Cold Dream

I was face down in a driveway. I did not know why. My world had been reduced to the inches between myself and these two lines of cement, and I had some vague notion that I must crawl forward, keeping myself between these two little lines. There could have been many standing around and watching me, or I could have been all alone, I did not know; it was dark, and my mind was dark. Slowly, I crawled, trying desperately to stay on my hands and knees, trying to maintain the right direction. I could not see where I was going, but I had a sensation of danger behind me and safety ahead.

This was the dream I had last night, and I never completed the crawl. I woke up in the middle of it and I realized my mind had used the memory of my old apartment; in the dream I had been trying to crawl all the way from the street to the back of the building. It would have been shorter to go to the front door, but then this was a dream and in the dream I didn't have that knowledge. I didn't feel any injuries or inebriation, but just that dull fear of what was behind me and an inability to rise any further than my hands and knees. The fear could have been nothing more than a concern to get out of the street and the driveway before a car came.

I found the reduction of my consciousness, of my awareness to be most unsettling.