text: For the last 3 weeks, every single night I had the same dream. As soon as I fell asleep, I arrived there. Nowhere. Just fucking nowhere. White. And in that nowhere there he was. Waiting for me. The first time I saw him he was like a speck. A smudge on the lens. Maybe not even human but some kind of restless animal or tree or something in between. Then night by night he got closer. Each time I arrived back there he had closed the distance just a little, but would move no closer once I was there. He gesticulated wildly but didn’t move from his spot. At this point all I could see was a figure, silhouetted against the blinding white nothing. He waved at me as if drowning, or falling from a high building. But stationary. Rooted to the ground. After a week or so he had swum into view. I could make out a short man, with long white arms and dark eyes. The waving seemed desperate, frustrated, maybe angry. One night he got close enough for me to see his face. His skin was dry, cracked, pulling itself to pieces over his skull like a jigsaw. A riverbed in drought. The next night I could see the whites of his eyes, such as they were. They bulged as he waved his arms in agony, or frustration. But they weren’t white but black, the whole eyeball glossed black like a pool ball. His mouth writhed in his head like he was screaming, but I heard nothing. The night after that I realised he was waving his hands to reach me, To touch me. His face was twisted as he screamed, tendons straining down the side of his neck, spit flying from his silent mouth. Last night I was almost within his reach. His black eyes looked straight at mine and his fingers grasped at my face. I still couldn’t hear him. Something pulls my gaze downwards away from the vast black eyeballs, and I feel the blood drain from my face. I realise that his arms aren’t long at all, not relative to his size. His legs are cut halfway down the shin, severed cleanly like a butchers cut. No blood. From the stumps stick metal rods, driven into the ground. Fixing him there. Like a scarecrow. He wasn’t the one moving closer to me. It was me that moved closer to this desperate flailing thing, night by night. I couldn’t make myself stop. It’s been more than 24 hours since I last slept. I know that the next time I arrive there I’ll be close enough for him to touch me. And I know for absolute certainty, that once he does I will be able to hear him. I know it with every fibre of myself. I don’t want to know what he is saying. I can’t know. I have tried not to sleep, but I keep nodding off. Every time my brain melts into sleep I hear his breathing, like its in my ear. Like a death rattle on repeat, before I shake myself awake. He’s waiting right next to me I *can’t* sleep. *I can’t -* I feel him next to me and I turn to look. I hear the rattling breath like it’s on my neck. Something tells me to reach out for his hand, an emaciated claw. But when I do he rips his hand away, evading me. He’s not trying to touch me, but trying to keep me away. He doesn’t want me here. He’s still screaming silent, bloodcurdling screams. Silent. But I still hear that rattling breath. I realise two things in an instant with terror: 1. That sound isn't coming from him. 2. In all of these weeks I had never once looked behind me. &#x200B; &#x200B; \- this little one came to me in (yes I'm serious) a dream, and was fun and quite disturbing to write.