the month of me: it was a bright cold day in april, and the clocks were striking zombie tuesday
Fear at a young age can be an all-encompassing devil.
At the age of 5, I had the most terrifying nightmare of my life. To this day, I remember every single detail of the dream.
It is not a long dream.
I am a child, playing with friends outside our home in Elliot Lake, Ontario. It is harshly sunny day, colours are washed out and everything seems sharp-edged. Everyone I am playing with runs up to the sidewalk. I follow and find everyone gathered around a smiling woman. Her hair is on fire. The flames do not burn, and everyone is happy, but I feel wrong.
Suddenly, I am in one of the townhouses along our row. I am in the living room, which is grey-walled and empty. There is another woman in the room. Floating in the air next to her are a large, shiny pair of scissors. She laughs — a mad, evil laugh. The scissors whirl around her head in a hypnotic pattern, opening and closing with an audible “Hisk… Hisk… Hisk…” .
The woman looks at me. Still laughing. The scissors fly across the room and begin to dance around me, opening and closing, opening and closing. Hisk… Hisk… Hisk… She continues to laugh.
Then the scissors stop, open, in the air in front of me. And then jump forward and close over my left arm, severing my forearm completely. My hand and wrist disappear. I raise the stump to my face and the inside of my arm looks like sliced bolonga, pale, pink, and dead. The woman continues to laugh. I start to scream.
And I wake up.
