Curios Chiaroscuro

I’m lying out in the desert, the midday sun beating me in the face. I’m testing how tight the ropes are tied when I’m plunged into sudden and complete darkness.

I’m on my back in a city street. Labouring bystanders give me mouth-to-mouth and heart massage but I’m suddenly in the light. I have reached the heavenly brightness. As I am about to bask in God’s love, I am cast out. Total, aching darkness.

The spaceship engine has failed and we are plunging back into the arc-welding brightness of the exploding space-station. As we hit the flaming penumbra, darkness engulfs the ship. The light of further explosions hit us again and again. And then darkness.

At 7am, my alarm goes off and I roll over to flick the switch. I am almost blinded by a sudden, intense light. I rear up and the culprit of the dreams falls off my cheek. 

I had fallen asleep on my Smiggle Book Light and the tiny bastard had glued itself to my face. Every time I rolled over I had switched the thing either on or off and as it had been resting on my left eye, it had really given the lobes of my brain a workout. 

(I don’t care if it happens again and again, though. I have a Smiggle Book Light. The only thing that doesn’t make me the envy of 9-year-old girls everywhere, is mine is black, not pink.)