Her sound
Face upwards, she lets go a lightning scream that rips into the deep, velvet night.
Across the road, waking with a start, he knows it is not his dream. His semi-conscious mind panics through a catalogue of memories until it turns up an explanation that matches the sound, allowing him to dismiss it and return to sleep.
The old couple who live downstairs wake cautiously, unsure at first of the reason. Their still sleeping bodies remind them what they have heard. He hears laughter and remembers a party somewhere down the street. She hears anger and wishes she was still asleep enough to cry out herself; free from excuse.
Sleeping dogs open their eyes enough to determine no danger; fighting cats freeze and unfreeze in one fluid act, then yowl their own baby-like screams.
The boy in the next room gets up, goes to the window and watches as an aeroplane unzips the sky and the sky slowly zips itself back up again. Here in the middle of the night is a world free from the interference of adult thoughts, held in during the day by the sky and the clouds, sustaining the waking world with their familiar images. But adult dreams are not contained by the night world. There is no blue sky ceiling to prevent them from escaping the pull of the ordinary; that is why the night is quiet. The stars pierce his eyelids until they prickle, and when he turns away from the window, his bed looks comfortably empty.
The scream is swallowed up and the velvet night closes noiselessly over again, allowing no echoes to escape. She turns, satisfied, and sleeps. The animals howl and the moon’s face screams silently back.