'Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take…'
His mother's voice reciting that long ago bedtime prayer reached him from a deep abyss in his subconscious and enveloped him in the same way her goodnight kiss had. Or…was it his mother? It was so familiar and tasted of vanilla…
Bourbon? The smell warmed him like an old friend…voices whispered in his ear, faint, just around the corner. Touches hit his nerve endings like lightning….and still he could not make his way back to join the shadows that moved through the light on the other side of his eyelids. Or were they real? Had they ever been anything more than shadows that skirted on the edges of his dreams?
Maybe that's what they had been…dreams. And this floating, heavy, never ending space was his reality. Was that not his life? Treading through the murky darkness alone, with the shadows of another life dancing just out of reach, the smells and warmth of it just out of sight…
But still….he could not help but feel he had intimate knowledge of these smells and touches. They were his. And he was theirs. He knew each and every one. And that held him like an anchor until he found his way back to them….