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Interference…

There was a knock on my door. Opening it, I asked ‘to who do I owe the pleasure?’

‘Satan.’ I heard him reply with a lop-sided grin, a flash of perfect white teeth. ‘I have come to show you around my kingdom, you have been in His one too long. Follow me, careful not to tread on my tail.’

A flash of smoke, a smell of sulphur and he vanished.

Maybe he was kidding, asking me to follow. I was left with the strangest feeling I had seen this man before. Who could forget those piercing blue eyes?

Shaking myself down thinking I must be overworked, seeing things that weren’t there.

The day bled away like water.

Colleagues smiled, chatted, making jokes. My day had been unchanged. The night, however, danced to a different tune.

Outlandish slaughters, murders of every kind. People in hells torment, Dante’s Inferno. There he was, operating my dreams.

‘This is what you were expecting, wasn’t it?’

‘It’s what we’ve been led to believe. Personally, I don’t believe in you or the other one.

No pitchfork or tail. He must have shed them before taking the helm of my sleeping mind. My private night space. I could have been dreaming of fairies for all I know. Seeing as how I sketch them most days, illustrating our latest acquisition. That’s not to say it’s the only kind of dream I have.

That was meant as an example. As I said, my night space is private. I don’t speak about my dreams, nor wonder what they mean.

As far as I can tell, dreaming is no more than a recycling bin, leftover rubbish from a former life spills out. This blue-eyed wonder seemed to know a lot about my bucket list. I want to travel, Venice, Paris, Egypt, The Rain Forest and Rome, to name but a few.

Over the last five nights, I have travelled to several of my favourite places, thanks to my unwanted benefactor. He managed to take my sleeping mind back in time to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Atlantis, the building of Petra, the beautiful pink city that was number one on my bucket list. The Pyramids, brick by brick, were not built by aliens.

One night he told me I could live anywhere, anywhere I choose. All I needed to do was end my life.

There came a blinding flash of life that woke me. My head cracking, a thunderstorm had taken over. Coffee, pills to ease the storm.

My thoughts rearranged themselves. If I believed in the devil, or in God, I would say this invader of my mind is the devil, trying to collect souls. A kind of competition, trying to outdo the Shining One, as my blue-eyed wonder referred to Him one night.

Remembering my RE, I know suicide to be one big sin. I’m not sure it’s one easily forgiven either, but I am the kind of person who likes to hedge their bets, seeing as how none of us knows the outcome of anything, planned or otherwise.

The universe has a way of putting the boot into best-laid plans. So I won’t be taking up his offer to end my life any time soon, to live in a paradise of my own choosing.

So you could say, the good guy, if he exists wins this one…

©anitadawes 2020