Woke up gasping, gagging, that feeling of a scream caught in my throat almost palpable. I threw off my covers and made to move for the bathroom, worried of vomiting, but held myself frozen still.

No. Unsafe. Not the door.

The dream manifested like a man in a mist, gone one minute, there another, at first only a suggestion, the details blurred, then fuzzy, overcome like raindrops slithering, fading, but the fear remained, holding me deep and hard.

Something about a tattered door in a broken apartment, different than mine but one I at once recognized as home, the certainty of the dream state. Over and over again, a prisoner attempting escape, peering from around the door jamb to catch a predator the same way a child past his bed time peers between the rails of the staircase. I never saw the creature, but I knew he was there, between his rounds, waiting.

Another shift in the situation, he was in the same room with me, speaking, his voice a warbling murmur that sounded like the screeching of brakes, a wail, a scream. I stared at the floor, arms curled round my knees, refusing to look, refusing to believe he was there.

Then I was alone in my room again, recognizing the emptiness, savoring that the thing was gone, but desperate to go, to get outside, beyond a second door, the main door to the apartment building – the dream home, where trees, lush, green, moist and springlike awaited.

A blur into action, a new scene, dreamlike escapades, a movement toward the door. The creature sniffles at the sound of my heels and whips around and I catch its eyes and in the moment, poured into my chest as I woke from sleep, tore through the filmy veil,

What made my hands shake and the sweat like tears leaking down my cheeks, was that in the moment I saw the monsters eyes, one bloody red, leaking, the other a pale blue and crisp, the sharpness drilling, all seeing, a cyclops in the kitchen with the hackles on his back raised and quivering, claws bent edge, I knew two things. One; that I would never leave this place, not for a long time. And two; I recognized him, and inside I saw a friend.

The words are out now, the dream for you to see as I did. Take of it what you will, there’s no meaning for me, the details fading even as I type, all that remains and all that I can’t avoid is the feeling deep, the camaraderie with the obscene, the sick feeling in my gut.

I’m too hot to curl under the covers, too vulnerable to lie sprawled. At once I want both a man next to me and I want to be alone. I squeeze tight to the edge of my blanket and press my fetal form against the cool bedroom wall.

Outside a street sweeper hums past, leaving a trail of garbage in its wake. Men yell and shout and beat against a metal sheet, a skateboard, a broken bottle, hooting and shouting, a bang like a clock tolling the hour.

Even when the sounds fade, the shouts die to inside whispers, the sub woofer next door rolling the credits, I close my eyes tight, but I don’t sleep. I squeeze them tight against the darkness because I’m terrified to open them, to catch the beast creeping in my doorway, to match his gaze and witness back what he sees in me.