I’m fighting a fever, and I never know if I’m in my right mind. I know, for a brief moment, when I wake up, when clarity breaks through the haze, but the fog rolls back in quick and thick. I try to do my prayers, and my dreams get mixed up with the words and become nonsense. I pray that I can pray.
I’m racked by sudden fearsāfears that seem so real, and my reason is so dim, worn out by this sicknessāthat I’ll die in my sleep. I keep waking up throughout the night with coughing fits, choking on my own phlegm.
I’m tired. I just want to sleep, but I’m so afraid of sleep.
I never know if I’m dreaming or awake.
It seems odd that this should happen to me within a week of reading “An Inhabitant of Carcosa” whose narrator is disoriented as he awakes from a fever in a strange place. Perhaps this is the root of my fears; perhaps not. I’m too tired to think it all through.
Tale Told 