Sleepwalking Past Hope

He woke up on the freeway. Chilled, gritty concrete trembled against his hands, and it took him a few moments to realise that it was him shaking with cold. He looked down to see his toes were clawed in silver sand, his knees crouched and locked. He looked up: broken strobing lights of traffic swept by. He blinked.

The wind sped by his ears, and he whimpered and ducked his head. The panicked adrenalin in his system made him shake. Not home, not home. Should be home. His hands ran like pale spiders over the concrete barrier he crouched against, searching as if the answer could be written in the Braille of his surroundings. His knees screamed with a protest against their position, but he felt too scared to stand. What had he done?

The tide of panic peaked, but his heartbeat reminded him to breathe. Breathing, concentrating on it; an out. His nails skittered across the man-made rocks as he clenched his fists, teeth grinding together. In. Out. Shrink the world to what's safe. In. Out.

In the silent blackness behind his eyes, he could think. What. Had. Happened?

The fluttering pages of the Bible, before him on the kitchen floor. Silent as a photograph, and presented as his last memory. The kitchen light had been harsh on his eyes, and he had been squatting on the floor. He had wet himself, and the yellow streak of urine glowed a path along the linoleum of the kitchen floor. Tightness in his chest. Bile in his throat. Panic locking up muscles into uselessness…

A frustrated screech tore free from his belly as he opened his eyes again. His knees had given way and he had landed on a broken bottle. Sobbing, he perched on his hands to regain his footing. He felt the blood rush to his cramped muscles, painfully. The rush of heat drew him back from his panic, and he leaned against the rough concrete of the barrier to use the lights of cars to see his knee. The green glass of the broken bottle thrust malevolently from his trouser leg. It glinted like a living thing in the moving lights. He took three quick breaths, wrapped his hand around the bottle, and yanked.

His scream was muffled by traffic and clenched teeth. He braced himself against the barrier as the world tilted, then looked down at his knee. It was impossible to see through the black blood. He clenched his hand over it, leaned back, and rested.

There was a strange taste in his mouth; bitter. Metallic. It triggered something. Like he had licked metal. Why would he do that?

He opened his eyes and looked around. There were acres of black tar in front of him, streaked now and then with speeding cars. The vehicles must have been late travellers – there were so few. And, up beyond that –

A pinch of instinct had him ducking his head again and curling into a ball. Houses were dangerous.

The lights in his kitchen had been flickering. He remembered getting up to look and standing. The window – suddenly he couldn't see out of it; lights dimmed and the room swam in its own walls. The cupboards chattered at him, and he screamed back – hard, so hard he couldn't scream any more –

The next thing he remembered was waking up on the linoed floor.

The honks of traffic pierced his ear and melted through his thoughts. Forgetting his knee, he shifted to look behind him. The knee gave out with a crunch, one that even his panicked mind recognised and cringed to hear. He took his hand away from the knee and used it to prop himself against the wall with his good leg.

So it was that. Someone was waiting in the brightness of a kitchen in his head and he was not going to dive into suburbia.

- He had been watching people, the way they reacted to others. Not just others but Others, the dark ones that They tried not to see, not to smell on the trams and byways. At first, he just couldn't figure it out – Other men would talk and help but people washed them out of their heads and ignored them utterly. They didn't see Others. Judgment.

The day had come when he had fallen. Into the sea. He couldn't get out of it. He had looked up and had seen light-filled gardens but they were no longer for him. Lilting voices talked but not for his ears.

It took a while, but he had got angry. It seemed so unfair. They had judged him into Otherness; They, who had the power to see and not see. He. It had been so long. He just wanted to find cool water and sink into it. Silence.

The trouble was. He had.

The lounge-room was easy enough to muffle: the curtains were thick and the hum of electricity was easy to shut off. He could lie there for days and absorb the silence, sweet and soothing.

They had.

Then.

his/   thoughts    /kept/   blanking/               out

He looked down. His knee was crusty now, just in that painful sticky stage. He watched from a distance as his fingers played with the wound, tapping at the congealing fluids. Shouldn't it be stickier than that?

He blinked, and his eyelashes kept gluing together. He thought his eyes must have been closed for a long time.

Sleepiness invaded the back of his mind. Carefully, he cleared the space beneath him, gently placing the pieces of broken glass and rubbish into a neat stack before sliding slowly down the barrier. He needed rest. He needed to think. He closed his eyes.

He remembered listening to people in cafes. The silence in his flat would be a mistake – he knew that now. Cafes had been a mistake as well. They were where he discovered he hated people. Their casual cruelty annoyed him. He listened to the chatter of teenaged nouveaus thrilling in their mastery over the world in their rich little shoes. He hated them. When he was there, faces looked ugly to him. He could pick out the features but couldn't see the soul attachments any more; walking past him came a collection of noses, eyes and teeth in gaping mouths. The mouths were what scared him – what was to stop them from gaping open further and consuming him, sending him into their holes of spinning blackness? The world was bleak and he had lost the flavour of it.

Retreat.

In the silence, he could hear things. He didn't have protection against his own thoughts. They felt like little moths battering against his closed eyes as he slept and he didn't like them.

His eyes slammed open as he remembered, finally. His mind became awash with images, memories running back like hungry sea puppies. The flat. He had tried, but the silence had only given him time to think. That noise was almost worse. He had taken the pills to make it go away, but it was too late. His thoughts ran through the house, ripping open the walls andhiseyes...

He had hyperventilated. He hated that. The kitchen had scampered around him and made him dizzy. The floor stood up and walked away. How could he cope without its support?

After that time, he had made a break for it, run until his feet pattered over gravel-covered tarmac and his knees hit concrete. At that point his mind must have ordered him to get some rest while it took a scout around. Captain!

For the first time, he opened up his ears and listened. The steady purr of traffic, growing now with the light, hummed a carbon monoxide lullaby. His ears filled with the static hum and the bitter taste of the world went away. The joyful air lifted him up and he was standing, arms spread to the sky as as he welcomed the traffic noise into his skin. The air tasted sweetsmoky and he turned around, placing his hands on the cool concrete, the beautiful traffic hum giving him a friendly boost so that he could lie along the barrier ridge, stretched out and wrapped in comfort. The diesel engine smoke became a gentle blanket and loving nurse for him and he suckled greedily from what it offered. Renewed, sustained, calmed and rearranged he opened his eyes and looked up into the gentle sky.

She was looking back, and smiled.