... I am at the farm in Ĉermná in what we call the front room. I am looking for a legal document or letter in an old writing desk. I am alone in the house, and the feeling of total isolation makes me uncomfortable. I am afraid, a type of fear I used to have as a child when I had to go alone to the cellar or attic.

Suddenly the door opens and Father comes in. At this moment I feel much better. Breathing a sigh, the sensation of suffocating leaves me. In futility we both look for receipts from the sale of hay. We argue, and our arguing turns into a brawl. I see my father grow pale, his left arm raise up and hold a chair over my head, ready to club me with it. I swerve out the way and the chair misses, its momentum carrying it to the floor.

I tell myself I should leave to bring this farce to an end. I think: Father is already an old man.

I go to the door but glance back. I see Father standing on one leg on the backrest of the chair, his other leg balancing in the air. He's stiff and pale, practically white. He's wearing a wedding frock and over it a white gown, a blazing candle on his left shoulder. He seems mute. His shoulders convulse, jerking as if he were racked with sobbing. Yet the look he gives me is as vicious as it was a moment ago, and I see in his eyes that he'd like to pummel me though he's unable to do so.

Suddenly, I don't know how, a second chair appears under his groping leg. I see him straddle on two chair backs. They seem to be attached to his legs, and all at once he starts to come after me, taking strides several meters long.

But he is still stiff, and it's not his blows I run away from, since I know he's incapable of hitting me, it's his apparition. He has caught me off guard, and before I manage to run out the door he chases me around the room a few times.

It occurs to me that he's been long dead and that what's pursuing me is his corpse. This doubles my horror. I run down a long hallway, across the yard, below the stable and barn, and into the fields.

But Father on his monstrous stilts is still on my heels. Under an oak the ground gives way beneath me, and I sink into a slough. I still flee toward the chapel though I am waist-deep in mud. When it reaches my chest, I think I'm done for and at any moment the mud will close over my head.

I feel an intense hatred for Father, but am comforted by the thought that he must drown in the mire with me.

I look back at him and cannot find him in the whole landscape. He's vanished. I discover that a large cork float similar to a millstone has appeared around my neck. I feel relieved because I realize I'm saved. I swim.

Yet I'm certain Father hasn't drowned either, and I'm terrified that in my next dream he'll come after me again on those chairs.

SOURCE: Dreamverse by Jindrich Styrsky (Twisted Spoon Press, 2018), pp.64-66; primary source Sny, 1925-1940 ("Dreams, 1925-40") posthumously published (1970).

TITLE: Styrsky titled all his dreams "Dream of..."; I shortened to avoid a logjam under D.

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