Sam’s Journal of Survival

I Had a Bad Dream

011626 This journal is fiction. The voice you’re reading is a character, not the author.

I Had a Bad Dream

I didn’t sleep well last night.

I had a dream. I suppose it was a nightmare, because he was in it.

Herman Johnson.

I don’t want to describe the dream itself. What stays with me is his voice. Hearing it again was shocking in a way I wasn’t prepared for. It sounded real. Close. As if my mind hadn’t forgotten anything at all.

My body believed it.

I woke up with my heart racing and my hands clenched. For a moment, I didn’t know where I was. I lay there in the dark, listening, waiting for my body to catch up with reality.

That took longer than it should have.

What unsettles me most is that I haven’t been thinking about him lately. I haven’t been replaying anything. And still, he showed up, uninvited, as if my mind remembered something I was trying not to.

I hate that he still has access to me this way.

I got up early. Made coffee I barely drank. Sat at the table until the morning felt solid again.

Writing this down puts distance between me and the feeling. It reminds me that I’m awake. That I’m here.

The rest of the day can wait.