Sleep
Night. A broad gentle dark. A time for resting.
The time for restlessness.
Thoughts trickle through her head, thick and sticky. A persistent black drip, like syrup, or tar. All is quiet in her bedroom, save the occasional tiny snore from her cat Milk, who sleeps curled contentedly against her calf. She resists the urge to shift and stretch her leg.
The hours stretch on. She glances out the window at the deep blue evening, dreading the purple smudge of dawn’s first light.
Dreams. Wakeful slumber. The Princess that never awakens. Paralysis.
She gasps, kicking the blankets off her chest. Milk mewls, affronted. It’s still dark out, but less so, she thinks.
Did she really even fall asleep? She wants to grab her cell and check the clock. She wants the comfort of technology’s soft glow. She wants to make sure the world is still out there. That there are those, like her, awake at this hour. At all hours.
Solitude. Peace. Loneliness. Disquietude.
A car revs awake somewhere outside. Close.
She stares at the headlights burning orange against the wall. They lay there for a time. She listens to the engine purr and glances around the room for Milk. It stirs at last, throwing the headlights in her room into a frenzy. She watches them roll away.
Silhouette. Nightmare. Shadows stalking with sinister steps. Surprise. Remembering.
Milk howls. She blinks. He howls again, hungrier this time.
She lay naked on the bed, blankets bunched around her thighs, listening to Milk’s grumpy protests. Her eyes open, and immediately they ache and water. Outside, dawn bullies night across the sky.
She feels for her phone under the pillow. Alarm in fifteen minutes. She screws her eyes shut, her lids limning with tears. Her entire body buzzes with a frenetic energy, like her soul were vibrating, brought to madness by its long imprisonment. She pulls herself to sitting, squeezing the bridge of her nose between her fingertips. She swings her feet out and just sits for a moment, steeling herself, before pushing off the bed with a great creaking of spring and bone. She has the sudden image of her blood falling out through her legs, pooling around her feet.
Fatigue. Erosion. Sleepwalkers and sleepless walkers. Zombies. A shambles.
She’s only a ten minute drive from the sleep centre, but the prospect of departure is daunting. Exhausting. She decides to skip her morning coffee — they’ll be waiting for her there at the clinic.
Her first patient arrives within the half-hour.
