A Hallucination

A Hallucination


I’d just stayed out late with my friends, having a laugh, I was walking back home.

The street seemed perfectly normal when I began to walk down it. Houses still, trees steady, all looking quite banal from last nights rain. Then it changed. Some of the lamp-posts were coiled up into tight balls, watching me with their red squinted eyes, they wore hard scales, some where slithering across the pavement with their forked tongues protruding threateningly from their mouths, hissing at me. Loud were the sounds as I turned round and saw cars revving-up their engines at me. Like monsters. Their bonnets hiding away giant teeth ready for me. Rear-view mirrors like the erect ears of a predator. One of the cars in-front of me, a Ford. Grinning. Smirking. Teasing, trying, testing me. I ran...and stopped, as the cracks in the pavement opened up to engulf me. The cracks surrounded me. Revealing their bottomless depths. The windows of the houses as I turned round showed sinister faces. Looking out at me, all pale, all dismal. Something about their expressions...terrifying; their noses were upturned and drawn to their eyebrows like pigs. Then I could hear all these strange noises. The loudness of the engines revving-up behind me, and the faces…oink oink, oink oink! I stood motionless on the last bit of earth left to stand on, the cracks in the pavement were widening. The trees now. Their branches bowing across the pavement. Groping for me.

I found a pathway and walked on. I looked up. The chimneys were spewing out fire. The devil was here!

I ran and ran and ran down the street. I caught my heel in a pavement crack and fell flat on my face. Reality slapped me. I looked at my foot and noticed the crack was tiny. The lamp-posts were shining a dim yellow, the windows were shut with their blinds drawn, the cars were parked silently along the roadside, the chimneys were releasing harmless smoke, and the trees were swaying softly in the chilling breeze. I stood up and noticed my dad's Ford parked outside our house. I knew I was here. And I think I knew what had happened.
Drink had betrayed me...or was it more than drink?

I woke up the next morning with a broken nose, and vowed, that after that night, I would never make the same mistake again.