The Institutionalised Nightmare + Black Widow 22 +
The rhymes below relate to a first nightmare. I’ve written about it before without understanding the nature of the dream. I think I understand it now. I was a kid, I had been sent to special school. I did find it easier to run when I was there. I dreamt in day time of running ... The Institutionalised Nightmare + Black Widow 22 +
Black News 
The rhymes below relate to a first nightmare. I’ve written about it before without understanding the nature of the dream. I think I understand it now. I was a kid, I had been sent to special school. I did find it easier to run when I was there. I dreamt in day time of running away but where ever I ran to i’d end up back there. The institution is the bear
The Institutionalised Nightmare
The unbearable chase around a shack
Is enlivened by a brown grizzly bear
His name is Beastie he makes me run fast
In concentric rings I never look back
Just as long as he doesn’t close the gap
I must stay ahead in this circling race
Of life compromised for most asthmatics
With weakening stamina on this lap
I’ll be OK if I can reach the door
If I can just get there before the bear
If I can just get inside a warm room
If I can only avoid being gored
I lift the iron latch and run inside
Then I turn around and guess what I find
Beastie the brown grizzly bear standing there
I’m scared, real fucked up and losing my mind
I get back out the race begins again
This time the circles are getting wider
The snow in the fields is growing deeper
Beastie won’t stop till i’m food in his den
He’s very demanding he’s not very fair
This my institutionalised nightmare
Richard Downes
18th January 2021
(From the Initial series)
Black Widow Chapter 22
New to Black Widow? You have the power to catch up from the start here.
Stella strolled the casino floor sliding on wasted craps. “Shit! I know he’s been here. He loves the beige, the green, the reds, the blacks, clubs, diamonds, hearts and spades. He loves to fiddle with his change. The disco lights are not for him. The sounds, the go go dancers in the cage. The winners, the losers the fit, the deranged. I can smell him. The filthy little shit!”.
Heartbroken is as heartbroken says. Shit Stella. You’re in a shit mood. She’s in the loos looking at her face. Her skin’s not so soft, not so shiney. Red botches, rashes, pimples, sores. All this with aches and pains and more. What the fuck is she doing and what the fuck is she to do. She knows blood is easy to score and she feels a pang and thirsts for more. Any blood. No. Not any blood. It’s Steve she wants to kill. It’s Steve she’s looking for. Steve she wants to taste. Her eyes flood with bloodbaths. Red. The rage is on. Growing. At times like this…. really….. any fuck will do. Swivelling she turns her head and sniffs, thrusts out a thorny, hairy leg and breaks a tile.
“SSSSHHHHIIIIITTTTT”, she screams. They have her now. Holding her down. They had been watching, waiting for that intemperate moment. They could tell somehow that it would be coming. The bloodlust. The frenzy. Four Gists held down two legs each. The fifth squeezed a syringe.
