The Visitor

The breathing that just woke me is different than usual. Instead of a soft hiss that rises and falls, it's more breathy, louder, and after every fourth inhalation, there's an additional sound I don't recognise; a deep rasp, akin to a cat's purr but much louder. The room is awash in alley light, bright yet desaturated. Perhaps I could let the blinds down but that would surely wake the sleeping one. I look over and see that he's facing away from me, and realise with some surprise that the sound is not coming from him.

It could be my slightly stopped up ears, left over from my recent head cold, I decide. A glass of water would taste good. I sit up and swing my legs off the bed to feel for my slippers. Instead of the floor, my feet come to rest on something large, warm and velvety...and breathing. It lets out a startled grunt and raises its massive head to look me in the eye. I can't make out color but I can clearly see symmetrical stripes on the face and all along the spine and sides of body, which stretches for eight feet or more. At the end of it, a tail, as long as the body, flat on the ground except for the tip, which is flicking back and forth. I feel like I'm about to pass out but it holds my gaze. Its breath is hot but not unpleasant and it makes an attempt to get up. I put my left hand out and pat it on its head a few times. It shifts, turns on its other side, bumps the bed and settles.

I can crawl over to the foot of the bed to get up, I think but instead, I lay back down. When I wake up three hours later, I peek over the edge of the bed. It's gone.

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No more going to bed at 3:45 am for me. After watching the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy you'd think my dream visitor would be a dragon. Isn't the brain a funny thing?

The other mystery today: one to three inches of snow that were predicted all week and never even materialized. Isn't Nature unpredictable?