Something I was working on today - part of a work in progress

She’d forgotten that there was such a time as 3 am – at least, other than as a time for getting out of bed, going to the toilet, and then hurrying back to the heavy confines of the still-warm duvet. Especially now, when you were about as far away from summer as it was possible to get.

But something’s disturbed her tonight: a bad dream. The type of dream that leaves you confused and shaken when you awake from it, not quite sure if the terror and the threat of violence was actually real, but knowing for certain that your sleeping body thought it was real; the irresistible and urgent promptings of flight or fight, the residual deep breathing, the echoes of panic and funk. Before the dream dissolves into lost memory, she registers a few vivid images: mercenaries in the desert, firelight, and a man’s head being gradually destroyed – vaporised – by the sustained close-quarter machine gun fire of a vicious rival.

She makes a cup of tea in the kitchen, hyper-aware of the kettle’s roaring heating element in the dark hours silence and stillness. The light switch’s click makes a big sound in the dead of night, and seems to echo through the building’s infrastructure.

As she turns off the kitchen light and starts back towards the bedroom with her fingers curled around the smooth, hot curves of the mug, her feet’s cool soles on the colder tiles, a car on the other side of the canal switches on its headlights.

Looking down at the car lights’ reflections shivering on the dark water, she thinks of childhood holidays: harbours at night, with long looping chains of coloured lights shimmering on the wavelets – red, yellow, green and blue on the water; the smell of fried onions and deep-fat-fried fish and chips; the gusty sound of laughter from the quayside pub’s yellow-lit interior; her parents hissing at each other as they all walked back to their hotel together. She remembers the sound of their anger in the dark air three feet above her head, and the feel of the breeze lifting her fringe off her delicate forehead. Mum and dad were holding one of her hands each, stiffly.