Engine Noise

When I lie down I hear it. The house is quiet, outside there is a distant rumble of a passing car, but inside my head there are engines humming. They are faint, at the edge of my hearing. I imagine them on tracks, moving forwards a few paces then reversing just to annoy me. Who could be doing this, I used to ask myself. Why bother this late at night?

Can you hear it? I ask him.
What? He says.
Listen.

They're at the depot far away, or maybe in the air. Odd little planes like mechanical insects - big thrumming abdomens, stubby wings. They are making the air throb or the ground. I hear them through the mattress, through the air, through the walls. Whichever way I turn...

Or maybe it is like the wasps and the blood, the drips of water and the leaking ceiling: just my imagination.

I used to be able to tell the difference. I used to know that the little man sitting on my shoulder with the large ugly head wasn't real.

When I shut my eyes I can see all these things. I fall into their world and we live alongside each other knowing we have a history - an unreal land of unsorted memories and dreams. It is an unbidden fantasy, a figment of my unconscious mind, nothing to do with the real waking world I inhabit now. But when it is dark it is difficult to tell the difference.