just_writing | Day Five: Snowman

I had that dream again last night, the one that always leaves me drenched with ice cold sweat and gasping for breath as if I have run a mile in a diving suit.

There is a snowman waiting for me on the other side of the door. I do not know how I know he is there, but I can tell with that certainty that dream logic gives. If I could see with infrared eyes the gap under the door would be blue with cold, a harsh unfriendly colour like the strip lights in the butchers which illuminate the corpses hanging from hooks, ready for him to reach out with rough hands and sharp knife and drag their flesh from their bones and wrap it in paper and hand it to the ravenous ravening horde whose desires cannot be satiated.

Breathe. In, out, in, out. Slow the heart rate. Discipline the body. It is only a dream. There is no snowman behind the door, no heart of ice to freeze myself against, no cold blue light to stick to. The chair in front of the door has not moved, the chalk marks are undisturbed; the hair across the hinge is still there. Nothing has come through the door. It was only a dream.

I am glad it has not snowed this Christmas.