Hauntingly, they all stared at me
As I trespassed into their comfortable domain
I was hypnotized by the lack of passion
A room full of empty chairs
Their vacant gaze sliced through me

Could they know what I was to do?
Was the fear I perceived really emanating?
Or was it, in truth, my fear of facing them?

At a loss for thoughts
I almost forgot even to breathe
As they sucked the life from me
With the constant slicing of their looks
With the sting of their empty minds

Where had I come from?
What was my purpose in being here?
I thought for an instant to scream
Asked yet one more question
What was it to scream?

Like the blackness of the deepest void
Their dark eyes pulled from me
Every bit of life force
Every bit of breath
Every last thought

I thought I heard a sound as the darkness flooded
Then silence
Utter silence

I hadn’t slept much of the night. I tried counting the sheep in the painting across the room from my bed. It brought me chills, though, reminded me of a poem – something about a haunting gaze. I drifted several times, then, all of the sudden was shaken fully awake by the chilling breeze that seemed to flow from the painting on the wall.

The sky, once stationary and gray, now had several white and puffy clouds. They were moving toward me, seemingly out of the image, into the room, into my weary soul. I looked at all three of my windows, could see them fairly well with the almost-full moon shining bright outside. Yes, the windows were all closed and latched. No holes in the window. No broken glass. Nowhere for the chilling wind that now swept both over and through me to have come from. Except the painting.

The painting with three sheep, leisurely just sort of hanging out under a gray sky, in a grassy field – the painting that more and more was coming to life before my increasingly alert eyes, before my confused but alert mind. The clouds were now leaving the painting; I could feel their mist as they sailed over me. I was awash in the raindrops, still forming, still unshed. I was awash in the unreality of this very odd moment.

The grass was now growing onto the frame, spreading to my walls. First one, then the other two, sheep moved. They shifted their gaze to me, much like the lines in that familiar poem. Much like the desire that was still unrained, still merely potential, and yet, somehow assured. The sheep in the forefront of the painting took a step toward me. I took yet another step into my surreal psychoses.