In a bid to lift a few spirits during these challenging days, I’ve been offering microfiction over on Twitter. I do this every now and again; previous themes have seen tiny ghosts and mysterious creatures haunting twitter, and this time I’m working on the theme of strange, forgotten dreams.
It’s an ongoing project, but over the next few days I will try to compile as many of these microfictions here on my blog as possible, so people can read them all in one place. The dreams so far can all be viewed below:
1. you are waiting for a bus. there is no road, and there is no stop, but you are waiting. the endless plains stretch out in all directions. night is falling. the sky burns gold, and somewhere in the shadows an animal is calling out, an animal is hunting. you are waiting for a bus.
2. the fox is a messenger. she moves between worlds. her bones are malleable; she can pass through the smallest of gaps with ease. you must listen to what she is telling you. you must follow her to the underpass, where the gods scrawl their secrets on the walls in crude letters.
3. you are always falling. you have forgotten what gravity is, why it tethers you to this earth. on the way down you will glimpse all the lives you could have lived, and you will mourn as you pass by, but at the very bottom you will find the truth. do not fear. first, you must fall.
4. you are strolling down a tree-lined avenue at night. it is the time of cherry blossoms, and the boughs are heavy with pale petals, creaking under their weight. you reach out to pluck a flower, but you cannot, for the trees are so far away, and each flower is a distant star.
5. you are trying to catch a fish. each time your hands close around its coppery scales, it slips through your fingers, disappearing into the weeds. you dive in, questing through the water; you realise it is not a fish, was never a fish at all, but a tiger, brighteyed and ravenous.
6. The Night Mare appears in all your dreams. She is long, and thin as famine; her flanks are the colour of night, and her hollow eyes see everything in the world. But you do not fear her. You understand that she is here to help you, and when she comes for you, you will go with her.
7. buried in the dry earth is a thing you forgot a long time ago. you do not know what the thing is, but you dig all the same, because something in your heart tells you it is the most important thing in the world. something in your heart tells you it is the only thing that matters.
8. You have been asleep, and perhaps you still are, for the luminous threads of dawn seem too bright, too vivid; pale fingers of lunar silver, though the sun is fat and bloodred, and the birds are singing in sweet chorus. Quietly, you lie still, and await a sunrise that never comes.
9. They call him honey-paw, forest-apple; they call him the dweller of the land, and in these woods he is king. You have walked for days to find him; you are hungry, and cold, and trembling. In desperation you call out to him, and when he answers, his teeth flash white in the dark.
10. there are fireworks in the western sky, blooming without sound; they scrawl their stories at the apex of the world, and you write each of of them down, for you speak the language of colours. Someday, these words will heal the world, and this is the gift you leave behind.
11. How did you get here, on this boat, on this pale green sea, where jewel-bright fish shoal? The sun is high, and the wind is strong, and you are certain you will get to wherever it is you are going. The horizon is wide and empty; beyond it lies all possibility. You are free.
12. you do not remember your nightmares because you always escape. that dream-labyrinth in which you find yourself, over and over; its marbled floors and mosaic walls, and the charnel stink of hot blood. the wet sound of something eating. you always escape. some day, you will not.
13. rain is falling from a clear & cloudless sky. the sun is so bright, and the puddles glow like molten metal. you recall distantly that this strange weather occurs only when foxes are to be wed, and sure enough, there is the procession; winding up the mountainside, towards the sun.
14. yellow is the colour. you pass through the variegated city, marking all the yellow things with numbered stickers; you record each of them in your yellow notebook. this is good work. it is important work. it is the work that future generations will rely on. yellow is the colour.
Dispatches from the Sinister Room 
Thank you for the wonderful distraction of creative speculation… First mental commercial I have had in several weeks!
I’m glad to be able to help in some small way!