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Night

The night crawls on bended legs and searching fingers at the foot of my bed.  I can hear it wheezing and muttering in its hollow soul.  I can smell its presence and jealousy and hate.  It reeks of cold and damp and Victorian evenings swirling in fog.  I try not to make a single noise.  Any utterance would trigger its awareness and I would be its prisoner all alone in my single bed.

I cannot see it.  This sense is deprived.  Cut off from neurons racing down my spine.  Black dilated pupils roll around scared sockets and settle on no physical thing.  Between parted lips I am aware of a sour aftertaste.  I have been kissed in my sleep by the mutant lurking in the corner and now it has had that first fatal taste there is no escape.

My hands know that in painfully close proximity a light switch aches to be flicked.  To banish the intruder beyond the walls of my bedroom and into the world to find someone else…anyone else.

But my arms are paralysed.  They refuse to move and a battle ensues between the various parts of my body, all in utter disharmony and disgust of each other. 

Only my mind is silent.  Straining to keep a psychic lock on the monster drifting inches away.  The sound of cramped toe nails dragging across my loose floorboards alerts me to the new angle of attack night has chosen to make.  A hideous gurgle of violent glee is emitted and I know my fate is imminent.  I wish I was as invisible as it.  But I know that the pale skin of my face and other unfortunate body parts lying outside the security of my duvet glow in the stale air.  I am a beacon for the night.

The sharp intake of breath from an entity preparing to jump shocks my back into action and as a cloud of hate leaps across the room at my face my hand wins its battle and swings wildly at my meagre lamp.  As my eyes focus on a future of grey skies and missions of depression light floods my tiny room and a gasp of unexpected pain and loss hits me between the eyes.  A millimetre lies between me and it.  The blink of confusion from both of us confirms it is no longer dark.  Electric bulbs have banished the fright and night has run off to lick its wounds and think up cunning plans for the future.

I shake under the duvet and start to sweat relief. 

It is 1am and I have a long time to not sleep.

– Published in Insomnia Magazine, September 2006

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