I have the same nightmare every night

This is a work of fiction.

Video included so you can watch and/or listen.

Enjoy :)

Every night I wake up at 4:48 on the dot.

I try to go back to sleep, but I can’t. I’m drenched in cold sweat. My heartbeat is loud in my ears. It’s fast and arrhythmic. I can’t get out of bed. I can’t “walk it off.” It won’t be light outside for many hours. And my legs are shaking.

I’m aware this is maybe not the best way to begin a conversation, but we don’t have time.

What I hold in my hand right here is a bottle of the strongest sleep medication you’ve never heard of. I just took three capsules. Before you got here. That’s a macro dose. In a tight 15-20, my eyes will shut tight and they won’t open again. I’ll return to the real world.

This stuff right here is not your standard issue Ambien. I moved on from that months ago. You develop a tolerance. No, this, you won’t find at your local pharmacy. No doctor can prescribe it. Won’t be on the FDA’s radar for another 6 months. Even I don’t know what it’s made of. All I know is that it will work. Of that, I am certain. I am certain because I believe.

Don’t be afraid of that word. There are worse things to fear.

If you’d seen what I’ve seen, you too, might grow desperate enough to believe. In something, anything. You too might feel like a stranger to Normal people.

Try telling your boss you’re pushing four hundred something nights of the same bad dream.

Your work friends, your colleagues, Mom, and Dad.

They say they understand, they get it, they’re here for you. But they don’t, and they’re not. How could they. They’ll say “Poor you,” and “How can we help,” and “Maybe try laying off the stimulants?” But this performance lasts only so long. Sympathy’s got a shelf life.

And can you blame them, really.

Even my licensed clinical therapist doesn’t know what’s wrong with me.

And before you start spouting off suggestions, like meditation or yoga or medical mary jane, I’ve tried it all. Falling asleep isn’t the problem. Au contraire, doctor. Insomnia would be a relief. Normal people can wrap their brains around insomnia.

But try being a grown adult male who turns into bed every evening at 9 sharp, and still wakes up exhausted. Who can’t put his socks on in the morning without trembling. Who, sure, gets seven square hours of shut eye a night but still fails to reply in a timely manner.

His hands are shaking.

Try going about the today in a cold sweat panic, knowing full well what’s waiting for you tonight. Try sitting through the Monday morning status meeting without peeling the skin from your hands. Whispering to yourself the daily laundry list of empty litanies.

Maybe I’ll get better. Maybe tonight will be different. Things could change.

But deep down, you know the truth. Nothing in this world changes.

You are Who you are What you are Where you are.

Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.

After I absorb the medicine I’ve swallowed, I’ll shut my eyes tight and lay down in the clothes I am wearing. I will not open my eyes again. But I will be far from dead.

I don’t expect you to understand. Not if you’re Normal.

If that sounds like you, then I offer one warning. Once you know these things, you cannot un-know them. Your ears will hear the Music. Your eyes will see only Signs. You will never be Normal again. You’ll be like me.

Consider this your disclaimer on the back of the bottle.

It’s up to you, the consumer, to do what you wish.

My sole hope is that you choose wisely.

Then maybe you’ll wake up too.

This all started maybe a year ago.

I was an entry level sales rep at an up-and-coming ad agency. My task was to promote a new brand of melatonin gummies, fresh on the market. Sleep Jellies, they were called. Something silly like that. To do my job, I thought I’d try the product myself. I did this a number of times.

That was my first mistake.

If only I had known. There’s no use complaining now. Hindsight and spilled milk and whatnot. Water under any number of metaphorical bridges. Spare me. I used the stuff for little more than a week before the dreams began. And once they started, they did not stop.

Every night, it’s the same.

I am seated in a waiting room. I am waiting for something but I don’t know what. The walls are tan, yellow, or beige. Something in between. I can hear the lights above me. The room is lined wall to wall with faded leather chairs. There are two doors. One behind me, and one in front of me. I am the only one here. In the dream I need help for something urgent. If I don’t get help, I will perish. Sometimes in dreams you just know things.

In this dream, I am certain something is very, very wrong. But I cannot for the life of me remember what’s wrong. That is part of the reason I’m here. To learn what’s wrong with me and get help. The room is a degree or two too hot. I am sweating, but only slightly. I’m wearing my work clothes, the clothes I wore to the office. There’s a digital clock on the wall in front of me. It always reads 4:48. No AM or PM designation. The numbers do not change, but it makes a ticking sound. The clock and the lights above me. These are the only sounds in the room.

