I dreamt of a clocktower. It was old, the sides of it crumbling into my fingers as I brush it. I remember it was high above me. I was on the top floor of a building. It felt like my school, but looked nothing like it. My school's roof is green - I see it each time I look out of my classroom window. This roof, is grey and brown smudged (like my oil pastels) , bricked, flat - like a castle.

The clock chimes, but the clock has no hands. Time is still passing though, a second each minute. I'm moving faster than time itself, but it doesn't bother me.

The sky, a misty, dark, gloomy grey. I'm alone...


(As I type this, a chiming echoes from nowhere. The nearby church, maybe, but for a minute, I am too afraid to move.)

I enter the building. Its warmer in there. I realised it had been raining outside, but I don't feel wet, just numb. I look up, and see how hollow the building is. Empty, like I was. A staircase made of rotten wood, grey as well. Everything is grey, including me. I remember the scars of age on the wood, the soft and old feeling of it under my feet, the rusting nails, now weak enough to let go. The air is stale, cold, just about non-existent. I'm walking up. A step threatens to break through, but I don't move any faster.

I'm standing by the face of the clock. The sharp roof of the clocktower is above me, banisters long and haunting, stretchs of wood across the air. The shingled roof is cold, and dark. Rats are watching me, in the shadows of the sky. The face is frosted, dirty glass. Yellow by age, and defouled. The numbers are beautiful, like calligraphy - painted-on. But all I pay attention to now, is the bricks, and the wood. The floor is going to give way soon, I can feel it. But I continue to admire the glass. I can't see anything out of it. And it is so beautiful.

Everything is so still, and my soul is flying out of my body, swirling down the stairs weightlessly. I see the clocktower, the roof, the sky, the restricting clouds. And I see myself - frozen, as the floor begins to creak.


I wake up, thoughts swirl by me. And I know - I know so well that I have dreamt of it before.