Part 2 Friday Evening - Pilate's Wife

The Nail
Part Two Friday Evening
Chapter Seven Pilate’s Wife...

Some people never remember their dreams. Rising from sleep they are one moment there, fully formed, vivid and alive, and then the next breath gone, dropping like a hanged man through the trapdoor of a suddenly remade consciousness, never to rise again; or as a coin cast into a well, falling and fading, so far down that even the tiny plash of its entry, the last register that it was ever real enough to be held in your palm, is unheard, lost for ever. Sometimes a tiny whisper lingers, like those times when you encounter a smell that for an instant transports you somewhere long back, but cannot be seized. It is here and gone in the same moment. That was what it was like for him. My husband.

Sometimes he would cry out in the night. Then I knew he was dreaming; knew that his dreams were as real as anyone’s.And sometimes he would whimper like a child. Still dreaming, distraught, shaking and sobbing; and even in waking, inconsolable: mourning for all the things he couldn’t even remember, just the dull ache of knowing something tangible was there once...

Taken from The Nail by Stephen Cottrell