Welcome to the second instalment of my nightmare log (not for the faint of heart):

Imagine yourself walking down a bright, too cheerful turquoise corridor. It’s wide and it’s oddly boxy, as if the walls and the ceiling were perfectly, sharply perpendicular to each other in a way that defies imagination.

Imagine your steps echoing off the perfectly smooth turquoise walls with an odd, too loud thumping sound. Thump…Thump…Thump…Thump…Thump…

Thump. Breathe in. Thump. Breathe out. Thump

Just as you synchronise your breathing to the thumping of your footsteps, you realise it’s not your steps that are making the sound. It’s too loud, too rhythmical, too foreign.

Your steps quicken, your breath skips a bit, your heart stutters and you’re there, walking down that bright turquoise corridor. Thump. Nervous, shallow breaths. Thump. The turquoise walls suddenly feel oppressive, too bright and too colourful. Thump. Nausea. Too much visual stimulation.

You run down the corridor and the walls seem to infinitely expand into space. Smooth turquoise planes everywhere, moving away from you as you run.

Thump. Thump. Thump. You’re getting closer to whatever is making the sounds.

You stop, panting. The corridor seems the same as it ever was. Turquoise, too bright and oppressive. You look down and your feet are suddenly covered in glitter. The silver micro-particles reflect the light off the damn turquoise walls and you quickly avert your eyes, silently promising to throw away all your jewellery that includes turquoise.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Resigned, you walk down the corridor and see a light at the end. Your heart strikes a hopeful beat and you walk up, hoping it’s an exit.

The corridor expands into a bright, pastel pink industrial hall with high ceilings and an intricate web of soft grey pipelines. THUMP. The sound is so loud now, rhythmical and kind of discordant, as if it’s coming from multiple sources striking a beat at the same time. You really look at the hall and your mind can’t comprehend what you’re seeing at first.

The hall is huge and full of people sitting at sunny yellow desks. The desks are positioned at a perfect distance from each other and the walls of the hall. It’s geometrical. It’s a disturbingly perfect pattern of yellow desks in a pastel pink hall with identical, dark haired people sitting at the desks, all facing towards you. They look vaguely Asian, but a part of you knows they’re far from human.

THUMP. You jerk back, once more becoming aware of the sound and taking it all in.

And then you see it. Each of the people at the desks is holding a chicken by the neck and a large, heavy butcher knife in the other hand. THUMP. The knife comes down and severs the chicken head from the body. THUMP. Hundreds of knives come down and sever the heads from the chicken bodies. THUMP.

The chickens are oddly silent and your mind is reeling from this fantastical display of uncaring, perfectly hygienic violence in a pastel pink hall. THUMP. The knives come down in sync, in rhythm, and each time the chicken is replaced with a new one, lightening fast. THUMP. The bodies of the chickens are sucked into a localised turquoise vortex in the centre of the desk, while the heads roll of into a hole on the ground on the right side of each desk.

THUMP. You can’t handle it any more and desperately look around, searching for something, anything else to hold your attention.

The words HEAVENLY CHICKEN blink at you from across the hall. They’re massive, vulgarly splashed across the back wall in garish purple letters and blinking white LED lights. THUMP.

It’s too much. You run back down the corridor, searching for the safety of that smooth turquoise oblivion. Your footsteps echo discordantly into the hall and you don’t see the people raise their heads and pause, but the sudden absence of thumping is deafening.

There’s a different kind of thump and suddenly you’re chased by severed chicken heads dripping with gore. Their eyes hold a cunning intelligence and they’re sort of hopping along, bouncing off their severed spines as if they were pogo sticks.

Thump. POing, pOing, pOing, pOIng, pOing, pOing, pOing. Thump.

They’re getting closer and it’s horrifying. Hysteria. It’s hilarious and you can’t breathe for laughing and running and laughing. There’s a back door up ahead on the left, its wooden surface looking oddly mundane in the smooth turquoise wall. POing, pOing, pOing behind you. Thump.

You rush through the door and close it just as the first chicken head bounces into it, followed by many different kinds of thumps as the heads are bounced off the door.

You look around the small, white washed square room and you’re safe. Back inside your own mind, back in your own reality.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

No more turquoise.