He woke well before his alarm, in a cold sweat.
He was having trouble getting out of the dream that seemed to have gone on all night, but at the same time feeling compelled to bring the details of it back for him to look at. After laying quite still with his eyes closed for some time, he remembered how it had started with a dreadful argument. To be precise, it began with an unexpected visitor showing up during the evening. He couldn’t remember who it was, someone from the past or a complete stranger? He just couldn’t tell. Somehow they knew he’d be on his own, knew that she was visiting her sister’s family for a couple of days.
The visitor had brought a full bottle of twelve-year-old Scotch whisky. In the dream they had slowly got drunk together. The way it was coming back to him made it all seem so reasonable, but that’s the way dreams are. They had just about finished the bottle when the visitor explained that several years back he had poisoned his dog. He said it was waking people up in the middle of the night and it got to the point where he just couldn’t take it anymore. In his dream, everything came across as perfectly reasonable, but somehow it all went downhill fast.
In fact, a fight broke out.
Bringing it all back was becoming more difficult to think about, but the brawl had ended up in the kitchen where he had grabbed a carving knife and stabbed the man! He was there, on the kitchen floor, bleeding. After a long state of panic, he checked for a pulse. There wasn’t one. Then, he opened the kitchen door and dragged the body down the side of the house, leaving it beside the dustbins. There it ended. The dream ended. Shuddering and still bathed in sweat he opened his eyes. He looked at the clock. He still had more than an hour before his wake up alarm.
He got up and went into the bathroom. A splash of cold water was what was needed.
The first thing he noticed was the blood on his hands. Then, in the mirror, bruising around his face, together with blood smears. Panic took hold and he ran to the kitchen, where he found blood, lots of it! The kitchen, yes, it all came flooding back so vividly now. He went out to the bins, where he found the body, just where he had left it. He was bending over the body when he was startled by a voice, right near his ear. He spun around, peering into the dark. He couldn’t see anything. It came again, this time louder.
“What is it?” she repeated.
He slowly turned to face her.
“What is it, dear?” she went on, “You’ve been grunting a lot. Are you alright?”
He sighed with a great sense of relief, and looked at the clock. Still nowhere near time to get up.
“Who was grunting?” he said.
“You, of course,” she said.
“No. Go back to sleep. You were probably dreaming,” he said, smiling.