Somnolence
She had never been a sound sleeper. There was a particular restlessness that followed her all her life. Not quite insomnia, or at least not officially diagnosed as such, but a kind of stirring of the spirit. It could manifest as exuberance during the waking hours, and it was in those seasons that it felt almost like a superpower. The ability to drink deeper from the chalice of vitality, to burn the candle twice as fast and still have enough wick to spare. She'd just come off a stint of several months-worth of night shifts, of vastly higher pay bartered for some mild lapse of sanity. Most probably couldn't have handled it, but not her. The night owl. A nocturnal specimen more comfortable on that side of the earth's rotation. But once she shifted back to a less vampiric schedule her sleeping problems intensified. It was always the monotony that got to her. The silence that amplifies every minute disturbance like the surface of the water rippling, lingering after. Fans or ambient noise machines didn't help; they were paltry distractions against the unrelenting quiet and any time-tested method of counting sheep or relaxing the muscles were little more than dumb jokes, as though exhaustion could be remedied by a simple switch flipped on or off. As though exhaustion was the problem. She'd taken medication for it before. It had worked like a holy panacea and she'd be on it still if its effect hadn't begun to wane and she could hear in her own chemistry a tolerance building, a future of withdrawals and orange pill bottles accumulating on the nightstand.
She would turn from one side of the pillow to the other over and over so frequently she thought she might get whiplash. It was torturous. Too hot underneath the comforter, too cold without it. It was laying on your back and staring at the pale rungs of chiaroscuro shadow from the window blinds. The irises dilated to the point that the dark is somehow not dark enough, but a kind of glaucoma. Groping along the walls to the bathroom and shocking the eyeballs back to squinty life. The red figures on the alarm clock become blocky hieroglyphs, become queer liars marking dreamstate timecodes; sometimes thirty minutes passing between checks, sometimes a full hour. Surely she couldn't have been laying wide awake for that long, right? Such a bizarre thing to spend a third of your entire lifespan doing. So much time wasted, so much productivity.
There was always some kind of distraction to keep her from any deep REM slumber. A phantom clamor outside the porch door; its thin glass barely keeping out any predator or assailant that could be roaming out there in the night, in the dark. Or the glass plugged charging on her nightstand, the little glass whose blue luminescence is a microdosage of rushing endorphins. Your whole life contained in it. Your little life. It was an addiction, or something close to it. Slaved to stimuli. What would it take to break it? That thought ran hamster wheels in her head. She was awake again. Some unholy hour. She just needed the willpower, that was it. Mind over matter, or rather a synthesis of what the body needs and the mind desires. Were it so easy. No, it would take nothing short of calamity to break this. And it surely wouldn't be this night.
Her eyes had drifted open and was tracing the patterns on the ceiling. Stucco waves and dimples like whipped cream cheese icing. Would hurt like hell if you rolled around on it. Her sight wandered down, down until she saw it at the end of the bed. The form of a man, vaguely. White hair on his head and a grey pallor to his skin and darkness around his eyes that in the night glowed with an orange iridescence. An ageless man, and small. A buttoned shirt the same color as his face he wore and black pants almost imperceptible in the dark. Sitting crisscross on the mattress, fingers interlocked in folded hands. She lifted her head and stared transfixed for a good while. Blinking, rubbing her eyes, trying to melt the hallucination from her mind. But it would not leave. She mouthed a word to say something, anything, but no utterance would form in her vocal chords and instead the figure spoke to her, whispering. "Go to sleep."
She felt the heaviness of exhaustion overtake her body and her head fell back to the pillow. Had she closed her eyelids she would've returned to sleep instantly, and every part of her cried out for it, but she didn't. Mind over matter. She lifted her head again, this time with the whole of her torso up. The figure was still there, some sort of grimace on his face now.
"Go to sleep", he whispered again.
She cleared her throat. "Are you... are you real?" she asked.
"Are you?"
"I don't... understand."
"Go back to sleep."
"What are you?"
"If you go back to sleep, I'll tell you." The being's voice never raised higher than a whisper. If he had an accent it was indiscernible. Strange. After he spoke she could hardly remember his mouth opening at all, nor the voice originating from him specifically. It was more an ambiance that she sensed close to her eardrums. Like the canned muffle inside a submarine. The echo of a sound.
There was silence between them. The being would not speak unless she spoke first, she realized after sitting and staring at him for... how long had it been? The foreign glyphs on the digital clockface were moving in liminal formations and not holding to any semblance of legibility. "I'm dreaming", she said finally.
"You're always dreaming", the being said.
"So I should go back to sleep to wake up."
He nodded.
"What happens if I don't?"
The being's face altered. Infinitesimal gesticulation in the muscles around the mouth and a dimming of the irises. Something close to disappointment, but not quite. It said nothing.