To my right, is a woman at a desk behind a screen. Her face is blurred behind the screen. I can’t tell if she’s looking at me. I stand up and go to the desk behind the screen to ask the woman why I’m here, and how long I’ve been here, and if I’ll ever be seen and helped, but before I can get the words out, she hands me a clipboard and a thick stack of forms. She tells me to sit down and fill them out. There’s a pen fixed to the clipboard by a long, umbilical chain of metal spheres. I sit back down in a faded leather chair, and in the very same moment, I hear the rotary telephone cry out somewhere behind the screen. The woman rises to soothe it. I don’t see where she goes. The phone keeps ringing. The woman never comes back.

I am alone in the room. The clock does not change. Nothing ever changes.

In most Normal people’s dreams, time follows a loose set of guidelines. Hours go by unnoticed. But in my dream, I feel every second. Every tick of that great, unchanging clock on the wall in front of me. The door in front of me stands as tall as two of me. It’s made of steel the same color as the walls so it blends right in. It’s got a lever handle in the shape of an L, the kind that turns down to ninety degrees before it opens. If someone comes for me they will pass through this door in front of me. In the dream I know this.

I sit there waiting.

I tell myself it can’t be much longer before someone comes. I think, Maybe I’ll flip through a magazine while I wait. But there are none to read. I stand up to pace the room and then sit down again. No one comes in.

The telephone is ringing. The lights are singing. Their bulbs are out of key.

It must be an hour or two of waiting before I stand up to leave. I don’t want to be here anymore. I’ll come back another time. Whatever my problem is, I’ll live with it. I walk over to the door behind me. The door behind me is shorter than I am. I’d have to crouch to get out. It’s a wooden door painted yellow, and the paint is peeling. Its knob is round and brass. There’s a sign on the door that reads: THIS IS NOT AN EXIT. I put both hands on the doorknob. My hands are shaking. It occurs to me I have no earthly clue what’s waiting behind this door. I look at the sign again. It reads, clear as day, DO NOT OPEN DOOR OR ALARM WILL SOUND. I turn the handle to see if the door is locked. The knob turns with me. I could push slightly and the door would open. I could leave. I could walk right out. I look at the sign and the sign reads, clear as day, WRONG WAY, TURN BACK. It occurs to me if I walk through this door, I will be going the WRONG WAY. I will be going against the clear as day directions of the sign. Something bad will happen. In the dream I know this.

I sit back down in a faded leather chair. Always there is the hum or whine or scream of the overhead fluorescent lights. I cover my ears with my hands. The hum is the same as it was before. Nothing changes. But it is this very absence of change that makes the sound deafening. The sameness itself becomes the killing thing. I stand up again. I cannot bear to sit. I pace the room with my ears in my hands. My clothes smell and feel three days old. They are not soiled. But they are stale, tired, spent. They itch. I unbutton and remove my shirt and then my pants and then my briefs and then stand there in the waiting room, naked.

Somehow I am still too hot.

It is at this point I might break into a fit of hopeless tears if it were not for the sudden click clack of a woman’s heels resounding from behind the second door. The door in front of me. The clicks are slow and measured. The clacks follow close behind. It’s louder than you’re imagining. Dial it up a notch. The sound is getting closer. The door could open any moment.

I am now confronted by an altogether different fear. Here I am, naked, splayed, in a public place where I should not be naked and splayed. We’ve all had this dream.

Why is it we only come to our senses when its already too late?

I scramble to re-dress myself. Briefs, pants, belt, shirt. My hands are shaking. In the frenzy, I never pause to consider why the click clack of heels rings out so very loud and clear from behind the closed, locked steel door in front of me. The heels are now so close their sound might be coming from within my body. This cannot be the case. But in dreams you write these things off. You let details fade from view. It’s only later on the pieces come together.

When I get my clothes back on I sit down in the chair I’ve been waiting in. The click clacks are right in front of my nose. I cross one leg over the other. I un-cross it. I place both my hands flat on my thighs and wait. It occurs to me the sound of the heels has stopped but the door has not been opened. I am possessed by the distinct sense that whatever I’ve been waiting for is, in fact, waiting for me behind that door. The music of the overhead lights has either cut out completely or I have simply stopped hearing it. Now the dream is silent.

