I dreamed

The park is a flat gray sheet of plastic, stretched tight over the ground. There are no shadows because the light is just sitting there, heavy and still, refusing to do anything. The eucalyptus leaves are frozen mid-sway, caught in a breeze that isn’t blowing.

I try to move, but the air is too thick. It tastes like copper and old rain. A single patch of light widens on the grass, not from the sun, but from the grass itself, bleeding outward like a bruise. It’s not illumination; it’s a wound opening up in the middle of the nothingness. I watch the tree’s shadow stretch thin, thinner, until it snaps.

The silence gets louder. It’s the sound of a machine trying to start an engine that isn’t there. The plastic sheet ripples, just once.