She stepped off the bed and, standing, saw that the being was not actually sitting at the end at all but hovering away from it, all of his three and half feet sitting in a monochrome lotus. The lamp would not light when she flipped its switch. She went to the window and looked through the blinds. There was mist in the suburbs and penumbrae formed from the anemic moon glow. Streetlamps were dim and coal black as though their bulbs had been filled with tar, like they were blotted completely of the precious light they could have emanated, light precious now in its absence. Stillness like she'd never seen before. Condominiums vacant of even the memories of their occupancy. No signs of human life, no signs of any life for that matter. The summer symphonies of crickets and accompanying nightbugs muted. The patter of rain and the susurration of wind in the trees. Some blasphemed land wherein every neighbor had gone and moved away never to return, where she was the last one left and the last one unable to leave a place where the sun would never again rise nor conscious waking to greet it. She saw all of this, or rather felt it enveloping, smothering, invading.
"Is there anyone out there?" she asked.
"There's no one anywhere," the being said.
"What does that mean?"
"If you don't go to sleep... It means this. Right here, right now. Forever"
She left the window and approached the being. It wouldn't turn to face her. An isolation began encroaching upon her, the realization of it. A coldness. The dim fading of the light, the light of the future, of the dawn. And loneliness, utter and complete, as though she were the only stick figure represented on a kid's styrofoam globe. The being was no company at all. When she reached out her hand to touch him it fell through and the solidity of his form took on a translucence. Before that moment she hadn't truly accepted his reality, that he was really anything more than an illusion brought on by insomnia or sleep paralysis or indigestion. But as he was dissipating and so too his presence in her room his existence became very apparent swiftly and she had to stop herself from reaching out for his shirt lapel, the instinct to hold onto even the vaguest resemblance of human contact.
The being's whole form rotated toward her. His face remained solid but the rest of his body quickened in its evaporation as it spoke one last warning to her. "Your time is running out. Choose now. This or the dawn..." The last part of it that could be seen were the orange irises that remained suspended in midair, still watching her before they too shrunk and disappeared with the blink of her eyes like a mirage that dissolves as soon as you draw close, like they had never been there at all.
When she awoke a sliver of sunlight pierced her pupil and she shuddered and rubbed the rheum from her eyelids. She came out of the bed gradually, exhausted though she had just been asleep. Had she been asleep? She remembered the dream; the gray figure at the end of the bed and the darkness out of the window. She looked about and all was there as it had been every morning previous. The sun, the neighbors, herself. As much guaranteed as anything in the world. It was just a crazy dream, she knew. And it surely would slip away from her memory a frame at a time as she went about the day, and so it did. In the doldrum hours of her midday tedium some flash might reign her thoughts back to it and a single image or isolated feeling would creep in its vivid reminder, but it would never last. That was until the night came. The night looking at her bed, hesitating with every pre-sleep ritual. Brushing her teeth, turning off her nightstand lamp. Hesitating, perhaps anticipating with some absurd and slightly fearful posture. She stalled until she convinced herself there was no such thing to be worried about and turned off the light. Rest came quickly and easily in that darkness, easier than she could remember it coming in years or decades or an entire lifetime spent agitated and unsettled. After she was gone completely, not to be awoken for another eight hours at least, he showed himself again. He who existed only in that narrow corridor between sleep and awake where dreams were tangible, in the shadowland where no living soul belonged. For the coming of the new day he watched and he waited.
She would turn from one side of the pillow to the other over and over so frequently she thought she might get whiplash. It was torturous. Too hot underneath the comforter, too cold without it. It was laying on your back and staring at the pale rungs of chiaroscuro shadow from the window blinds. The irises dilated to the point that the dark is somehow not dark enough, but a kind of glaucoma. Groping along the walls to the bathroom and shocking the eyeballs back to squinty life. The red figures on the alarm clock become blocky hieroglyphs, become queer liars marking dreamstate timecodes; sometimes thirty minutes passing between checks, sometimes a full hour. Surely she couldn't have been laying wide awake for that long, right? Such a bizarre thing to spend a third of your entire lifespan doing. So much time wasted, so much productivity.
There was always some kind of distraction to keep her from any deep REM slumber. A phantom clamor outside the porch door; its thin glass barely keeping out any predator or assailant that could be roaming out there in the night, in the dark. Or the glass plugged charging on her nightstand, the little glass whose blue luminescence is a microdosage of rushing endorphins. Your whole life contained in it. Your little life. It was an addiction, or something close to it. Slaved to stimuli. What would it take to break it? That thought ran hamster wheels in her head. She was awake again. Some unholy hour. She just needed the willpower, that was it. Mind over matter, or rather a synthesis of what the body needs and the mind desires. Were it so easy. No, it would take nothing short of calamity to break this. And it surely wouldn't be this night.
Her eyes had drifted open and was tracing the patterns on the ceiling. Stucco waves and dimples like whipped cream cheese icing. Would hurt like hell if you rolled around on it. Her sight wandered down, down until she saw it at the end of the bed. The form of a man, vaguely. White hair on his head and a grey pallor to his skin and darkness around his eyes that in the night glowed with an orange iridescence. An ageless man, and small. A buttoned shirt the same color as his face he wore and black pants almost imperceptible in the dark. Sitting crisscross on the mattress, fingers interlocked in folded hands. She lifted her head and stared transfixed for a good while. Blinking, rubbing her eyes, trying to melt the hallucination from her mind. But it would not leave. She mouthed a word to say something, anything, but no utterance would form in her vocal chords and instead the figure spoke to her, whispering. "Go to sleep."
