I must announce a dream I had—a dream so vivid and unsettling that I cannot keep it to myself.
Somewhere in that deeper dream, beyond the familiar borders of sleep, a voice spoke to me. I could not see who—or what—was speaking. The words seemed to come from the darkness itself, solemn and certain.
“You will be shown glimpses of the future through a small window.”
The message carried a command as well as a promise: whatever I saw, I was to write about it in every publication I published. No detail was to be withheld. No warning was to remain unspoken.
Then I woke—but only into another layer of the dream.
Relief washed over me. I had seen nothing. The little window had revealed no future, no catastrophe, no secret I would be burdened to carry into print. I was glad, because I did not want the responsibility. I did not want to write the things that might be shown to me.
Believing I had escaped the warning, I went back to sleep.
And the dream opened again.
A great storm was moving in.
I could feel its approach before I saw it—the air charged and restless, the world bracing beneath an unseen weight. I ran to the door and looked outside.
There stood the flagpole that had always held the American flag, raised high each day above everything around it. But now the winds struck with such force that the flag snapped violently against the darkening sky. It strained at its fastenings, twisting and pulling as the storm gathered strength.
Then the fabric began to tear.
The great storm ripped through it until the flag could hold no longer. Torn apart by the wind, it fell from the peak of the pole and vanished downward into the fury below.
And as I watched it come down, the relief I had felt before was gone. The small window had opened after all.
