IT'S A NIGHTMARE.

I remember myself escaping through a narrow dark and dimly lit alley that exactly led nowhere but kept coming back to the same place as if in the confusing labyrinth. The effort was futile I knew but the fear of being caught by the vicious predator kept me to my feet- running! I was panting but running still.

Amidst the darkness, a prisoner, making a breakout like me, was caught and was beaten till his skull got punctured and died there of severe haemorrhage. So coward was I that I found myself staring at the poor man or rather a comrade in this battle of escape, being beaten mercilessly to death from a safe distance.The bleeding sight stroke me with nausea. In my entire life I had never- till the moment- seen people die in front of me. The fear born in me then was overriding than the nausea so I kept running again.

Time seemed to have flown away without my knowledge for I don’t remember how I reached to another inferno. But there I found myself witnessing again even fiercer scene; massacre and random butchering of the women and children. With common fatal strike by the killers, the heads were smashed open by heavy hammers and the atmosphere was filled up with the smell of the ignited matchstick. Someone then said that it’s the odour of blood flowing out from the head. Human heads though tough as protected by cranium, is still the Achilles heel. A fatal blow on it and the life is done away. Moreover, the savage assassins were justified as trained killers with that weapon. I wondered then how they dared to despise life that way.

To astonish me, a girl of around my age, shrieked as she was pulled away right under my nose by a burly man. He looked cruel of all the killers. He hit her on the fragile temple by his monstrous heavy club. Blood oozed out from her head and the atmosphere was again filled with the dirty smell of lighted matchstick. Pulling her by her hair, he checked her impulse. Assured that she’s dead, he went on his business again- hitting randomly and smashing heads and cracking the skulls as he trampled them under his feet and spitting on the lifeless corpses.

Amidst the darkness and the dark scenes, I heard a familiar voice that dissipated my fear but increased my worry all the same- it quivered each time I saw the extinguished life collapse to the ground. A hand pulled me by my shoulder and I traced the sound to my mother. I was flabbergasted by her presence.

“Why are you here in this unsafe place mother?” I asked her upon which she answered: “to take you home. It’s not good here.” She put her finger on her pursed lips to gesture me to keep silent. 

A modern cop on surveillance then got frenzy and began shouting. I was taken aback when he joined the assassins in killing the civilians. As he cracked open the heads, I felt carnivores blood flowing in his veins. Perspiration rolled as blood from me as I trembled, fearing the demented cop may sense my blood too. Feudal lords' regime would have been no different to this.

A devilish knock from the cops club killed a guy who struggled but to no success. He swung the weapon towards me and I woke up!

Below, the cooks were chopping something for breakfast and they had already built a fire. Austere Lord Buddha with his halo of enlightenment and in the composure of eternal bliss, on the wall consoled me. On my table was a New Testament; I left on the page where Herod conspires to kill the little Jesus and where he, upon discovering that he’s been outwitted, goes on killing infants randomly. It seems that a page from the Holy Bible had flown in my dream. All I saw was a nightmare only.

Thank you, Lord; nightmare was a dream only though a terrible experience.