The Dream

The sun set with slow but steady rhythm and cast a net of darkness over the city, a net that grew in size as the pale globe of the moon took over. It was surreal even for a dream, an entire city bathed in silver as I patrolled its streets with a shotgun in my hands. There wasn’t a soul in sight and the only sounds I could hear were my footsteps. The skyscrapers around me reached out to the black sky, till they too disappeared into the darkness of the night.

I looked down and felt a strange satisfaction to see I was dressed in black. The attire seemed appropriate for the gothic tone of the dream. The road on which I was walking stretched ahead for a while before merging into a labyrinth of lanes and alleys. I walking pretty fast, like I knew where I was going.

The cool wind, or something that seemed like it, brushed past my face. The effect was more soothing than I expected, like I was somewhere near a beach. I thought I even heard rushing waves, but I could be wrong.

The lights flashed with startling abruptness and disappeared the same way - they came from the end of the road. I felt my feet raise the pace at which I was moving. Arms tightening their grip over the shotgun, I sprinted as fast as I could. The lights weren’t normal ones, like lightning or flame. They had a bluish tinge to them. They were the unmistakably reptilian eyes of the thing I was stalking. I didn’t stop running till I came to the corner of the road, gun leveled ready and my finger at the trigger. But there was nothing there.

“Looking for something Nilan?” hearing its grating voice behind me, I swiveled around and pulled the trigger. The gun roared and sent me staggering back. It took a chunk off the wall ahead of me and raised a cloud of dust. By the time it cleared a few seconds later, I got the strange feeling I was alone again. There was no sign of the reptilian eyes or the taunting voice. Only the massive buildings and the eerily silver moonlight remained.

Then, my alarm-clock screamed and woke me up. Shit! Six nights in a row and I still can’t kill the damn thing.