The Intersection I Was Sent To

The dream did not feel like mine. That is the cleanest way I can say it. My dreams are murky and self-involved; this was framed, like something shown to me.

Dusk, an intersection I recognised — Mercer and Vine, near my old gym — the crossing signal counting down, a woman with a pram half a step off the kerb. From the left, a silver saloon with one dead headlight coming too fast, light long red. In the dream I stood on the northeast corner and shouted, and the woman stepped back, and the car tore through where the pram would have been. Then, absurdly specific: the streetlight above me buzzing in pulses of three.

I woke and it would not fade the way dreams fade; it sat there, appointment-like. The dusk in the dream had a particular ripeness — I judged it around seven. I fought with myself all day about it in both directions and lost both arguments, so at 6:40 that evening I was standing on the northeast corner of Mercer and Vine feeling like a complete fool. Above me, the streetlight buzzed. Pulses of three. My mouth went dry.

At 7:05 a woman arrived at the opposite corner. With a pram. The signal began its countdown; she edged forward, and I heard, before I saw, an engine being asked for too much, from the left. One headlight. I shouted — no words, just volume — and she froze, startled backward, and the silver car went through the red at a speed the police report later put at 84 in a 50.

It clipped the signal pole on my corner. Nobody was hurt. I was the witness whose statement matched the traffic camera, and the driver, who had done this sort of thing before, finally lost his licence.

The woman asked me afterwards how I had known to shout early. I told her the truth. She looked at the pram for a while, and then thanked whatever sent the dream, rather than me, which I thought was exactly right.