That night Seth dreamed.
It nearly killed him.
He was in a normal place at first. A place with sunshine and green leaves, a blue cloudless sky and a breeze that gently wafted the aromas of honeysuckle, lilac and cedar in perfect combination.
Outwardly idyllic, the effect this scene had on him emotionally was one of longing and poignancy that caught his breath. Somehow and in someway, while in this dream setting he was not part of it, like it was enveloped in some kind of crystal clear shrink-wrap that he could not penetrate no matter how hard he tried.
The feeling of loss this engendered seemed to go on forever, and sink whatever hope may have lain dormant in his heart.
He wanted with all his will to awake from sleep and have this fade into memory, but it stubbornly remained and entrapped him on the outside.
After some timeless and excruciating interval, he began to move away from the warmth and sunlight. He could still see it sharply, the image cutting open his heart even as it became smaller in perspective.
He began to bleed copiously from his chest, at first brightly red, but then becoming dark and sluggish; thick like the sludge that sometimes comes from a long disused water faucet.
As his blood spread, it blocked out the rapidly dwindling panorama of sunlit forest still receding from him. It became like a pitch-black curtain admitting not even the smallest photon of light.
In turn, the curtain began to enfold him in greasy, smothering folds of lead-heavy and coarse cloth.
And then it drew tighter, like a cocoon, or a mummy wrap.
Now all was fathomless darkness, intolerably close and hot.
His breathing became more labored, each laborious inhalation taking minutes to satisfy his imperious need for air.
He could not move arms or legs.
The terror of suffocating intensified. His entire existence focused on the next unsatisfying breath.
Until an even greater fear engulfed him.
At first it commenced as an unnoticed rumble of thunder on the very edge of perception.
It sounded like a cataract of water roaring over the edge of some great cliff.
Then it became much louder very quickly as he seemed to be falling toward it.
As he descended the heat became unbearable.
The blackness around him began to deteriorate. Bright orange writhing worms of flame seemed to be consuming it, replacing it with a deeper, more pervasive red glow.
Now the heat became so intense it felt like icy fingers slicing away his skin and scorching his very bones with acid tongues of flame.
The agony nearly overwhelmed him. Never in all his years had he felt such physical pain.
He opened his mouth to scream and the worms of fire leapt down his throat, searing his lungs and burning him literally from the inside out.
And still he fell into increasing heat and crushing depth.
Now the far memory of sunlight and leaves seemed only to exacerbate the torture as he uncomprehendingly longed for the pain to cease, yet it did not.
It maintained itself unabated, feeding endlessly on his flesh, but never consuming it.
Always the same indescribable torment, not for a second abating...
Finally, mercifully Seth awoke.
His body and the bedclothes around him were drenched in sweat.
His heart was racing almost to the point of bursting, and he was gasping for air.
He suspected he was near death, and that thought for the very first time in his self-centered life brought not a hint of relief from the cares of this world, as it had done in the past.
Instead, it filled him with a dread that made the darkened bedroom spin in a sickening spiral.
When he awoke again, he found himself on the floor, having lost consciousness and having slipped noiselessly from the bed in a tangle of drenched sheets.
He was shaking as he extricated himself and walked unsteadily into the bathroom.
He reached the toilet just as an unstoppable wave of nausea engulfed him.
He remained kneeling in front of the bowl in the dim illumination of the hall night light, too weak to move.
Seth tried to dismiss the nightmare and chalk it up to the deleterious effects of all the pressure about Jill's incident he was feeling.
But a very small voice in the back of his mind kept asking himself inconveniently, "Is that what death is really like?"