The night wraps it's dripping rime hands around my neck, catching sweat on Python fingers, their tongues flicking the flyaway hairs. It's nails creep up the soft cape of flesh of my throat, dragging their way up to my eyes. They peel my lids open again and again, jagged cliff edge knife pulling at thinly veiled corners. I can feel the vessels pop within my eyes, a New York New Years firework show of running red.

Dead silence is swept away by the whirring waves of a fan. I am awake and rolling in routine malaise. Guilt tugs at my heart and disappears in the instant I try to pin it down. It is frightful and flightful and with its fleeting nature, leaves and then emanates a trace of soreness in its place. There are no alarms and no time taking place. Everything is frozen under the fingernails of a great beast.

A dull tapping at my windows tells me dear fear wants to braid my hair and whisper gently in my ear. I toss and turn a few times more, trying to shake the animal off of me. It's nails rap again at my eyelids and they blister, hot tears spilling and I look up, staring death in the face and seething from something that I can't quite see, nor feel.