Alfred's Nightmare (Part 1)

Alfred awoke with a forceful jolt. Often we are woken from dreams by such jolts. We dream we are falling, or have slipped, or tripped, and when we hit the dream ground, we wake to find we have landed not on concrete but on soft mattress springs. When we get older, of course, we realise that there was in fact no fall; just a violent muscular twitch, enough to stir the conscious back to sudden life. Alfred was past the age at which he wet the bed; past the age at which he could legitimately run to his parent’s bedroom and slither in beside his mother. But he had not quite reached that age in which we can fully separate dreams from reality. This age, in truth, varies from person to person, and one may ask if any of us ever really reach it. But it matters not; what is trying to be shown here is that Alfred Hutchins, age 10, was lying wide awake in bed, eyes frantically scanning his shadowy bedroom to check that this was now real life, that his dream was really over.  The fear which had gripped him during his sleep had yet to relinquish its hold; try as he might, he could not squirm of it. He grappled for the switch to his bedside lamp. In its yellow light, he felt better, however its glow was small consolation alone, and how would he sleep once it was turned off again? Being dragged back into that feverish dream world was a fearsome concept.  Under his bed was a pile of Beano annuals. Without looking (fearing what he might see there, though he knew in his heart that there was nothing) he clumsily snatched one up and settled down to read its colourful pages.

In his dream, Alfred Hutchins had been chased by an ugly woman who, though old and wizened, was extremely fast and strong. He didn’t know why she was chasing him; he did not stop to think about it, nor did he think about the fact that his ‘house’ was suddenly a huge purple mansion with a lake in the garden. She chased him from room to room, eventually finding him behind a sofa where he had been trying to hide. Pulling back his arm like he’d seen on T.V. he’d punched her repeatedly, or tried to. His fists moved through the air slowly, as though underwater; when his knuckles made contact with her wizened face they had no effect, for his arms were suddenly weaker than a new-born kitten’s. He tried again and again to hit her but each punch took all of his strength but had the same feeble effect, his limp fingers just brushed against her rubbery skin.

All of a sudden, dream Alfred was sprinting towards the lake, his haggard pursuer snapping at his heels with her vile toothless maw. When he reached the water, he dived in, and it happened again – his arms were once again enfeebled, powerless. In slow-motion he flailed in the water as if it were thick oil, moving nowhere. Once again the old woman was upon him and this was when he woke up with the aforementioned jolt, reeling with terror, alone and safe in the dark, though he did not feel it.

To be continued