Night Heat

--Timothy Hogg

The night that the heat finally cooled from the city, dissipating from the freshly tarred streets, the cool air provided an abundance of much needed sleep for most of it's residents. Dreams became clearer in the coolness of the night, less abrasive, more visceral. He awoke in the middle of the night, the last dream all too much a reality. This began during the heat, but the dreams themselves were less clear but more horrific. He would lie there afterwards, sweat glistening from his pores in the night glow, wondering what was causing these dreams of discontent. Not this night--the cool air brought forth a moment of almost euphoric haze, his body no longer trying to sweat out the badness inside of him.
There is something here and there is something missing, lost.
The stress from the days had been compiling into the night for everyone--people here need their slumber in order to rinse their sins from their minds each night. When the heat leaks into the night, there is no escape, no savior or solstice. It is a natural ebb and flow, much like the ocean that drives the weather--when there is no release of the hot air, the clouds begin to produce thunder heads, pent up angst, demanding a release.
His mind recants to a different time in a different place, the opposite side of the rock, a place where the heat is not controlled by the days, but by the season. There is never any escape from the heat, but the end of summer. Read more!