The biting sub Antarctic blizzard was in full swing just after midnight. Anything alive was either inside or battened down behind whatever shelter it could find. Cows and sheep tried to huddle behind the twenty meter high pine wind break that ran along the boundary of the property and the two dogs had dug a hole in what was left of the lawn to try and keep warm with each other under the heavily rusted 1980's Ford Cortina that had skidded diagonally toward the back door that afternoon as he made a quick bolt inside out of the weather.
The cracked windscreen and broken headlights complimented the rather dilapidated three bedroom bungalow with faded paint, chipped windowsills and dirty windows as it stood on an ordinary South Island country street. Both looked forlorn and completely miserable. This was weather that was for sure. On some level every sentient life form must have appreciated its insignificance compared to the unbridled power of Mother Nature raging across the night sky, and tried to get out of the way.
Even the timber fence facing the street, stained with diesel and engine oil many moons ago, gave testimony to the harsh climate, as what was left of it bent and buckled but somehow, like the few very hardy trees that were left, didn't fall. It suited the property to a tee with the muddy tyre tracks showing the evidence of far too many mornings that a seedy driver rushed to work late and lost traction, with both his car and his grip on the start of the day.
The back door was shut but the broken windows were frosted over as the curtains danced and whirled with each other. A broken coffee mug and an empty bottle of whisky lay on the floor as the kitchen door slammed repeatedly in an attempt to come off its hinges. At the front of the house, past the swinging knotted mouldy shower over bath curtains tied at one end and the frozen toilet bowl with no cistern and a twenty litre bucket beside it, past the filing cabinet holding the side door in place, right down the far end one room had the door shut.
Inside the room the paisley wallpaper seemed to drift in and out of phase. The ceiling gave the illusion of rising and falling in time with the fat man's chest and the two bar radiant heater looked translucent as the air around it shimmered and the carpet got crispy. The fat man's chest continued to rise and fall, oblivious to all of this, as he tried to suck the paint off the ceiling in a deep snoring sleep, which could very easily have been his last.
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Inside the dream the feeling of a nagging intrusion came again and again, like when a cook cracks an egg open to get the gloop out, an intrusion trying to crack my mind open, except when my mind cracked open there was nothing there to scoop out, so the nagging intrusion crawled inside and went to sleep.
Inside the dream I was sweating profusely. I must have been in a shack working on something because I couldn't see the sun, but the heat was intolerable. I was parched and my mouth felt like a birdcage. I looked up into darkness but the sun seemed to be slowly rising from under my feet.
You sometimes know in dreams whether it is or isn't real but all I knew was that the heat was tangible; tangible and final. I wasn't scared. I didn't really feel anything except the heat. Then the ground erupted in flames.
"So this is what the end of everything feels like."
Piezoelectric sirens shrieked in the darkness above, louder and louder waking the intrusion that was asleep inside my mind. The sound now came in physical waves that knocked me off my feet and I fell. I kept falling and expected to eventually melt into the searing flames but instead felt a solid thud as my mind eventually reconnected with my body and hit the bed. My tongue bled from biting it with the impact of the fall, and the wail got louder and the ground got hotter. A window shattered and...
Wait, what?
I very nearly didn't feel the blast of freezing air hit my face but it was enough to jolt me back to the shrill scream of the smoke alarm.
"Fuck me!"
I jumped off the bed and tripped over my boots, falling head first into the heater and gashing my forehead open to match my bleeding tongue. At least the impact ripped the power lead from the wall socket and the heater was off; my rapidly blistering skin another entire matter. That smoke alarm was drilling my temples so I grabbed the door handle and seared my hand for my efforts.
"Fucking...!"
I put my sweatshirt over my burnt hand and turned the knob, opening the door to let the icy air flood the room but the smoke alarm would not shut up. My head and hand both really hurt but all I could focus on was getting some quiet to get back to reality, so I ran for a kitchen chair. I dragged it roughly up the hallway in my still semi-conscious state, multi coloured paint chips landed on the floor like a trail of snowflakes as the chair bounced off the repeatedly painted over walls.
Back in the room I clambered onto it and balanced precariously on tip toes to pull the battery out. I mean how hard could it be? That's the thing with the twelve foot stud in these old places, apart from being bloody cold the high ceilings give the impression of spacious living but it's a bugger to reach them when you need to. I stretched as far as I could go to just reach the clip and finally I ripped the nine volt battery out plug and all. The piezo seemed to get even louder if that was possible, or maybe it was just my head.
"Shit, that's right."
New fire regulations meant that Mum had made the electrician hard wire them in when she was still alive, for the insurance. All I wanted at the moment was for some quiet, so I climbed down, went and got the mallet I keep beside the bed and, hurriedly climbing back up (without falling off) proceeded to bash seven shades of shit out of both it and the ceiling around it until the piezo went to a feeble squeal and then finally died a tortuous death. With the quiet my brain started to function and reality returned. Standing on the chair, mallet in hand, I surveyed the result of my idiocy. Dream or not, that was almost it. And
that's
when it happened.
"You gotta stop drinking so much boy," a sultry female voice hissed inside my ear.
I literally fell off my chair in shock, too slow to tuck my chin in time and managing to knock myself out as the base of my skull hit the floor splattering my blood in an almost perfect circle on the now semi liquid carpet as my hair melted into it.
"Well, that was lucky," the same voice purred with a good deal more compassion as I drifted off back into the space where my mind once was.
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The pain came to me as I tried to peel the carpet from my blistered scalp the next morning. It was daylight so I must have been out for several hours. My mind cracked again and reality fell on me. I was alone. I'd almost done it properly this time. I smiled through the pain at the irony, the heat and the parched thirst. Then I remembered the voice. She was right of course; I'd always drunk too much but never had a hallucination when I was awake.
"Is that you God?" I laughed.
"Fuck off idiot!" I imagined the reply.
Whatever she was, it was the push I needed to shift my mind. Of course my stupidity almost cremating me alive had absolutely
nothing
to do with it.
It was a face numbing whisker freezing morning when I eventually dragged my very sorry Non compos mentis shell out of bed. The wind had dropped and there was a stillness you only get in these types of places. If there were any birds in these trees they were still well and truly hunkered down after last night. I opened the back door and staggered out onto my patio to have a piss as I do most mornings. I find it refreshing to expose my most sensitive organ to the elements and the sight of the steam rising as my stream melts through the frost covered ground was genuinely satisfying. My lungs burnt with each icy breath and my mind kept humming the Patterson Hood lyric over and over again, "It's fucking great to be alive."
