Dreams

When you try to sleep roll below for the nightmares that leave gasping for air.

Running across no-man’s land, shells smashing into the ground throw up limbs, head and torsos. You keep running through the charnel rain, the mud and the water but where are you going? The battlefield seems endless.
You hold a dying man in your arms their face shifting between those of your countless lost comrades. They plead with you to save them, grabbing onto your uniform as if you can be an anchor that holds them against the endless dark void. Blood flows from their mouth, their nose their ears, their face becomes a pool of featureless blood. You want to push them away, you hold onto them, this never ends.
You are in the trenches again a maniac chases you with a knife and a grenade. Each cut of the knife is searing and makes you cry out. You know the figure has pulled out the pin and you try to find a corner you can duck behind before it explodes but the madman is always just behind you mercilessly slashing at your poor body.
Your uniform has been torn apart from the blast and blood flows from the shrapnel wounds that pepper your body. You crawl past the torn bodies of your comrades, their shells obscenely sliced open to reveal their intestines, livers and brains, glistening and bloody. You slither through their seeping lifeblood, contribute to the pools with your own. You don’t feel human but like some ancient beast sliding over the mud and then into it, squirming through the wet earth like a bloody worm, pulsating and seeking darkness to dream in.
You are young and at a house party at the start of summer, the evening air is cool and the light is still bright and clear. You recognise many of your old friends and acquaintances of your parents. The conversation is light and people are laughing but you can’t understand what they are saying. People acknowledge you, smiling, squeezing your arms affectionately. Your ears are buzzing with tinnitus. There is a shot, the whizzing of a bullet in the air audible just above the deep static of the tinnitus. A guest’s head dissolves in a shower of meat and blood. You cry out for people to take cover but no-one moves. You crouch next to a stone balustrade. Another shot and a guest’s arm is severed the limb falling close to your feet and the jetting blood staining the man’s trousers. He does not seem to respond or acknowledge the fatal wound. Everyone continues to talk their nonsense chatter and sip from their wine glasses. Another shot, another, another.
You are in a field hospital, the canvas is high above you and the air is thick with blood, body odour and tears. Men call for their mothers and reach out towards you to plead for water. You are drawn to the electric lights of the operating area. Around the operating tables are not doctors but butchers in heavy leather aprons, joking and smoking. They dissect the poor soldiers that are thrown one at a time onto the table, removing their arms with deft crack and twist, hacking into thighs and then removing a leg with a determined heave. You try to cry out to warn the wounded soldiers of the danger but your voice is a strangled snarl, you try to move but the wounded clutch at your clothes and the air feels a thick as tropical air. You are trapped by the weight of a finger upon you and the soldier after soldier is broken down into mere components in front of you.

If you have been drinking then the dreams are the same but everyone seems demonic in appearance and nature.