...[dream number four]...



first thing i'm aware of: running out of a side street into the main promenade. it looks like regent street but it isn't, it's different somehow. older. everything is in a state of madness; police are trying to get people off the streets. i hurry across the road to the shop. it looks closed but the door's open. i wander inside and start searching, rummaging through files, in drawers, sweeping papers off desks, opening folders. whatever it is i'm looking for isn't here.

back into the street. it's changed. now it looks more like goodge street, but again, not. i don't question why, there isn't time for that. cars steered by panicky drivers are blaring their horns at each other in a state of urgency and impatience, as stones and bricks fly through the air, hurled by dissatisfied young men. none of this affects me, i'm not part of it, surely they realise this. the sky is darkening overhead, as the long tree-lined causeway continues its panic-stricken progress.

i continue running down the crammed street. you're running alongside me, both of us looking for a way out of this. surveying the scene, it's apparent that the street's changed yet again. now it's more akin to a bustling backstreet in peckham, but the same terrified disorder remains, people hurrying grimly in one direction down the street, and the familiar sight of the cars jostling for escape. no longer arranged in a tidy, single-file traffic-jam, cars are now jammed across the street, all trying to make their getaway in opposing directions. people are starting to duck and hide as the bombs start falling, hurtling towards us from the sky, heralded by the planes that offloaded them; the police's attempts to control the terror and chaos are failing hopelessly as the street erupts in a display of survival-driven violence. you and i nip between the cars, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. without warning your hand slips from mine, and your eyes tell me that you'll see me later, at the end when all this is over. at this point i believe you, and you dart away through the cars, disappearing into the frenzy.

i force my way across the street to a house. [again the front door is unlocked - why do people leave their doors open just because there's a national crisis?? crazy.] i sneak in, treading quietly through dark, unlit corridors and past open doors that lead nowhere. i make it through the house and emerge from what i had thought would be the back door, but it turns out to be another front door. everything is entirely different on this side of the house. no sirens, no overhead planes, no terror-stricken hordes of people. no heat, no warmth. no life. a long, cold, empty street; grey out-of-town nothingness as far as the eye can see. on one side of the street, the endless parade of faceless terraced houses; on the other side, miles and miles of perpetual wire fence, behind which stretches a plain that i can't see, thanks to the mist that obscures it. i'm glad of the mist, because i don't want to see or know anything about that plain, even thinking about it, seeing what little i can, fills me with dread.

i turn back around and knock on the door, praying that someone answers, that you answer, because i don't know where to go next, and this blank, bleak, dead street scares me. as i wait, the door opens.

and a woman stands before me, with a face that looks friendly but disconnected and closed. i ask if you're there. the name by which i call you isn't your name, but it seems to fit well enough for now. but you aren't here. i ask for directions and she points vaguely up this horrible street in the direction of the horizon. and i realise that i don't know what to do. i know that the street with the bombs and the cars and the people is just on the other side of these houses, and i desperately want to get back there, to where there are people and noise and crazed, frightened life, and the houses are made of brown and red brick, instead of dead, cold grey stone. but i can't get back there; all i have is this ever-stretching, empty road, and i know then that i am lost. up to now, everything has been automatic and clearly destined. now i don't know what comes next.



gawd knows.

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