I wake in the middle of the night to bang which echoes in my head. In my sleepy state, I can't place where it came from but I sit up, rub my eyes and switch on the bedside lamp. I look around the room in the dim light but nothing seems out of place.
A storm is raging outside and I can hear the wind howl. Thunder rumbles loudly in the distance and I swear I can hear the roar of the ocean all the way from here.
Bang!
I jump as the sound comes again and my heart pounds in my chest. One of the shutters in the windows flaps on its hinges, threatening to come loose at any moment.
It was just the shutter, I tell myself. I put a hand up to my heart as if it will help it calm down a little but, of course, it does nothing.
I slide out of bed, shivering a little at how surprisingly cold the room is, and make my way to the window. I have to find a way secure the shutter so I can get a good night's sleep. My toes curl at the coolness of the floorboards as I make my way barefoot to shut it.
As I reach to pull the shutter closed, a bolt of lightning forks across the sky. It's gone in a matter of seconds, a flash of purple in the sky, gone in the blink of an eye. In the storm, it is impossible to see anything but the pitch black sky but something about the night is strangely mesmerising. It makes me linger, waiting for something more. The cool wind sends shivers down my spine but I shrug them off and wait.
For several moments, there is nothing but the soft echoing of thunder and the splattering of raindrops against my skin. But then, another flash of lightning, a brilliant blue, splits the sky in two. And in the light, I swear I see something – someone – down on the beach. That's impossible; it's high tide and in such a storm going down to the beach would be suicide. I strain my eyes to see.
And the most impossible thing is the fact that I can.
It feels like I can see through the storm, through the mist which obscured my vision just moments before. And I am surer now than even that there is a person on the beach. Not just one but two. It is difficult to make out their features but they are both impossible tall, with broad shoulders and determination in their strides. They face each other as if ready to battle. As more lightning crackles above their heads, I see one of them is a large man, almost ten feet tall, in with black hair and a drenched pinstripe suit. And he's holding a lightning bolt in his bare hands!
I must be dreaming. There is no way this is real.
When the thunder rumbles, I hear voices behind it, as if the voices itself are echoing across the sky. A deep, rumbling voice rings out. "You cannot do this, Poseidon! You have a vow to honour!"
The voices are so loud that I fear they're in my head. I cover my ears, try to shut them out but it is no use. This must be a nightmare. How do I wake up?
I begin to turn away from the window but in another flash, I see the face of the other man. And that is how I know I must be dreaming.
Because the other man looks just like Don. Only this Don is several feet tall, dressed in a flapping Hawaiian shirt, surprisingly dry despite standing in the pouring rain in the swirling ocean. In his hands, he carries a long spear. No, it's not a spear – it's a trident.
He doesn't move his mouth, but his voice, the voice that I heard face to face just a few hours ago thunders across the sky, just like the other. It pierces through the roaring of the wind, its anger chilling me to the bone.
"You stay out of this, Zeus!" his voice growls. "She is none of your concern! You leave her alone!"
"How can I?" the other man, Zeus, demands angrily, "How can I ignore her when you have already chosen her? I cannot let you break the oath!"
"Oh, like you broke it?"
"That was different!" Zeus shouts wildly, his rage causing lightning to spark brilliantly in the inky sky. "My daughter will have to suffer the consequences. Do you want your child to face the same challenges?"
"That is beyond my control, brother," Don, this manifestation of him, replies, "I cannot change the decision of the Fates."
"You will bring ruin upon us all!" Zeus bellows.
He raises his fist, the one that clutches the bolt of lightning, pulsating in its pure form, and raises it towards the sky. The man who is not Don raises his trident and the sea roars around them. A radiant, white explosion fires across the sky. The sea rises to meet it. The collision is so forceful, it rattles the house, knocking me off my feet and blinding me.
When I look outside again, the storm rages on but the men on the beach are gone. There is no evidence that they had ever been there at all. My vision is blurry, my stance unstable as I carry myself back to bed, unable to tell whether I dreamt it.
What frightens me most is the conviction that it hadn't been a dream at all.
