Travei

Dream of the other



Light.

All around you, and red like your mother's womb. It's a soft light, but so all-encompassing it might as well be blinding; there is a room, and you are sitting on a chair, or perhaps the edge of a bed. You know that. But to see it is as impossible as in absolute darkness.

Darkness is there when you close your eyes, or perhaps just a deeper shade of red. No longer the red you don't remember from before you were born, but the red of old blood on a rusty nail. Now, how do you know the colour of old blood on a rusty nail, on barbed wire, on wood?

The question fades from your brain as the light does not, because you suddenly notice there's someone else in the bright red room. Their breathing is loud, the ragged breathing one associates with heavy labour or acute stress. The smell of sweat clogs your nostrils, rank and warm, not the slow gummy sweat of someone who's nervous but a new, salty sweat. That settles it, then.