Free Fifty/Fifty and Other Stories by Matthew W. McFarland Page B

dream I once had, unusual in that it had stayed with me for such a long time. For me, dreams are always gone before I have had the chance to give them any waking thought. I had dreamt that a killer whale had me in its jaws and was swimming at enormous speed through the water towards the shoreline. The sensation of the force of the water pushing against me as we swam was unlike anything I have ever dreamt before or since – the feeling was so real that like the dream it has stayed with me for years.
     
    I had woken to find myself safe in bed, with no windows or doors open letting in a breeze to explain away the incredible pressure I had felt, the way a ringing telephone or a doorbell can sometimes migrate from the real world into a dream. Strangely, I had felt no sense of danger, either in the dream or upon waking. Neither did I feel that the whale was particularly benign. It was a killer whale after all, not a blue whale or a humpback. In the language of dream analysis this surely has some significance. Perhaps I had just accepted my fate?
     
    I suppose this is why that dream came back to me now as I fell through the air. Dreams where one is falling are amongst the most common of all, and there are a multitude of explanations for what such dreams mean. I have had them too, many times. In my dreams however, I always enjoyed that feeling of falling, and I would turn to look at the ground rushing up to meet me, with the same sense of calm that I felt in the jaws of the orca.
     
    I had always wondered how it would feel to meet the ground at such a speed. Would you feel nothing at all as the shock of the impact turned your nervous system to mush? Would it feel like your whole body was on fire from the inside out, the way people who have been struck by lightning and survived often describe? Or would it be like that horrible stinging slap when you trip up, but can't get your arms out in time to break your fall, only worse?
     
    Time had slowed down, the way it will if you are driving and hit a patch of ice. That split-second where you lose control of the car and then correct it, which seems to have lasted an age but in reality hasn't taken any time at all. This state of heightened awareness which I have experienced many, many times fascinates me. It is a well documented phenomenon, particularly in road traffic accidents or other near-death experiences, and sometimes you hear athletes or sportsmen describing it, but I can't remember ever hearing of anyone properly examining it. It seems to support the theory, found everywhere from comic books to ancient religions, that if we were to focus our minds we could be capable of so much more as human beings. Do we all have the ability to slow down time at will, to drown out the surrounding noise and concentrate all our energy and focus to a pinpoint? Do we all suspect this?
     
    It can't have taken more than a few seconds for me to fall from the 12 th floor to the ground, but I experienced it as so much more. The longer it went on, the longer there was between moments. Like the falling cats, I spread my limbs out to the four corners of the earth in an instinctive need to arrest my rate of decline, and once more I felt calm as the pressure of something which I could not control held me in its grip.
     
    I slowly began to twist until I was facing upwards, back to where I had came from, looking up through myriad shards of falling glass which seemed to hang in the moonlight, twinkling like so many little stars. Two faces peered over the edge of the balcony after me, clear and distinct despite the distance I had travelled, one etched with a look of abject horror, the other mirroring that same calmness which coursed through my being. 
     
     
     
     
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Lansdowne Road
     
     
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    T hat smell reminds me of going to rugby matches as a boy. The pipe smoke wafting over the crammed terraces of Lansdowne Road, being