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From the Journal of the Morbid Socialite, Dr. Mementomori Malodrema:
“This particular nightmare has haunted me three nights running since the lecture attended on the twenty-fourth of June, resisting honey, laudanum, and even forced insomnia, finding me waking at my desk, unaware that I had ever fallen asleep. As per the suggestion of the Emissary and Professor, I have seen to it that this nightmare be logged and acknowledged. If the mind sees fit to plague me to get me to pay attention, then my attention is granted, though not without bitterness and bleary eyes.
“This particular nightmare has haunted me three nights running since the lecture attended on the twenty-fourth of June, resisting honey, laudanum, and even forced insomnia, finding me waking at my desk, unaware that I had ever fallen asleep. As per the suggestion of the Emissary and Professor, I have seen to it that this nightmare be logged and acknowledged. If the mind sees fit to plague me to get me to pay attention, then my attention is granted, though not without bitterness and bleary eyes.
The nightmare begins thus:
I start with a foetal mound of flesh in my hands, squirming and mewling, though the features of the underdeveloped creature resemble both a human child and some unidentified creature of the Neath's design and, in doing so, resemble neither. My mind tells me to name it and all I can think of are London streets, London shops, the beating heart of London between my hands and leaking placental blood between my fingers and to the undefined floor below, spreading from the point where it drops like webbing and, all at once, like tears.
I am wearing gloves, cold, impersonal, and the premature babe can tell and cries harder, a sharp, painful, wailing thing that sounds like death itself. I am afraid. I am so very afraid.
My hands venture close to closing around the babe, trembling and strong enough to crush the frail body.
I am afraid.
A figure, simultaneously dark and bright, simultaneously merciful and hateful, simultaneously understanding and disgusted, approaches. It takes the mound of flesh from my hands before I can close them and I feel my heart- or perhaps my soul- tear free of my ribs, tethered to the bleeding creature that is both flesh and concept. London is taken from me and yet it is all I have.
All at once, I am falling through imperceptible void, though I know that it is filled with colors and lights I cannot see and figures that mean me harm. I cannot open my wings, it hurts to do so and they refuse to catch nonexistent wind. I am falling and falling and falling for ages that feel like a second. There is a great flash of light, a great, burning pain that overtakes my mind and body…
And then I awake, screaming.
I have so few days to resolve these dreams. It is time to take drastic measures.”
