GROUND ZER0, New York, N.Y.--Mar. 4, 2004 -- The nightmares had no sound--they were muted images, void of the auditory dimension.
           There is the expression:  "white noise" and then there is the "black noise," the absence of sound in a nightmare that suspends the horror of the dream's reality by making it even more unreal, removing from it the gravity of its illusion.

        I've been having those kinds of "quiet nightmares."   They suspend themselves just behind the eyes like a spider dangling on an invisible thread, glaring at you hypnotically, freezing your muscles and mind.
           There is little doubt that the Beast of Terror uses different tools and systems to pry into someone's soul who daily vows to fight him.   It's like challenging the neighborhood bully who then decides to lie awake at night dreaming up ways to bully you just because you refuse, or vow to not be bullied.
            My nightmares without sound are disturbing.   I can see but cannot hear,  inhale but cannot exhale; I can cry out but the void muffles the plea.

                 The Quiet Nightmares rule the night.  
            They come at will, slipping into the mainstream of my somnolent silence as a submarine sliding undetected along the coastline, its periscope spying for the right moment and location to surface so that it can take the shore by surprise, can startle those who think they are safe, and then submerge into the abyss to prowl the deep dank depths of the mind's ocean until it is ready to surface again.
            These Quiet Nightmares seem to explode into my thoughts as I sleep.   There is no warning.   Suddenly, I am under attack, unable to rush to a foxhole.   The images explode around me, blocking any escape even though I cannot move, covering the points of the compass as though to remind me that if I could move, it wouldn't matter.
           I have been well trained in hand-to-hand combat, but my hands are bound, stuck to my sides, useless weights of flesh and bone that cannot lift themselves defensively, let alone offensively.    But the Beast of Terror doesn't attack.  He stalks.    He moves about me in the dream, exhaling Quiet Nightmares of scenes of death and destruction.   His death is the crippling of Courage by Fear....the weakening of Conviction by Intimidation, and the dominance of Complacency over Right Actions.

          I see the abuse of his victims through eyes that cannot blink or squeeze shut to distance the illusion from the delusion.    I am forced to watch the bodies leap from the burning buildings; to see the eyes of Terror frozen in Fear's cement as those about to die fail their last moment of humanity and surrender to groveling for the scraps of life rather than standing up to the scythe of death's dulling blade with dignity.
           I can see their mouths twist into screams, and their eyes bulge as the blood of panic rages behind their occipital nerves, as though they might freeze frame the last vision of life before death's black shroud embalms them forever.
          Quiet Nightmares.
          Black sound.
          I am glad I awake.   But then I remember that later I will have to sleep.
          Despite it all, I take the Vow of Vigilance.   I will not surrender.
           

Mar 3--A Mother's Vigilance--My Baby's Not Dead!