Awake, but dreaming...
For me, it had always been easy to sleep in a car. The back seat was a favorite place to curl up as a kid. Then on family trips, I would crash out and like magic we were there. No need to hurry on my account, 3 hours, 10, hell it could last all day. It was just a blink of the eye. Driving or not. That hum, that screech, that thumping… whatever it was that screamed C A R, spelled sleep to me.
People talk about being tired. They say how they barely got moving or that they’re “dragging ass” but in reality they are just complaining to be heard. Now, when someone is really under the pressure of fatigue, now that is a sight to behold. You go to move, you will your body into motion and nothing or worse, you feel like you have moved only to realize that your body has betrayed you. Eventually, even your will tires of the battle and you would just as soon piss yourself as move to the bathroom, the effort of getting out the chair is enough to wear thin ones patience with the world, and answering the phone, to actually interact with another human being on a meaningful and productive level a soul shattering endeavor. Then there is the breaking point, that moment when you have crossed the threshold of tired, you have endured being truly fatigued, and you just snap. It’s that point when you have driven out into the highway and you think with perfect clarity that it would be ok, hell its better then ok, it’s a great idea to lower the seat back and just let yourself slip off, for just a moment and then you’ll be OK to keep going. After all, you have driven this road a thousand times; you could do it with your eyes closed.
That brings me here. Technically, I was brought here by someone else. Someone with enough will to compel both our bodies into motion… at least for now; I am sure that in time even her love will wear down and that sparkling, loving force of nature that propels her, that animation of body and soul that she shares with me will wither away. So we sit. We wait. That’s what waiting rooms are for. This waiting room held that same dull luminous quality that all hospitals have, old magazines and the smell of disinfectant trying desperately to cover up the rot. Pretty much the same as everywhere I guess. The study was supposed to get me to sleep through the night, but so far they only had succeeded at boring me to exhaustion… well to further exhaustion at any rate. The magazine I had picked up was something about machines or psychology or something like that, it was something that used to interest me, but it’s hard to be interested in the world when you only to get to see through one eye and the haze of non-sleep.
The doctor had come out and was saying something, that’s when her fingers dug onto my hand. It was cold and vice like. I looked at her and she was just gone, that spark had fled in terror. Her eyes were empty, doll-like and shifting down refusing to look up. He was walking into the sleep studies office. He was here. There is always that person wronged you or someone you love, but then there are those people that wrong the world and wonder why everyone turns their backs on them. That was him. And every time he used up one person there was always someone lined up to see how hurt he was, how badly it was not his fault, that life had dealt him such a blow, that if only someone would care for him and love him just enough, he could be a good person. The years had been kind to him, far kinder then I would have hoped for. He was tired of course. He had look of the defeated to him. He had not been sleeping well… and then he was gone. Her hand relaxed. She said nothing, but she would not look me in the eyes. She was hoping that I had not noticed. I had stopped noticing a lot of things when I had stopped sleeping. Not this, never this.
The doctor came out and called a name. I was staring at the doorway behind him lost in the thought of this man, this pig dressed up and pretending to be a man, I hadn’t heard my name. She was still looking down when I rose and started to walk towards the door. The doctors face took over my vision., He was smiling and his breath held day old coffee between his teeth, he told me to come with him, that we would find out what was at the root of my troubles…. They were sitting the other room, I just walked by.
My mind was racing, here I was with the man that caused me so much pain. Like me, he sat there in a white room with silly little wires attached to his head. We were separated by five feet of empty space, maybe a foot and half of plaster, 2-bys, and cheap paint and it may as well been around the world. The doctor asked his banal questions and I answered them from rote, he handed me the pills and I was already dreaming red, seeing every torture I had ever thought of played out with him as my canvas… a masterpiece of sinew and splattered blood… but I was just dreaming. Once again my body betrayed me, still and limp, I watched it lie there with all those machines. For a heartbeat I waited. I saw myself. Lying there asleep, the machines beeped and whirred and the scratching of paper continued on… but, I could see myself sleeping there…
Looking at the wall, I willed to move, but I hovered there looking down and then at the wall again. Over and over again, I shifted my gaze. I just wanted to tear it down, to get to him. He was over there just as helpless as my own body was before me. My dream self stretched out, hard and fast, it was almost like tearing a muscle the sickening noise that echoed in my ears, but I hit the wall. It was hard. It hurt like hell, but I was already sliding through the spaces between the wall and somewhere else.
He was there. Just like mine, his body was helpless. Above him, was something else, smoke and ash poured out of his mouth and hovered above him. His breathing was ragged, cut with deep snores, he stirred ever so slightly at my appearance. Each breath drew the thing of ash and smoke deeper into him… he was trying to wake. I screamed. I was crying. I had moved into the smoke and ash. Deep within the smoke, two cherry red embers burned where eyes should have been, I clawed at them with sharp alien looking hands. With every slash, I felt my muscles rip and still they eluded my rage, finally slipping between his lips. His face contorted as blackened finger length daggers passed through his head. Steely walls had replaced his features and I hammered away at it with huge sledgehammers that were once my hands. He was in there, I could feel it. I would have him.