I am waiting for the door to open.

The L-shaped lever handle of the door begins to turn down. Its motion makes no sound. The handle turns counter-clockwise, leftward. I can hear my heartbeat in my ears. The handle reaches ninety degrees and stops. That’s as far as it should go. This is where the door should open and I should see what’s behind it. But somehow, impossibly, the knob keeps turning. It winds round and round. It turns past the South Pole of its fixed orbit and ever leftward still. Slow, silent, round, and round. It is only now that I begin to scream. No sound escapes my lips.

That’s when the door opens, revealing, finally, what’s waited for me all along.

The figure is several feet behind the door. Down the long hallway with no light. A shadow upon shadows. It stumbles forward, out of rhythm. The woman in heels. The click clack of her feet doesn’t match her steps. Her movements lag behind. She is coming for me.

It occurs to me I should not be here. I should have left this place when I had the chance. The door behind me was unlocked. I had my moment and the moment is gone. She is coming closer. She is nearly at the tunnel’s mouth. She is nearly through the door where she’ll soon be lit by the panels above. I’ll see the true nature of her face.

I spring from the chair and rush to the door behind me, the door that is NOT AN EXIT. Even so late in the day, I pray. I pray the door is still unlocked, that some cruel trick has not been played against me. I get my hand on the knob and turn, and Thank God it turns, and I pull it back to flee, and right behind the door, of course, right in front of me, a foot from my face, is the figure, the shade, the woman in heels.

I see the true nature of her face.

Her arms reach out towards me. Her hands are older than the rest of her. Not a drop of blood inside them. Her face is broken in smile. It hurts to hold herself like this. She has been like this for a long, long time. In the dream I know this. Her eyes are lidless, bloodshot, screaming eyes. She has been in this place longer than I have. I see what has happened to her. I see what I will become. When she reaches for me, it happens slow. It might be a minute or an hour. But I cannot pull myself away. It’s as her fingers reach my throat that I wake in bed, alone.

The clock reads 4:48. It’s dark outside the window. The only remnant from that place is my heart, still loud in my ears. I am embalmed in sweat. My body’s rigid shape, its flaccid geometry, printed, or etched, in the mattress below. Like the white chalk silhouette of a corpse on a crime scene. I lay there motionless for many minutes more. Until I’m certain I am awake. Every night it takes a little longer. My arms and legs shake with so much force I cannot even begin to consider getting up to relieve myself. I stay like that long after the war drum of my heart recedes. After my fingers and toes unclench and the sweat dries.

And every night, I wait there, hoping, praying to drift off again. I wait til I feel that downward pull, the lightness of skull and body that precedes sleep. And it’s every night, as I begin to fade once again into blissful dark, that the morning alarm rings out. A loud, penetrating cry.

Its melody is the default sound.

It’s time to get out of bed.

Today is a new day.

It’s been four hundred something days and nights of this.

I’ve learned to live with my ailment. As all cursed people do. We swallow our pride.

We carry on.

It was three days ago something changed. I was at the office. I had reached the bottom of my 97th bottle of over-the-counter sedatives. At the bottom of the bottle I found a small white scrap of lined paper, torn jaggedly on all five sides. I don’t know how it got there, but at this point I lacked the energy to ask questions. On it was a message assembled from the cut out letters of a popular self help magazine.

“Having Trouble Sleeping?”

I flipped the scrap over to read a sequence of 10 digits separated by dashes. I scrambled to my rotary telephone and dialed the number. Put the receiver to my ear. The phone rang and rang. I stayed on the line. When colleagues walked past my desk, I pretended I was on with a client. I waited for someone to pick up. I had to wait. I knew if I did not wait, if I hung up the phone before someone answered, I would never have another chance. If I called the number again, the phone might not even ring. Sometimes you just know things.

It was after forty or fifty rings, there came a long crackling sound and a young man’s voice broke through the other end of the line.

“Top of the morning to you.”

It was 4:48 in the PM. The voice was faint, squeezed through a tiny hole in a distant wall. The connection was poor.

“Hello. I found this number on a slip of paper at the bottom of my bottle of sleeping pills. It asked me if I was having trouble sleeping. I suppose you could say, I am.”

The crackle was louder than the voice. But if I squinted I could hear words.

“What seems to be the trouble?”

