One More Night

Images like that will wake me up.

It’s the start of a race, we are crouching: -“On your marks, Get set…..”

Then nothing.

We wait.

Nothing.

Then everyone is moving away, something has happened, something has changed.

Everyone is moving away, everyone; there is a sense of urgency, of rising concern.

I am moving against the tide, there are a few of us trying to return to from wherever we had started but everyone else is moving in the opposite direction. The crowd is dense and there is a strong presence of soldiers forming a barrier at the edge, there is talk of an explosion.

Then the bombs begin to fall, people start running, panic.

I am heading towards the power station, a probable target so I turn and make for the river, I should not be here, and this is not my war.

On the river, boats of many shapes and sizes are leading the exodus and some of us wait hoping to join them; some stop and offer lifts.

A naked woman in the water by the bank sees me and suggests that we swim.

I accept.

We swim along the narrow river, the bed choked with the dead and as we swim their limbs brush against our own.

We leave the river and walk along the corridor; she is clothed now in a purple cotton dress. As we walk blood starts to flow from between her legs, I pick her up and carry her, making once more for the river.

A boat stops, a female captain and two leering males.

We board.

I offer to help and the two men set me an impossible task – to invert metal clasps in an old shoe.

I start, trying to pull a knife from the twine that holds it, then trying to cut the twine before realising that the twine is being spun by the two men to hinder my every move, I manage to separate the two sides with my legs and attack one of the clasps with the knife.

The men intensify their efforts to restrict me.

The girl is gone.

Images like this wake me.

It’s 2.30am.