Everyday Story

I felt the cotton sheet against my back. It was my companion but I had no choice but to rise. My muscles tensed. My mind fought back. I did not move; movement seemed impossible. There was time yet.

The air was pierced by an alarm that caused my body to shrink in terror. I felt adrenalin rush through me. The noise was unbearable. My body tensed further still, then, with a supreme effort, I raised my torso up through air that only moments before had seemed too solid to allow me passage.

My arm swung out as though it were the arm of a crane. I did not remembering ordering it to do that. Perhaps it was no longer under my control. Perhaps my control had always been an illusion. My hand hit the alarm clock.

As I withdrew the hand my unconscious brain took over and executed a series of complex movements that resulted in me turning through ninety degrees and ending in a sitting position on the edge of the bed.

It was dark. My eyes told me it could still be night. It was a mystery that I had found the clock, or that time existed at all. I stood, in blind faith, and gravity operated in its dependable way. I knew the light switch was just to the left of straight forward. I took one step forward, imagining that perhaps there was a deep pit before me, lined with spikes.

The first step switched off my imagination and led to another step, then another. My arm, now well under control, crept forward through the darkness, searching.

I hit plastered wall and felt disappointed with myself. More to the left, fool. I felt left, and beneath my hand was the switch. I stood for a moment longer in the darkness, savouring it, feeling that perhaps, after all, it might be my natural environment.

My fingers moved over the plastic, found the raised end of the rocker switch, pressed it. The room appeared around me, intermittent as I blinked. I turned and faced my wardrobe. This was it, everything that the last eight hours had been building towards: another day.