Yet again, another strange dream. I don’t write all of them down – I’m much too busy for that, with meetings, visits from dignitaries (and undignitaries), travel, official dinners and what not. Some people would find it hard to believe I have any time for writing.
In this one, I was floating in a dark ocean. All I could see was darkness. There was no light towards the surface. I had no trouble breathing normally as I was moving my arms and legs to propel myself forward. I had no idea where I was and no idea where I was going. I simply knew I had to keep moving. And then a gigantic shark came into my field of vision. Grey, massive, threatening – if only by its sheer presence.
I stopped moving. It came towards me until its head was about two meters away. It appeared to be looking a me with the one eye I could see. As I’d heard before, shark eyes have no emotion, they are simply blank, unemotional, dark, monstrous.
I remained frozen. I was not afraid even though I was fully aware that these could be the last minutes of my life.
The shark, the terrible blank eye came closer. And then I mercifully woke up with a gasp.
It took me some time to calm myself, telling myself that it had been just a dream. But then I remembered the last session I’d had with Mme. Sovatskaya, my spiritual advisor. I’d asked her about her prediction for my future – she had not answered but looked at me for a long time.
When she finally spoke, she said that there was no soul left in me, that she could tell by the blank emptiness she saw in my eyes. It was as if there was nothing human left in them, as if my self had been replaced by some non-human entity. “Like a shark,” she said.
Then she went into some tirade. Was I really not aware of what I was doing? To all those dead soldiers, their mothers and fathers? The whole country? And what for?
To cut her off, I jumped up and put my hands on her shoulders. Hard.
“Do you even know what you’re babbling, you stupid woman?”
She was going to say something else, but I yanked her out of her chair and towards the door, opened it and told the guards to throw her out.
That was the last I ever saw of this grey-haired woman who had professed to be a soothsayer, a clairvoyant, and whom I’d consulted for years.
– James Steerforth (© 2025)
Steer Forth! 