Jason M. Thornberry’s work appears in The Los Angeles Review of Books, JMWW, North Dakota Quarterly, Entropy, and elsewhere. Jason overcame a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic epilepsy. Relearning to walk and speak, he earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Chapman University. He lives in Seattle with his wife.
J. M. Thornberry has been previously featured on In Parentheses.
Tonight’s Dream
The smoky, neglected landscape of tonight’s dream was transmitted to me on a roll of damaged black and white film. Splintered holes punched into certain frames. In tonight’s dream, I was back at work. It didn’t look like anywhere I’d ever been. But I knew somehow that I was on the clock. And now I stood before a gang of hunchbacked men with crab pincers for arms and the rusty voices of growling dogs. They surrounded me, demanding assistance, each of them bickering loudly with one another over my attention, their growls rising and reaching an impossible crescendo, a resounding blast of atonal noise, echoing voices entwined. I looked around for help. For someone I knew. For anyone. The men collapsed upon me, brown pincers clicking at my face as I lurched backward and felt for the soot covered door behind me, slipping again and regaining my feet, digging, and fumbling and pushing a fistful of keys through a hole in my pocket.
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By In Parentheses in IP Volume 7
32 pages, published 1/15/2022
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