She felt the heaviness of exhaustion overtake her body and her head fell back to the pillow. Had she closed her eyelids she would've returned to sleep instantly, and every part of her cried out for it, but she didn't. Mind over matter. She lifted her head again, this time with the whole of her torso up. The figure was still there, some sort of grimace on his face now.
"Go to sleep", he whispered again.
She cleared her throat. "Are you... are you real?" she asked.
"Are you?"
"I don't... understand."
"Go back to sleep."
"What are you?"
"If you go back to sleep, I'll tell you." The being's voice never raised higher than a whisper. If he had an accent it was indiscernible. Strange. After he spoke she could hardly remember his mouth opening at all, nor the voice originating from him specifically. It was more an ambiance that she sensed close to her eardrums. Like the canned muffle inside a submarine. The echo of a sound.
There was silence between them. The being would not speak unless she spoke first, she realized after sitting and staring at him for... how long had it been? The foreign glyphs on the digital clockface were moving in liminal formations and not holding to any semblance of legibility. "I'm dreaming", she said finally.
"You're always dreaming", the being said.
"So I should go back to sleep to wake up."
He nodded.
"What happens if I don't?"
The being's face altered. Infinitesimal gesticulation in the muscles around the mouth and a dimming of the irises. Something close to disappointment, but not quite. It said nothing.
She stepped off the bed and, standing, saw that the being was not actually sitting at the end at all but hovering away from it, all of his three and half feet sitting in a monochrome lotus. The lamp would not light when she flipped its switch. She went to the window and looked through the blinds. There was mist in the suburbs and penumbrae formed from the anemic moon glow. Streetlamps were dim and coal black as though their bulbs had been filled with tar, like they were blotted completely of the precious light they could have emanated, light precious now in its absence. Stillness like she'd never seen before. Condominiums vacant of even the memories of their occupancy. No signs of human life, no signs of any life for that matter. The summer symphonies of crickets and accompanying nightbugs muted. The patter of rain and the susurration of wind in the trees. Some blasphemed land wherein every neighbor had gone and moved away never to return, where she was the last one left and the last one unable to leave a place where the sun would never again rise nor conscious waking to greet it. She saw all of this, or rather felt it enveloping, smothering, invading.
"Is there anyone out there?" she asked.
"There's no one anywhere," the being said.
"What does that mean?"
"If you don't go to sleep... It means this. Right here, right now. Forever"
She left the window and approached the being. It wouldn't turn to face her. An isolation began encroaching upon her, the realization of it. A coldness. The dim fading of the light, the light of the future, of the dawn. And loneliness, utter and complete, as though she were the only stick figure represented on a kid's styrofoam globe. The being was no company at all. When she reached out her hand to touch him it fell through and the solidity of his form took on a translucence. Before that moment she hadn't truly accepted his reality, that he was really anything more than an illusion brought on by insomnia or sleep paralysis or indigestion. But as he was dissipating and so too his presence in her room his existence became very apparent swiftly and she had to stop herself from reaching out for his shirt lapel, the instinct to hold onto even the vaguest resemblance of human contact.
The being's whole form rotated toward her. His face remained solid but the rest of his body quickened in its evaporation as it spoke one last warning to her. "Your time is running out. Choose now. This or the dawn..." The last part of it that could be seen were the orange irises that remained suspended in midair, still watching her before they too shrunk and disappeared with the blink of her eyes like a mirage that dissolves as soon as you draw close, like they had never been there at all.
When she awoke a sliver of sunlight pierced her pupil and she shuddered and rubbed the rheum from her eyelids. She came out of the bed gradually, exhausted though she had just been asleep. Had she been asleep? She remembered the dream; the gray figure at the end of the bed and the darkness out of the window. She looked about and all was there as it had been every morning previous. The sun, the neighbors, herself. As much guaranteed as anything in the world. It was just a crazy dream, she knew. And it surely would slip away from her memory a frame at a time as she went about the day, and so it did. In the doldrum hours of her midday tedium some flash might reign her thoughts back to it and a single image or isolated feeling would creep in its vivid reminder, but it would never last. That was until the night came. The night looking at her bed, hesitating with every pre-sleep ritual. Brushing her teeth, turning off her nightstand lamp. Hesitating, perhaps anticipating with some absurd and slightly fearful posture. She stalled until she convinced herself there was no such thing to be worried about and turned off the light. Rest came quickly and easily in that darkness, easier than she could remember it coming in years or decades or an entire lifetime spent agitated and unsettled. After she was gone completely, not to be awoken for another eight hours at least, he showed himself again. He who existed only in that narrow corridor between sleep and awake where dreams were tangible, in the shadowland where no living soul belonged. For the coming of the new day he watched and he waited.
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