“I have bad dreams. Sorry, dream. Singular. This has been going on for a year. Maybe more. If it goes on any longer, I’m not sure I will. Go on. I wake every night at the same time each night, always embalmed in sweat. Visceral terror. Can you help me?”

“I’ll just ask you a few questions and see if we can assist you. That sound alright?”

“That sounds alright.”

“Describe the dream for me. Do you find yourself trapped inside a small box? Or are you standing at the sheer edge of a tall building in the sky, looking down? Or are you cast adrift in a vast ocean? Or something else. To say something else, you can dial 1 or say something else.”

“Something else.”

“I see. I’m guessing you’re a Waiter.”

“Actually, I’m an Account Representative at an up-and-coming ad agency.”

“In the dream, I mean. Stop me if this sounds familiar. Every night you find yourself alone in a yellow room. Waiting for hours on end to get help for something you can’t name. Does that sound about right?”

“That sounds about right. How did you know?”

“It’s not so uncommon in those who come to us.”

“Us?”

“We’d be happy to assist you with your trouble. Your medication will be waiting at your doorstep when you arrive home this evening.”

“How do you know where I live?”

The line had been disconnected.

I put down the phone and shut off my computer. I sat there staring straight ahead for a minute or two. Then I got up and left the office. I drove straight home. Sitting outside my apartment door was a single envelope addressed to no one. It bore no message or return address. Only a stamp in the lower left corner. A black and white photo of a moth, fluttering at a streetlamp. I stared at this image for a minute or two. Then I crossed over into my apartment, tore open the envelope, and found a small bottle of pills, unlabeled. Inside the bottle was a scrap of jagged paper. A message made from cut-out letters.

Instructions:

Take one capsule per night. Do not exceed one capsule every 12 hours.

I twisted the bottle. I struggled for some time with the Child Safety cap. When I got it open, I shook out a blue oblong pill and placed it in my mouth. I swallowed with my own saliva. Then I floated into the bedroom and sat on my bed in my work clothes.

I laid down. I closed my eyes. I waited.

When I open them again I am in a different bedroom.

Everything about the room is the same. The plants. The total lack of wall hangings. The rug. But it is somehow different. That much, I know. I look to my left and there is a woman in bed next to me, sleeping. Martina. The receptionist from work with the copper curls, who doodles at her desk all day, who I turn to glance at every quarter minute or so between the hours of nine and five. This dream occurs to me in flashes. I blink and we’re kissing. Clothes come off in waves. I blink and we’re at the breakfast table over plates of poached eggs. The surfaces of the kitchen are marble or quartz. Smooth and shiny. I blink and I’m driving fast on the highway in a black matte Jaguar. I have an expensive looking rose gold watch on my wrist. I blink and I’m at work. Its the same workplace I go to every day of my life but its cleaner. Nicer. Everything in its right place. In this dream, I lead the status meeting. I have my own office with my name on the door and the desk. I blink and I’m back home with Martina. The walls of the house are made of glass and there are trees outside, everywhere. Martina is about to tell me something. Something beautiful and crucial. It’s as she opens her mouth, I blink.

And I wake in my bed, alone.

I could hear my heart in my ears. I was embalmed in sweat. But I was not afraid.

I looked at the clock and saw it was 8:48 AM. I had slept through the night. And then some. I was late for work. I sprang from bed and drove to the office in the same set of clothes. I had not shit, showered, or shaved. I sat through the Friday morning status meeting with the dream images coursing through my mind. Then I sat at my desk and did the same thing. Many hours went by unnoticed. I could not bring myself to work. Could not reply to one email in a timely manner. Not after last night. The fabric of this day was artificial, false. Polyester when it should’ve been cotton. It didn’t feel real. Not quite.

At some point, Martina stopped by my desk to ask if I was alright. Looked like I’d had a rough night, she said. She was being friendly. I told her No, actually, I slept great. Then I asked if she was free for dinner the following evening. She was taken aback by this. Her eyes went wide.

She said, Took you long enough to ask.

Meet me at California Pizza Kitchen at 8:48, I said. PM, I said.

Yeah, duh, she said. It was cute the way she said it.

I left work early that day and drove 15 over the limit to get home. I wanted to get back to sleep. When I got home, I poured out another blue pill and placed it in my mouth. I swallowed with spit. I sat on my bed in my work clothes. I closed my eyes. I waited. But when I didn’t feel that downward pull, the lightness of skull and body that precedes sleep, I figured I’d better take another. So I took another. One more couldn’t hurt.

