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One day I woke up and nothing was the same. The sheets felt coarser against my skin, the duvet felt strangely hollow.  I opened my eyes and the light coming through the window was different, too. Different how? Thicker, colder; It filled my room like water filling a basement. When I breathed in there was some strange smell I couldn’t quite fathom. Somewhere between the scent of a river and the smell of burning, though what was burning I couldn’t say. Not paper. Not wood. When I pulled myself out from that cloying duvet, and stood up, my body felt abnormal. It was as though I’d left a nightclub having taken the wrong coat from the cloakroom. It was the same coat, yes. The same size, same style, same colour. But not my coat. The alcohol wearing off in the bitter air of the morning hours, the wrong coat on; my body felt like that, that feeling of malaise, of not being quite right in your own skin, wanting to shuck out of it. Take the coat off, despite the chill. My skin was raw and feverish. In the bathroom the light, again, was strange. It poured through the window filled the bathtub like cold milk. I looked in the mirror. What was different? Everything? Nothing? My eyes were never so green.

No one else was awake as I descended the staircases, slowly, a foal’s first steps on uneven grass. The kitchen was flooded, too, with that strange white light. I put the kettle on to break the silence and its splutter wasn’t quite loud enough to manage. Perhaps my ears were blocked. Was I sick? I sliced some bread for toast, clumsily, bringing the knife down in jagged strokes. My thumb, out of my line of sight, was hiding in the knife’s path. It didn’t hurt. The blood was darker than I’d ever seen; it oozed out, dark as blackberry juice. I looked at it for quite some time before going to the drawer to find a plaster. Bleeding assuaged, I smelt burning again. I looked over to the toaster. I hadn’t even put my toast on. What was it? Not the oven, not the grill. On the cooker the clock said the wrong time. 03.29. Broken. I turned back to put my toast in but the bread wasn’t there anymore. How can bread vanish? I looked up at the clock on the wall. The big hand pointed to the VI and the little hand pointed to the III. I read and re-read it, but I had been right the first time; I’d learnt to read the time from his old Roman face. Perhaps I’d slept through until half three. I walked over to the window to look out and noticed the garden was full of large puddles. The patio was flooded. Then I looked up and saw that the sky was black.

The sky was black and there was a full moon. What strange dream was this? Nausea raced through me and my skin prickled hotly. I turned slowly back to the kitchen. Darkness, darker than I’d ever seen; only the moonlight lay on the ground in pools. Then I noticed the water which covered the floor. It stung my feet. My whole body stung. I flicked on a light switch but nothing happened, and that was when I noticed the staircase, lit dimly by moonlight, was charred completely black. Surely not. I climbed it slowly, running my hand along the banister whose blackened surface dissolved into dust against my sweaty palm. In the lounge all the chairs were broken piles of charcoal, the carpets black, the walls, too, stained with smoke. From the front door glowed lights, red and blue. I  walked out, not daring to look at the bookshelf lest I see one million words destroyed; not daring to look in the hallway mirror lest I see something altogether more terrible.

The front door was already wide open, so I stepped out of it into the street, lit up in sepia by the street lamps, the roofs of houses lit silver by the moon, windows reflecting red and blue, red and blue. The street was full of people and vehicles. Big red trucks. White and green vans. White and blue cars. No one looked at me as I came out, barefoot, in my pyjamas. They looked at big shapes draped in white blankets being lifted into the vans. My heart beat shook me with its fervour as I counted them. By the shapes and sizes I could have named them. But I just counted. One, two, three. Four. No. No, I screamed. No! But no sound came out, my throat was raw and dry. No sound, just silent sobs. And that’s when I saw it. The fifth, a fifth body in a fifth white blanket. Five. And I didn’t need to name that one. The fifth one. I just watched the street get further away as I ascended, saw the rooftops, mine like a blackened ribcage, still smoking. I rose slowly with the smoke, watching the houses get smaller, until the people were no longer visible, and the street was just a thin thread, and the cold air became me and I became it.