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Sleepwalking, pills, and the thing in the fridge |
| Written by Rover | |
| Tuesday, 25 March 2008 | |
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Share it:      She woke up in the kitchen, with a bottle of pills for her depression in her hand. She could not remember what had happened before, no matter how hard she tried. Her mind seemed like a sky full of cloud before a storm, and she could not form any kind of coherent thought. she had never taken on the habit of drinking, so this could not be a hangover, but it felt a bit like one. She let years of routine giude her as she automatically prepared her breakfast. The next morning, the same thing happened again: this feeling of a sudden awakening, once again in her kitchen. This time, this was accompanied by the impression that something important was so close to her reach, but yet ungraspable...On her way to her office, she started thinking about this weird phenomenon: she had never experienced anything like that before. At work, she seemed less effective than before, and she felt as if she had taken a step back from the human world, watching everything from above, without any kind of emotion. The place where she worked reminded her of a creepy christmas market, decorated with yellow garlands, and swarming with busy people. She was told a murder had been committed by one of the cop, she had better go home and expect to be contacted by the police station for a few formalities. She was a very sensitive naure, and should have been utterly shocked. However, the news did not made it through the thick heap of clouds her mind had been floating in for a few days. The same things kept happening to her: every day she came back to her mind in her kitchen, and could not remember anything that had happened between the moment she came back home from work and the moment she took her pills the following day. She talked about it to her doctor, he comforted her, telling her she was under a lot of stress and probably not quite eased after the shock caused by the crime in a place which was familiar to her. She took his advice and stopped working for a few weeks. It made things worst. Now that she had nothing to do all day long, she could not help thinking about what she could not remember. Or more precisely, what she could remember. Pieces of nonsense popped up in her mind, as sudden as her daily awakening every morning when she took her pills. At first there were only sounds. Sounds of running feet or smashing metal. Then came the images. The town at night. 7-11 about to close, late passer bys, people coming home after parties, whores, cops, night watchmen, stray cats, drunken hobos,...It was like the town had two population. One that she had always known, the one that lived in daylight, and another one, that came out at night. Day by day, these images became clearer. Soon walks through areas of the town she did not know came back to her mind, but somehow they felt wrong, as if it was not her walking...or maybe searching, because a longing was associated to these visions. She drew a lot of hypothesis: she was a sleepwalker, she had flash-backs from another life, she had extremely realistic dreams,...She was about to contact a psychiatrist when she finally understood. It was the pills. She always woke up when she was taking them: she was addicted. They kept her going all day long, and as their effect faded, she felt into a state close to the one of a vegetable, and became herself again when she took her pills. The dreamy visions of an endless search through the town at night were an expression of the sensation of need experienced by every junkie. She decided to slowly reduce the quantity of pills she was taking. The next day, she met her neighboor at the local shopping mall. The elderly woman informed her she was about to move out of town, because of the growing insecurity. At first, she did not understood what her neighboor meant, and thought this was typical third age paranoia. At home, she turned on her TV for the first time in weeks: what she saw made her heart miss a beat despite her constant half numb state. Her own town was the theatre of particularly violent murders committed by what seemed to be a dangerous psychopath that the police could not catch. Security measures had been taken, but nothing could stop the killer. Panic overtook her. What if she was after all a real sleepwalker, she could come accross the killer in one of her walk at night... From then on, she became more and more stressed, worrying about her safety, not knowing whether what she did at night was real or not. She spent her days in front of the TV, keeping informed about the progression of the murders. The killer seemed to strike mostly in the poorest areas of the town, which surrounded the place where she lived. Anguish became litteraly a part of her life. She would jump at every crack in her house, the awakenings she still had every morning became more violent, and the remains of her dreams clearer. She could now feel the appeal of death in them. Visions of blood, screams that still rang in her ears, rushes of adrenaline...She associated her dreams with her fear of the killer. She bought a book about self-defense and started practising alone. She wanted to be ready if the killer attacked her...she could not make her mind about the reality of her dreams, and she thought it might be both nightmares caused by her fears, and sleepwalking. She was successfull in reducing the quantity of pills she took, but could not stop completely because of the first pill allowing her to recover her mind every morning. One day found new clothes in her wardrobe, that she did not remember buying. There were dark clothes, while she usually wore light colors. Then she found the knife in her drawers. This was probably a starting point for something. She decided to leave town. She found a nice flat for rent in a nearby town, but far enough from the killer to be safe. She moved and the dreams that had been haunting her for more months disappeared. She lost her pills while she packed and then unpacked her stuff, and she did not miss them: her addiction was gone. She also found a new job, better paid than her former one. By one sunny Sunday afternoon, she was sitting casually in her living room and found herself thinking about all what had happened to her recently. Everything could be explained by her addiction to her pills, stress, and the situation of potential danger the killer had put her in. But nothing could explain the severed head she found in her fridge the next morning. Copyright 2008 Rover |
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