I sat, I laid, I waited. I closed my eyes.

When I open them again, I am in the house of glass. There are trees everywhere. I look and smell like a man in a commercial. The walls are made of polished stone. The dream tonight does not occur in fragments. Life is one continuous chain of cause and effect.

Martina is about to tell me something. Something beautiful and crucial. We talk about getting married. I drive to work and receive the promotion I’m up for. Martina and I get dinner at California Pizza Kitchen for the third time this week. We talk about life, and bringing new life into it. I’m an Account Executive now, and hey, why not bring a little guy or gal into the picture? Martina and I make love. We make love three times a week but no one’s counting. We’re painting the second bedroom tan or yellow or beige. We will impose neither blue nor pink on our little munchkin. Let them choose for themselves. I am promoted again. The agency now services every consumer packaged health brand in the Western hemisphere. And we are expanding East. Martina and I take in a rescue pup named Oskar, a Dachsund/Great Dane cross breed. On our first family Christmas, I stand at the head of the table to make a toast. Martina looks across at me from the other end. The long table is lined with relatives I’ve never met. I cannot see their faces. They are like the grown ups in children’s television programs. They exist but not fully. They are concepts. Martina smiles at me with full moon eyes. Then there’s the sound of a small splattering under the table. Her water is broken. We’ve got to get to the hospital. Its as my son, my baby boy, comes into the world that everything fades to black.

And I wake once again in my bedroom, alone.

I looked at the clock and saw that it was 4:48. PM. I had overslept. Thank God it was a weekend. I had less than 4 hours before my date with Martina.

I scrambled out of bed to get to the rotary phone. I dialed the number. It rang only once.

“Top of the morning to you.”

“Hi. Hello. This is the gentleman with the same dream every night. We spoke the other day. I found your number at the bottom of a bottle of sleeping pills.”

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to be more specific.”

“Right. Of course. Well, listen, there’s a problem here. I just awoke from a dream that lasted a full year. Maybe longer. I was married, I had a life. It was more real than anything I’ve ever felt. And now it’s over. Just like that. I’m awake but I don’t feel awake.”

“How many capsules did you take?”

“Two.”

“And how many capsules did the instructions instruct you to take?”

“One capsule every 12 hours.”

“So you’re seeing, I hope, the faint outline of the problem here.”

“OK, yes. Responsibility taken. But responsibility aside, I need to get back to my life. My real life. I need to get back to the dream.”

“Are you ready to commit?”

“I’m sorry. What did you say?”

“If you’re ready to commit to your real, true life, take three capsules. Do it tonight.”

“Three capsules. Got it. I can do that.”

“But I have to warn you of something. Consider this your disclaimer on the back of the bottle. If you take three capsules, you won’t come back.”

“What do you mean I won’t come back?”

“The life you return to will become your true one. The world you’re calling from now will be a faint dream you chose to forget. You’ll never again rise from bed unrested. If you take your new life to be your true one, you’ll always be awake.”

“If I said I wasn’t following you before, that is nothing compared to the lack of following I’m experiencing now.”

“What I’m telling you, good sir, is if you take the macro dose, you’ll sink into a sleep you’ll never wake from.”

“You’re saying I’ll die.”

“That’s not what I said. What I said was, You’ll never again open your eyes this side of the dream divide.”

“So I’ll die.”

“Has it ever once felt that way when you’ve woken from a dream?”

I said nothing to this. I just listened to the crackle on the other end of the line. The sound was not unlike the cacophony hum of overhead lights.

“Alright. I think I’m following you. Three pills. Tonight. I’m ready to commit.”

“We’re glad to hear it. When you get here, I’ll make sure to come by and say hello. For a proper introduction.”

“Wait. You never told me who you are.”

But the line was dead. I hung up the phone for the last time.

I began to to make arrangements. I went through the motions of shutting down my life. I hand-washed all the dishes in the sink. I took out the trash for the last time. I did not call Martina to let her know I wouldn’t make it to dinner. I would be seeing her shortly. I drew the blinds and locked the front door and barricaded the front door with furniture. Then I watered the plants. I swallowed the pills and floated into the bedroom. I locked the door behind me.

I sat on the bed in my work clothes. I closed my eyes. I waited.

When I opened my eyes again, I was alive.