For weeks after, this was a nightly dream:
I am a zebra, haunches poised to spring away, but the danger is so instant that my adrenaline hasn’t even hit yet, and I am already down. The lion from nowhere has his claws deep into my striped haunches as the dust rises around us.
And the picture tilts slowly to the left. We are whirling upside down, swirling slowly off into utter darkness.

Windows shatter, objects fly around me like bullets and my blood feeds into a puddle so dark that it is as if there’s a spiel tapped into my skull, pouring out thick, toxic tar. A minute or two more, a slightly bigger puddle, and the zebra dream would have been the last thing on my mind, forever.

Instead, it was a dream, until I realized it was all I could remember from the reality. Why a zebra? And a lion? Why did I wake up at all?

Luciana, 29