Rest
(Text by Audrey Martin)
Your eyes sting as you stare at the blinking bar on the screen in front of you — grey shadows dancing over the bright, white page. Breathing has been difficult for the last hour. You know it should be automatic but it isn’t, so you inflate your lungs yourself, deflate them, inflate, deflate.
Your heart is still racing from the energy drink you downed a couple of hours ago. Your tongue sticks to the roof of your mouth, pushing against your teeth, numb. You want to move, to run, to scream, but your body remains still. The tips of your fingers tingle, cold and blue.
You lift your right hand from the keyboard, slowly, and it doesn’t feel like it’s a part of you anymore. You reach towards the monitor and switch it off. Its ghost remains etched into your eyes even though you now live in darkness. You finally close your eyes and you mean to reopen them right away, but they stay closed. Your head starts to spin, your stomach tightens, your lungs cramp.
You force your eyes open wide and take a deep breath, then stop and freeze. It takes another moment for you to tell your body to push itself out of your seat, and yet another to turn around and look at the only light in your room; the white numbers of your alarm clock telling you the sun will rise in a few hours.
You know you have to go to sleep, no matter how you feel about it, no matter whether the energy drink is still coursing through your veins. You have things to do in the morning, meetings to attend, people to not disappoint.
You walk over to the window, your body feeling like a puppet with too many strings. Your hand reaches up to grab the curtain but you stop, having caught a glimpse of something on the street below. Your eyes dart towards the spot, trying to focus, failing to focus. Nothing seems out of the ordinary. The streetlights shine softly onto the pavement that weaves between the giant buildings where you lot all live. No cars in between, only a handful of bikes tied to the railings next to the shed where the bins are stored. As always, a few lights are still on in the building across from you, shadows swaying behind curtains, students awake when the world is asleep. Your eyes wander over the landscape in front of you, wondering if maybe it might have been a cat or an empty bag dancing in the wind but everything is still and as it should be.
You take a deep breath and let your eyes flutter shut, the incessant prickling only getting worse once your eyelids are draped over your eyes. You slowly lean forward until your forehead touches the glass, the cold radiating from the contact point over your forehead and down your face.
Your hand loses its grip and falls to your side and suddenly you’re wide awake again. You check the street one more time but there’s nothing there, just as it should be.
You finally draw the curtains shut and turn towards your bed. You slip out of your clothes, letting them pool on the floor around you, and slip into the soft, old t-shirt you sleep in. Two strides towards the door to switch off the light, two strides back to reach the bed again.
You finally slip underneath the covers, turning your body towards the wall so the light of the streetlamps peeking out from beneath the curtains won’t bother you. You drag the blanket over your head and pull yourself into a tight ball, breathing in and out. Slowly. Deeply. Concentrating only on your breathing, nothing but the in and out and in and out, and you can feel your mind drifting off and dragging itself back into consciousness over and over and over again.
Images are dancing in front of your eyelids without your consent. The cat from across the hall, the car you saw in a commercial that afternoon transforming and rearranging itself into a different car from a different commercial, faces you have never seen before turning to you and staring at you, coming towards you, but you are not afraid, you are used to them by now. The same way you are used to the voices calling out to you from a distance, whispering nonsense throughout the room. What you are not used to, however, is when one of the voices shouts your name into your ear.
You bolt upright, staring into the room behind you. Your heart is racing, mind wide awake. Your eyes dart from one corner to the next, but there’s nothing there. You even switch the lamp — on the bedside table — on, for good measure.
Your breathing slows down, your heart beating at a normal pace again. You cross your legs underneath yourself and let your face fall into your hands. You groan, knowing full well that you won’t be able to fall back asleep now. You rub your hands over your face and decide to get out of bed. You think that a short walk outside will do you some good, that the cold air will reset your mind, that the movement will tire you out.
You change into some old sweatpants and hoodie lying on the ground and slip into your shoes. You step out onto the building’s hallway and walk down the stairs. You have to hold on to the railing so that you won’t accidentally slip and fall down. It shouldn’t feel this dangerous to walk downstairs but what your eyes are telling you is in front of you, and the way your body is perceiving the room, isn’t lining up the way it should. When you reach the end of the staircase, you close your eyes, shutting them tight, your knuckles turning white as you hold on to the railing. You feel like you are falling, like the ground is spinning underneath your feet. You take a few deep breaths but every time your lungs fill your stomach twists and turns.
