Halloween Countdown: October 7 – a piece of my world

I caught a really terrible bug last spring. The illness peaked during the night, and my body temperature soared. The flannel sheets that my wife prefers for our bed during the colder months trapped in the heat, and tangled around my sweat-drenched body.

I spent hours fitfully slipping back and forth between conscious and dream states, to the point where the boundaries blurred. Fever nightmares, vivid hellscapes of swirling crimson skies, screaming faces, and clutching hands, alternated with brief flashes of lucidity. My wife had left the TV on when she nodded off, and I’d catch bits of Humanoids from the Deep (on Encore or some other movie channel), providing fresh nightmare fodder for my virally-induced delirium.

The illness passed after a couple of days, but the psychological effects of that night lingered in for months in the form of randomly triggered flashbacks, blindsiding me with soul-numbing horror as I went about my usual routine. Combined with my usual post-sickness hypersensitivity (“Roderick Usher syndrome,” it’s been dubbed), it made for an interesting convalescence.

This no wave track by Mars reminds me of that traumatic night. Too much so, perhaps.

Mars – Tunnel (from No New York, 1978)