Tags
creative, fiction, flash, flash fiction, short stories, stories, story, The Nightmare, writing
I was falling. I was tumbling heads over heart over heels, cascading like a waterfall over broken rocks. Behind me, or perhaps above me, depending on which up I was facing at any given moment, the piano came tumbling after me. Stairs gave way to rocks which in turn began to melt into a murky fog which itself without warning transformed into daylight and then once more a staircase. It was as if I were falling through one of Esher’s woodcut prints, down an endless set of staircases which repeated upon themselves ceaselessly. And still, the piano came hurtling towards me, threatening (or promising) to catch up with me without ever quite managing to do so. Like a mouse in the grips of a domestic cat I was nothing more than a plaything, a toy with which to pass the time. Teeth, white then black then white once more, chattered after me. One moment it felt as if I was destined to be devoured by them, perhaps to return as some discordant melody, the next I felt that they had something that they needed to say to me, a message, perhaps, a sense of purpose. And yet still the piano remained both as close and as distant as it always had.
My eyes opened, stinging with the salt from a cold sweat. I swung myself out of my bed as if it were the source of all I did not want to face. I opened the door to step from my room.
I was falling.