Page 139 - Hunter - The Vigil

T
C HI L D R E N OF T H E S EV E NT H GE N E RAT I ON
I
N
O
Dear Diary,

Every night, the same dream.
A man walks along a bridge — some old European
bridge like you might find in Prague or Warsaw or
wherever — and he’s not old-old, but maybe in his 50s.
Walks with a cane, a twisted piece of lacquered wood
with a rabbit’s foot on the end of it. Some gulls orbit
overhead, complaining. It’s maybe noontime. A bus
passes. A child laughs. I see a hot-air balloon way up in

the sky just over the trees and roofs.
And in the dream, I know who he is. Not his name,
no, but that he’s one of us.

And I know it’s the night of my 23 birthday.
rd
And he walks, and suddenly he grips his chest, and
his nose bursts with a splash of blood, and he just leans
to the right and topples off the bridge, dead.

And that’s that.
I was made, and he was cast into…

Well, wherever it is that we go.
So I wake up, and every time I have the dream, I find
one of those little imps by the window, the thing with the
leathery wings and the ruby eyes, with its many mouths
upon its soft and sallow chest. Little talons scratching at
the glass. It begs me to torture it, to bite it, cut it, kick it.

I don’t. I didn’t.
But I want to.

I hate who I am.
Damn me.

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