Forgetting to Sleep.

A flash fiction fable.

In a small rural town there was once a man who could never find the time to sleep. Once, maybe twice, a week he would crawl under his kitchen table, for he had no bed, and allow himself to enter into the sweet realm of dreams for a few hours. During these indulgences he would often dream of extravagant circus performances, that would culminate in him taking center stage and weeping, such an honest and soulful expression of emotion that he could see in the pained visages of the spectators that they had truly understood his performance. At this they would all stand up and cheer as he continued to weep tears of joy. Other times he would dream of swimming in warm rivers of pure milk, or of desperate throbbing sex, or of enjoying the pleasant company of good old friends long since alienated in the waking world. Upon waking he would indulge in the further luxury of sitting and contemplating, reliving, the dream. After a couple of minutes of this, though, his mundane concerns would constrict around his thoughts, crushing his hopes of dwelling in this beloved exile forever, and he would continue about his business, vaguely ashamed of his dreaming.

One day, after an especially long period without sleep he found himself walking in the middle of a desolate field. The scrubby semi-arid landscape worked its way into his consciousness slowly until he fully realized his situation. On this day he had taken up a task of the utmost importance, and had set out upon that task with the highest sense of purpose, but what that task was had now completely escaped him, like the late night concerns that tenaciously keep one from sleep yet fade into meaninglessness and are forgotten by the morning. Whether this was the true nature of all his previous enterprises or whether this new development had spread itself out back in time within his mind to color and change his memories, he was not certain.

© 2013 Jason Macias