The news gets under my skin. Sometimes I have to ignore it for years to prevent debilitating depression (redundant, yes, I know) and nightmares.

Nightmare, 1:30 a.m. Wednesday morning: For an uncomfortably prolongued moment my mind becomes awash in a buzzing mass of noisy Nothing (like the sensation of standing under a helicopter no sense just a spike of intensity uncomfortable and scary to bear, crescendoing in and decrescendoing out) as if I’m entering Cho Seung-Hui’s persona then exiting [but during the moment I am consciously not entering Hui’s but ?’s persona, as he called himself, and I am completely aware that no sense will ever be made of the massacre, leaving nothing but the terrific (archaic usage) questions, and although the media and the FBI investigators will try to extract some logic, and the lawmakers will make addendums and new referendums in gun control to “prevent” any similar experience – I (in that terrible moment) know that all their efforts are truly futile, because at bottom, Seung-Hui is empty, nothing, in hell, stuck in a pit, and that his demons are simply unanswered questions and the failed attempt to escape from that empty pull that desired the answers – a lost self, no identity, no reason, no limits, and most weighty – he had no substance]. The draw into this is completely unpreventable - as strong as an MRI to a piece of steel – and completely unwanted. This happens at least twice in succession and I remember now that the sound and overall feel is more like jolting electrical menace and electrical surge than helicopter. It is a terrifying feeling and I feel immersed in what feels like him crying out to share his hell with others. I am helpless to escape from the pull and must wait until it passes.

A(n imaginary) Virginia Tech student’s voice says Usually I feel there is a blessing in something. Here we were blessed with nothing.

Again the crescendo in but this time like my jaws are being clamped shut by my own muscles more tightly than I can bear with fear that my teeth will shatter and a general tightening over my whole body as if my muscles are growing terribly spastic and horrifically uncontrollable. I fear I’m having a seizure. During this the fear hits that I am unable to move and I want desperately to be able to stand and walk. I wake myself slightly, so I think, but really I’m just moving up a layer in consciousness to where I am able to stand and walk, and I know I’m upstairs at my parents’ home, and I want to go wake my mother and tell her I’m seizing as if I was a child who was very ill. Then I go back to the previous layer, unable to move as if my muscles are a vice grip from which I can’t escape, then back to a slight release and wanting to tell my mother. This happens at least three times until I finally wake for real and am frightened because my door is open into a black hallway and of the now unfamiliar light coming from Finn’s yellow paper star. I fear crazy things that I don’t feel safe writing down. I also fear that F. can feel my bad dream before shaking the feeling, getting up and going downstairs for a drink of water. I believed for a moment that some of the victims must have felt that helpless pull, that inability to move, that draw into a substanceless, purposeless end masterminded by a nobody in want of answers – another voice arises: This was the work of man, not of God.