.....

I was lying awake after my dream. A nightmare in which I saw a man, pale, emaciated. His ribs were showing through his skin, getting more prominent as he inhaled. His eyes were bulging as if his skull couldn’t contain it. He appeared to be restless, but given the state of his condition, he could only crawl.

He was crawling on a sandy surface. I was not sure if it was a desert. The painful crawling kept on for a while until he chanced upon a book. Old. Hardbound. The man then frantically opened it, turning the pages violently. It appeared to me that he was searching for a passage in the book, but as I looked closer, the pages were all blank. The man hysterically tore the pages and began to weep. His long, low-pitched moan made me shiver. He then stopped. He slowly reached for the torn pages and ate them.

After that, I was on my bed, in the dark, tossing and turning, sleepless from the sweat in my sheets.