Night Sweats (1)

Last night I was up against the perimeter fence of a tennis court, same court as before but this time somewhere very hot. Not like last time where it was on a hotel roof top, twenty stories up and windy.

I am sweating in my dark suit and I don't have a racket.

Tennis balls are being fired at me from a pneumatic ball machine on the opposite base line and it has a huge barrel like a howitzer, hundreds and hundreds of balls...and fast.

Most balls whizzing past me are the usual yellow kind but every now and again one of those special orange ones comes straight for me, faster than the others.

I cup my hands and catch the orange ones only, offering them up to a shadowy figure standing behind the machine, leaving the others to fall harmlessly behind me.

Then I wake up sweating, wondering what it all means.