You hear the voice again, calling out for you from the end of the hallway. This time you turn around before it can get closer but even in the well-lit hallway you don’t see anyone else. You turn back around to look up the staircase, thinking that maybe the sound had come from somewhere else, but you are completely alone. You don’t hear any footsteps, you don’t hear any rustling of clothes, you don’t hear anyone else’s breathing.
You decide the best course of action is to go outside, so you hurry down the hallway and slip out onto the path connecting your building to the other student accommodations. You put your hands in your pockets and pull your shoulders up to protect yourself from the cold. You keep your eyes on the ground as you walk down the path and towards the bridge that leads to the university. You think it’s going to be nice to stand at the very top of it and look down upon the town, observe the few people who are still awake at this hour, those who have to work the night shift, those who are celebrating.
You walk up the ramp of the bridge. There is a figure at the other end of the passageway. You stop, trying to determine what it is, if it’s even really there. You can’t decide if it’s just a shadow or if someone, or something, is standing there. You try to blink, to squint, to focus your eyes on the shape. It might be a human, it might not be a human, you can’t tell, and your eyes hurt from the effort.
It isn’t moving, until it is. You step back until your back hits the railing. Whatever it is, it is coming towards you. Not quickly, there would definitely be enough time to run away if only your body would do what your mind is thinking. You try to tell yourself that it’s just a shadow, that it’s just a trick of the light from the passing cars underneath the bridge, even if you can’t hear any cars passing by. It passes under one of the lights and still, you can’t recognise what it is. Your head starts to hurt trying to think about it. You can’t stop blinking, can’t keep your eyes open. You know you stopped breathing a while ago so you take in a deep breath, trying to restart the automatic system, but now the only difference is that your lungs are full of air instead of painfully empty. Your chest starts to hurt, your throat starts to hurt. It is coming closer.
The wind picks up around you, whispering your name, but the image in front of you, the shape, the shadow, whatever it is, isn’t moving its lips. There doesn’t even seem to be a face for you to recognise, or so you think. Your brain is trying to wrap itself around what you’re seeing, to comprehend it, but every time you might get close to understanding this form, your mind restarts the process. Your knees buckle under you and drag you out of your trance. You close your eyes as you fall down, opening them only when you hit the ground.
The bridge in front of you is empty. You turn your head to look down the ramp but it is empty as well. You turn to look behind you, to your right, above you, but there is nothing there. You settle down, breathing in, mouth open, and try to tell yourself that your mind is just playing tricks on you. You haven’t been sleeping well lately, you can’t trust your senses right now.
You rub a hand over your face and pull yourself up. You look out over the bridge, unsure what to do next. You don’t want to go home, you don’t want to cross the bridge, and it’s too late to go to a friend’s place, so you turn around and walk back down the ramp. You just need to shake off the feeling. You try to convince yourself that there isn’t anything weird going on, you are just seeing things because you are tired, just hearing things because your brain needs rest. Yes, that must be it, there is no other logical explanation for it. Coming outside was a silly idea, you should have just stayed in bed. Tried some of the breathing exercises for a bit longer, maybe finally attempted to do one of those auto-hypnosis exercises you read about. Put on some white noise or relaxing music, something that can lull you to sleep, that can drown out the voices. Or maybe listen to a podcast until you drift off. You just need to distract your mind until it’s empty enough for sleep. It really shouldn’t be that difficult.
Something shouts your name in your ear and you whip around to stare into the darkness, into nothingness, into an endless abyss.
You wake up, eyes wide open, heart pounding, in your bedroom. The sunlight is radiating through the room from behind your curtains and you can hear birds chirping in the trees outside your window. Your head is pounding, the light of the sun hurting your eyes, the murmurs of the birds and people living their lives around you making you nauseous. You turn around in your bed, facing the wall, and drag the hood of your hoodie over your eyes. You sweat from the heat underneath your covers; you shiver from the freezing cold running through your veins.
You dare not try to fall asleep for fear of hearing your own name.