For In That Sleep

For In That Sleep

She fell, slipping through blue, dropping past dappled green and startling sparrows. The earth caught her softly, flung her back up and sucked her along in its wake. She was a satellite. Ashes. Dark hush, then chiming laughter, silver peals sparking like comets. She blinked at the light.

Dust drifted and stuck as the sun dropped honey on the walls. A man bent over a wide porcelain bowl; pink roses patterned the rim. She thought she knew him, the broad arc of his shoulder, the grace of his hands as he cupped them. Turning, he flicked his fingers out, scattering drops like diamonds that hit her chest and burned.

"It's time," he said, and laughed. His white shirt grazed chest and hip as he turned in front of the mirror, reached out and pulled a copper pin from her hair. She watched it tumble down, saw sunlight slanting across the floorboards. He padded out on bare feet. Shadows flickered across the window.

He returned, dust on his cheek and cobwebs in his hair. "Here," he said.

She sat up and walked a lush sweep of bottle green lawn that sloped to the glassy water. Towering cypress lined its border and shadows blurred the edges. Ahead, willows dragged their ragged skirts. She walked a lush sweep of lawn.

"Wake up," he said. "You've fallen asleep." He faced the window. Through it, dust approached. "Hurry now."

She sat up as he disappeared and the door knocked shut, then she rubbed her face with rough hands. She dressed and pulled back her hair, avoiding the mirror above the basin, its blurred edges. His laughter floated in the window, tangled with dust in the slant of sun.

A cramped corridor tilted before her, lurching abruptly into a stretched hallway. She crossed the hallway then stepped down stairs and into a cavernous warehouse. Weak light filtered through narrow windows high overhead; dust and grit coated rough walls and uneven floorboards. Signs everywhere that she couldn't read. Men in white shirts sat at long tables processing lines of somber people, stamping papers then slipping them into piles that waxed and waned like tides. The lines of people moved silently, shuffling on padded feet.

She blinked dust off her lashes as his hand slid into hers. "This way," he said, voice washing over her, clearing her vision. She followed him outside where pollen danced in the air like ashes. She focused on him as the wind touched the back of her hands, blew her hair into her face. She had to tell him. She shaded her eyes then turned away, filling his vision. Her blue skirt swept over the sand and she disappeared as he shaded his eyes and watched. The ocean roared up, and floating parallel to the shore came a great white ship full of dark men who shaded their eyes and watched. She searched in vain as the boat faded into the horizon. Something important. People passed by, greeting her by name, ignoring her cries. She caught a woman by the sleeve. Demanded. The woman screamed, splitting her face in half and her heart jumped and someone shook her shoulder gently, said her name. She fell.

"Wake up, sleepyhead. You'll be late." He turned off the alarm and brushed his lips across her forehead. Chuckled like church bells. She opened her eyes to sun glossing the mirror frame, footboard. He was gone. She tossed back the covers, scratched, padded into the shower.

Washed and dressed, she followed the stairs to a bright kitchen, tipped coffee into a green mug. There she kissed her child's sticky cheek, her husband's delicate neck and graceful lips, fished keys from a wooden bowl, maneuvering them around sunglasses and soft toys.

She walked a lush sweep of lawn to her dark sedan. Driving to work she heard the same song repeated on the radio. Traffic washed past her; high rise windows stared like a thousand flat gray eyes.

She strode through a narrow corridor hunting a signature, stopped at a forbidding door. She knocked softly. Inside someone called her name. The door opened on a thin stretched room, a heavy oak desk squatting at the end like an optical illusion. She approached the desk, murmured to the man in white, proffered paper. The man stamped it and scratched his signature, shuffled it with others into a tidy stack and handed it back, voice waxing and waning like tides.

In the corridor people passed by; some calling her name. Sometimes she answered, but mostly she sat at her desk in the late afternoon. Sun tipped the blinds, and something stirred inside her, fluttered down her spine. She lifted her head. The walls blurred, shifted, and she remembered pink roses on white porcelain, verdant lawn, heard the rhythmic beat of waves against the shore. She blinked. Reaching out, she touched desk, phone, wall––reassuring, solid.

She held the wheel tightly on the drive home. Bridges loomed up in the evening drizzle, disorienting her, and she sensed she could drive into the sky at their apex if she could only want it hard enough. The red glare of brake lights flared up. She slowed, stopped. Anonymous buildings lined the highway; everything was gray and vague, soft at the edges. Flashing lights, the white and red bulk of an ambulance stopped ahead. She crept past, watched in her rearview mirror as paramedics held paddles to a body. The paramedics waited, then put the paddles away. Traffic opened up and a horn blared, startling her.

The TV flickered; the windows held nothing, became walls, became doorways. She draped herself along the couch, feet up. Murmurs drifted down the hallway, soft coos and husky melody point and counterpoint like tides. Flat bright images flashed and disappeared. She closed her eyes.

"Wake up," he softly whispered, brushing her arm with slim fingers. "Come to bed."

She sank into cool sheets, grateful for him, his warmth. She smiled up at him as they moved, fused. She searched. Delicious waves broke against the shore.

Something stirred and woke her. Her arm was numb, a lead anchor dragging after her when she rolled. Tried to roll. She closed her eyes as needles of pain slid through and her breathing dragged, shallow, a rhythmic roaring in her head.

She fell like a cliff diver, graceful, fluid, through fields of diamond, endless oceans. She fell and everything rushed past her. At the bottom, she opened her eyes on brightness, saw.