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Scribe
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Ohio
Posts: 57
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When I Sleep-Part I
[Rough draft--needs a lot of work still, but I think I have a decent start. Feedback welcome!]
"When I sleep my dreams are crazy, I'm flying over fields...I don't think I sleep for more then twenty minutes..." Golden Palominos, Victim
There was stillness, she thought, there was silence, and then there was this--She felt her thoughts becoming more and more raw and basic as the hours passed by..Her body reduced to a map of nerve endings where the tracery was bloody and thin. And there was the pain of it-- The pain always found her no matter where she hid-And day by day things changed…She moved through the small spaces as best she could her eyes just a little more red than the day before...her limbs just a little more alive with pain and heavy with anger--her brain clicking violently like a ticker tape with each new thought that jutted in...Certain phrases stabbing like lightning.
Indeed something was out of place in her head, in her heart in her life...but she did not fear it, not really...absence was old and quite familiar to her. Absence had made her heart grow cold.cold like the moon must feel she thought, (speaking to herself in simile yet again) sitting up there perched above trees. Listening to the stars incessant prattle--so cold...So there was the matter of her cold red heart, and the matter of her seething, red head. Neither of which gave her a moment’s peace or any new perspective at all. She remembered how now how it had happened one evening, when, unable to shut her eyes, insomnia entered her life slowly, loudly, heavily-- And now it bore down on her, pressed itself against her ribcage, tightened itself around her waist. And this prevented whatever it was (breath, blood, demons, songs) from escaping her too soon--that something that wanted out. The something that screamed when it was too quiet to hear...
She sat alone in a room thinking too hard and too fast about what might have been once, what could've possibly stopped this avalanche from burying her dreams alive where they stood a gasp inside her. But she knew the truth. She knew nothing could have stopped this, this truly was all her fault. Because she couldn't behave, because she only went to therapy when she felt like it, because she liked coffee too much, because the sky was always a dead stopped gray on Tuesdays and hard to look at...and there the excuses ran out. And she had nothing again. So, Hayden sat alone in a room feeling the cold. Feeling the absence of something...feeling the desire for anything...feeling the confusion...feeling the colors inside her bend and blur together. She could no longer decipher the glyphs of her own internal language...when would this stop? And did she want it to?
Sleep, or bits of what she imagined might be sleep-- came to her in sharp electric stabs-each minute of reprieve tinged with a bit of that other world that she carried. Chaos, stars, birds, threads, sticks--tumbling, falling through her head, each image falling on top of the next until the pile of dreams was so thick it breathed and glowed and was like a carpet her dreaming self could walk upon and shred like paper or air if her hands were knives.
So these bits of sleep that were less than restful and certainly unsatisfying grew longer and deeper each time. And quickly the chasm between her rational mind and her irrational self deepened and filled with water--water that could drown a pulse beat and float every kind of demon.
She began to look at solutions…
She began to crave bullets…
and a gun to shoot them out of …
'But that would be too easy wouldn't it? Too simple, way too dramatic, even for you!' She hissed, taunting her own shadowy face in the bathroom mirror. No,no. Death is not good for today--mercury is in retrograde today, I checked my horoscope this afternoon-- I'd most likely just fuck it over--end up another sad, don't try this at home kids statistic--a ready face of woe to be plastered between the after school specials and commercials for tampons.
She began to wish for perfect bedding...
She began to wish for a perfect bed frame...
to pile it all on-blankets, sheets, fluffy pillows...
"But that wouldn't matter" she uttered continuing her dialogue with herself while pacing from bathroom to kitchen, to living room."Every bed feels like stone today...has felt that way...So I guess I would like to go somewhere...somewhere is better than nowhere. And I am certainly nowhere here...so I'll go out there...and I'll do things, be things, buy things...maybe I’ll find someone who is selling sleep for a good price...someone who can cut my brain to the quick and leave only the proper nerve endings...maybe.”
She dug through piles of lace, velvet, the textures pleasing. She almost forgot her purpose fondling her silks like loose butterflies she then pinned to her chest, testing the look of them. She chose finally a pair of velour black pants tight in the hips loose everywhere else…and blue lace top with satin underlay and sleeves loose and threatening to unravel with age…and her boots. Black and always so tall so she could look down upon the city when walking…or crush them like ants without caring. No one cared for her anymore and empathy seemed such a waste of energy.
Hayden grabbed her purse-- checked it for cash and cards, the hands simplest movement, a reflex…
She latched the door, shaded her eyes and pointed her body’s long lithe arrow ahead, toward something--pushing, building velocity, determined. Hissing from beneath the fabric her hips whispered-persuasive and swinging they lead her to it-the thing she wanted. Her eyes heavy lidded and innocent focused and would plead guilty to any crime if asked.
