Lonely At Night

I had a nightmare the night before.

I woke up sweating all over as if I had just been soaked by the rain that was wreaking havoc outside in the waking world. Even my palms were wet. Getting up to have a glass of water, I had a sudden, completely unexpected revelation. I was all alone.

There was not a single entity in the whole house other than me. That thought alone scared me for the first time in five full years of living alone. Come to think of it, I've always lived alone. In the orphanage, everybody did. We just liked to pretend that we all had achieved some sort of an idealized familiarity, a type of friendship-like bond that could not be broken by all evils of the world. But once we were let free into society, we all forgot those made-up, concocted feelings and emotions our caregivers would often imbue us with.

To be honest, I've always liked living alone. At that, existing alone. I hated being surrounded by people because that would then increase the chance of them bumping into me, or even slightly brushing me. But now, I suddenly felt an unknown craving – the touch of a warm body.

Was it because of the dream, or the weather? Maybe both? As I sat down by the window pane to look out at the rain, I felt the unfamiliar feeling slowly fade away. I could still detect a slight twinge of its remnants at the very bottom of my stomach, but mostly I was back to my old self. I was there, standing in the pit of dark emptiness which could not be filled by any daily activity, was not stimulated by ambition or agitated by emotion. Though there was a roof over my head, I could feel the cold drops fall onto my skin, slowly penetrating and making the night seem even more insufferable.

I tried picking up the pieces from my memory to draw a clear picture of the nightmare that had left a huge mark on my insides. Though all my dreams were equal nightmares, this one was a bit more delicate.

I am holding a bag full of snakes. Around me is the old house I lived in way before I'd get abandoned at the orphanage. I don't know how I remember the house, but I feel like this must be it. All the snakes inside the bag are dead except for the one whose head is out through the hole it made itself. It's spewing venom all over the place. I do everything in my power to save myself. There's a mirror up front. I catch a glimpse of myself viciously choking the snake with my bare hands as an evil look rests on my face, with a devilish smile tugging at the end of my lips. As I observe the expression, I feel how horrible it feels to be the one killing. With the strength of my veined hands, I also feel the weakness of the now-dead snake. It feels cold. So slippery. I throw it away and look back into the mirror. What it shows is so much different from how I feel.

I don't feel like smiling at all.