19 September 2005

Nightmarish Night

Both my boys abandoned me last night, making for an altogether ominous night alone. Shadow was restless because of the full moon. I took him outside, thinking he might need to relieve himself, but all he did was bark and listen to all the other dogs barking. It was almost creepy how light it was outside. The air itself looked silvery, and visibility seemed the same as daylight at first. Then I noticed that everything wore its nighttime veil of shadows and secrecy. I remembered a statistic I heard once that the crime rate skyrockets on nights of the full moon. Nervous, I called to Shadow to come in. Just then, the high-pitched yips and howls of coyotes filled the night, and Shadow froze. It sounded like a pack of the wild, lonely dogs were in our front yard. Shadow sat down, listening with his head cocked to the side. I called and called for Shadow to come in, visions of night prowlers creeping into my mind's eye. He wandered back to the door, and relucantly came in. As soon as I laid down, he started barking again. STUPID DOG! I got up, put my robe back on, and took the stupid dog back outside. Midnight. Sleep, finally.

A terribly realistic nightmare haunted me in the early morning hours. Kyle, my little brother, went missing. He had been on some sort of trip with friends, and was on some sort of lake or ocean when he went underwater and that's the last his friend Cory saw of him. We were posting Missing signs up everywhere. I remember the intense mental battle of maintaining hope that he was alive and battling thoughts that he was dead. At the end of the dream, I stumbled upon a foot; the rest of the body was buried under something. (I read a Hurricane Katrina article where a woman stepped on the foot of a dead child, the rest of whose body was buried under rubble.) The foot I found was Kyle's; I could tell by looking. For a horrific moment, I stared at the foot, willing it to move, to signal life. It did! His foot actually wiggled, and Kyle raised up, and he was alive! I was crying, and then I woke up. Love you, brother!

What a frightening, lonely night without Hubby... He'll be back soon.

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