Less then a block away from her apartment she paused. Testing the air for signs she came up with nothing but strode along mocking confidence as she always did. People were so stale and benign and easy to fool-too bad they happened to be useful at times-she supposed that was the saving grace of humanity-their ability and willingness to use and be used.
She'd go see an herbalist...
She'd go see a specialist...
She'd go see a healer...
She stepped heavily on the dead cement, something she could bruise without leaving a mark.
Her quick stride broken only once, to buy a bouquet of flowers from the girl who sold them who looked like the perfect little princess-in-hiding who artfully tugged at her remaining sympathy with big green eyes and dirty fingernails. So, Hayden gave her only smile of the day away and pressed some bills into the Sidewalk-Cosette’s little bird frail hand. As she walked she clutched the bouquet to her side, roses and and baby’s breath tapping her hips as she bounced along the pavement like a black rubber ball.
Now she knew where she was going, the flowers had reminded her, had engaged the cogs of her brain in the simple word associations she played, (about the only things her head could manage these days)...flowers, ground, petals, properties, healing-- the herbalist. She was going to see the herbalist.
The door to the tiny shop jammed itself into her clean gray line of vision. She noticed that it was propped open with an old copy of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina which she took for a locked red box at first glance. It was a sign that practical people could be found here. People that would not waste their time or hers with nonsense--they would get to the point quickly--she hoped.
They would say, ‘Take this and your dreams will be easy’
They would say ‘Take this and you will rest fitfully.’
They would say ‘Take this and you will float away gently’
She didn’t notice the man slip in easily behind her, a blank sheet of paper into a city story being rewritten every day…he himself was as small as the punctuation left out.
Threading through the she isles passed her fingers over jars of every shape, size and contour…she then would trace their strange shapes in the air, trying to get a sense of the One she needed--.the orchid amongst the weeds…she felt for the flowers at her side again…the motion feathery and frantic...searching for her anchor…her balance…how she craved balance…maybe here with the magics and powder dust she’d find it.
Pale flickering hands caught the attention of the shopkeeper…an ordinary compact woman with a steady gaze and slightly faltering step…the result of a bone disease carried with her from overseas…(packed in her suitcases tightly amongst the memories of ancestral foot binding and other cultural wreckage)…she made her way to the tall, intense, certainly American woman and waited for her to notice. She kept an eye on the man too…the man who though nondescript did not seem to fit-his presence unbalanced the air.
The man who was a broken puzzle piece who fit nowhere anymore had spent weeks deciding whether to do it…whether to go to her in the city…so now he was here and he had found Her..the one he dreamed about..the one that he was never even sure existed until now..still she was the one he knew better than anyone else in the world…He had found Hayden…he had found her and he was not going to go away…’I have a right to her-- she is my property, I feel her inside me every day…She knows she belongs to me, how could she not?” He scratched his chin and felt the stubble. He waited.
Hayden spun around and faced the tiny woman…spoke softly,
’What do you recommend to bring my sleep back? It has run too far away this time, I’m afraid”
…They were halting words whose fall from Hayden’s lips was pillowed with heavy silence..
She tried again, checking herself before unloosing the usual cloak of verbal thorns and daggers-blood waterfalls pooled and waited playing at the corners of her mouth. She said simply then,
“I haven’t slept in days.”
The shopkeeper smirked, said ‘Um-hmm, I see that…” Hayden noticed she spoke her English with a slightly muddled British accent, indicative perhaps of a childhood in Hong Kong or Shanghai. No matter the source, she was quite taken with it, as she was will all sorts of syllabic enchantments, and wished the woman had more to say. She waited, watching the woman think. She paused for a moment and found herself in that familiar, frozen state-Why did it always happen like this?
The first time she had been only seven. Her mother had taken her to the park and after planting her daughter there, an odd sort of human rose, crossed the street to the bank without even a word of caution. Alone now as she ever was, Hayden sought out the reliable company of some leaves and ravens squabbling under a big oak tree. She approached slowly not wanting to scare the creatures, her eyes focused on the oil slick cluster and beaded raindrop eyes-when in mid-step she froze completely. Every muscle and every nerve throbbed and stiffened, and while they did the world around her melted and fizzled, all the colors inverted, and what was left was a hideous x-ray of everything. After that Hayden stopped going to the park, in fact anywhere she didn’t have to go. But the thing followed her everywhere, even to school. Soon the world was so frightening and ugly that even the vague desire to do things deserted her--tiny things like breathing, putting on her shoes, or just seeing the world naturally in her primary black, grey, white colors--grew tiresome.
Time, though, provided the cures to her strange troubles, and she learned how to fight her visions, how to give in to them, how to run from them, and eventually, how to see beyond the boundaries of sight. Hayden folded into herself slowly so as to stall the inevitable-Looked outward at the strangeness. There was something here, that was right here, right now, that she should be noticing…And she knew this, all of it, without knowing.
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