My r.e.m. is interrupted by an abrupt need to search for a sweet spot. Kick my legs to loosen the comforter that’s tangled them. Gosh I’m tired. I survey the dark room as it appears from this new angle; under the dresser. Nothing new there: same old dust.
Suddenly there are lights. Police lights? No, there is green and yellow with the red and blue. The strobes dance from the window that faces me and the one behind me. But this is no celebration.
I wrestle an intangible invisible weight–I’m not moving; can’t move. I scream silently—or is that the whirring of the lights drowning my sound? Their constant movement feels like noise must were it tactile. I’m screaming that I “belong to” Jesus Christ.
I’m wondering why I invoke Him when my personal prayers have rarely included His name, specifically, in years. I hear the television droning from the next room and wonder how late—or early—it must be that no one is alarmed by all these lights.
I cannot close my eyes.
Finally it all stops in my last gasp for breath—what would have been a scream had they not all been silent. My heart is beating fast. I’m staring under the dresser still. Dry eyed and with none of the stickiness and blur that would confirm sleep has happened.
From the window, there’s nothing but the glow of the back door sensor. No whir of traffic, even, from the window behind me (which looks down on a parking lot and into a street that is hardly a thoroughfare but sees a little more activity than this on any other Saturday night). No lights from there either; I know this even though for so many minutes I dare not look.
Finally, I turn on one of the lamps and pick up the phone. It tells me it’s only 12:30 a.m.; my twin answers on the second ring.
Read more about my [day]dreams here.
darlene anita scott 