Dreams are fickle things.

For children they are points of wonder and fascination, an unwaking world of endless imaginative creation waiting to be explored. For adults, they are often a gentle place wherein the responsibilities and fears of life melt away.

How I wish things could be the same for me.

For when my eyes shut, I see only nightmares.

Visions of a time and place far removed from my own. Visions of death, decay, and desolation so maddeningly real that even when I wake from them my mind remains within their dreadening grasp- distorting my perceptions until all that I see of waking world matches that of the un-waking. Sometimes it lasts only fleeting seconds… and others, it continues for hours.