Sleepwalkers

I am incredibly uncomfortable.

I don’t know why I thought today of all days was the one to bring my gym bag as well as my backpack to class, especially knowing it was going to rain. I stumbled into the classroom, late as usual, and didn’t look a single person in the eye. Furthest row to the left, six seats back. I set down my backpack, gym bag, overcoat, sweatshirt, gloves, hat, and scarf on the desk behind me — no one ever sat there. Not sure if it’s because of me, or because it’s such an isolated part of the room, and I don’t really care to know either.

“Wie geht’s?”

I looked up — my teacher was standing near my desk, and I finally took a moment to look around. Everyone else had their textbook out, working quietly on a writing prompt, and I had only just sat down. I mumbled a humble “nichts, bin gut” and quickly dug into my backpack for the textbook.

Before I could open my mouth to ask, my teacher answered my question. ‘Drei und zwanzig’. I nod, just barely thanking her loud enough for her to catch it, and flip to page 23. Just as I get to that page, my finger slides down the fibers of the sheet and slits right down the middle. I gasp, but it doesn’t hurt. A paper cut that didn’t hurt. Bizarre. Not really, I guess. Nerve endings only go so far, right?

“Warum bist du… late again?” I hear from next to me. Warren is whispering at me. Warren is the only person who will actually speak to me in this class, and I’m grateful for it — but my incessant need to look cool will never let me admit that to him. I shrugged, and he laughed at me. “By the way… St. Patrick’s Day,” he said. I looked down, and sighed.

Shit.

He reached over, grabbed my arm, and pinched.

It’s cold. Cold enough that I can see my own breath. I frantically turn a couple circles, looking for any of the belongings I had come with. When did I even start standing up? Nothing. What I wouldn’t give for those gloves and scarf right now, let alone the sweater and coat.

What really ought to have been my main focus right now, though, just about slapped me silly with reality. Or rather — and that’s just it — the lack thereof. I wasn’t in the classroom any longer. In fact, I wasn’t even sure I was in San Francisco any longer. None of my surroundings made any sense. I had the sensation of being in a forest, or some kind of deep nature setting, but I couldn’t distinguish any trees around me. It wasn’t for a lack of lighting — though it were dim, it wasn’t dark enough for me to be blind to my surroundings. It was more peculiar than that — it was as if I were in the background of an oil painting, where the trees were too small to be defined as anything more than smudges on a canvas.

Shivers ran down my spine and I knew I wasn’t alone. I turned a few paces again — maybe a full circle? Everything blended together, I couldn’t tell my left from my right. Fingers encircled my wrist, and suddenly all of the smudges were being pulled violently to the right. Or rather, I was being pulled to the left.

I looked down to observe my captor, only to realize I was at eye level with a young girl. Am I dreaming of Alice in Wonderland? When the tree-smudges finally stopped moving, we were in total darkness. I think. I couldn’t tell, because everything around us was black as could be, but the girl herself was so brightly lit.

“Alara,” she said, as if answering the question I had not yet thought — who is she? Before that thought could register was when I saw the first one. The first sleepwalker. And at that moment, I was running. Or at least, trying to. The sleepwalker appeared to be getting smaller, but the black around me was motionless — for obvious reasons. All the same, Alara had not moved a single inch, as if we were both standing still in the same room. She gave me the most peculiar look.

“Where are you going? You just got back, after all this time,” she said, crossing her arms. Something about her face looked so familiar. I shook my head.

“What do you mean? I’ve never seen you before,” I said. Because that was the obvious thing to ask the only person who appears to know what’s going on in a place where those things are walking around rampant. Her eyes widened.

“How long were you in there for? I know it was a few days, but good grief Sama, you’d think you’d lived…” she started, and then stopped mid-sentence as if she had realized something.

“Excuse my language, but what the fuck are you talking about?”

“Here.”

Her fingers encircled my wrist once more, and again I had the sensation of moving — but I wasn’t even moving my feet. Suddenly, I was surrounded by hundreds, maybe thousands of them. My heart was pounding in my chest, reminiscent of the kind of fear one should have at seeing something like that. Adrenaline pulsed through my veins and suddenly, I could see them. They were like people. Sort of.

Very blurry people.

She pulled me closer to the nearest one — a short one — and guided my hand towards its face. I pulled away before I could touch it.

“What the hell are you- what is- what the fuck?” I asked, holding my hand to my chest. She sighed.

“You really were in there for a whole lifetime, weren’t you?”

I closed my eyes. This makes no sense. None of this makes sense. I’m dreaming. This is a nightmare. I reached down to my leg, pressed my fingers against my flesh, and pinched. Immediately, I heard a giggle. I opened my eyes — nothing had changed.

“You can’t come out of a dream if you’re not in one, you goof,” she said, in a sing-song voice, “now touch the damn girl.”

How could she even tell it was a girl? These creatures were so blurred, there’s no way — I finally looked back at the ‘creature’ to see a toddler, eyes closed, slightly rocking back and forth as if sleeping standing up.

“I just…?” I said, reaching my hand out to the toddler’s face. Alara nodded. My fingers made contact with the tiny girl’s temples.

“Meems, let’s go!” cried out Avery. I opened my eyes. Everything had changed again. But something in my chest had lifted — I felt elated. A feeling you can only really truly feel as a toddler exploring the word for the first time. A boy, whom I somehow knew as Avery, was holding out his hand. I had butterflies in my stomach — a childhood crush? He took my hand, and we walked down the steps of his basement.

“Remember, we can’t tell anybody,” he said, and he led me around the banister and to a padlocked door under the staircase. He tugged at it, and it sprung open. “It’s been broken for weeks, but no one noticed.”

The door swung open, and there was a box laying amongst a bunch of bags of old clothing and winter wear. Avery knelt down and pulled the box toward him — suddenly, I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. The elated feeling was completely gone, and I somehow knew what was going to happen next — as if this were a dream of something that had happened before…

“No,” I said, urging Avery to put it back. He ignored me, didn’t even acknowledge my words. I had no control over this. He pulled the lid from the box and exposed a rifle. “Cool,” I could hear myself say, and yet my brain was screaming ‘run’.

“Right? My daddy never keeps it loaded so I like to pretend I’m him at the range, or like I’m one of those actors in those movies my mommy doesn’t know he lets me watch,” Avery said, and lifted the gun out of the box. I remember this. I know where this is going. I don’t want to. I can’t watch this. He held the gun out towards me, and I took the cold handle into my hand.

“No!” I managed, finally able to take control of my body, and I reached down to pinch my thigh.

All at once, I was wrenched right back to the dark place. Alara stood there, eyebrows raised.

“Sorry about that. I forgot this one killed her friend, she has nightmares about it pretty often. That’s my bad,” Alara said, completely unfazed.

“My bad?” I asked, “My bad?! I almost shot a little boy and that’s all you have to say?”

“You didn’t shoot him. That boy is already dead. Meems shot him. I think… two months ago? It’s hard to judge time when dreams move so quickly,” Alara said, pacing but not moving in space. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and finally decided to take the plunge.

“What is this? Who are you?” I asked.

“Oh Sama. It’s not who am I, it’s who are we. We’re the others. We watch the sleepwalkers. Make sure they don’t get hurt, you know?”

I looked around. Suddenly, the silhouettes looked a little more sharpened. The hundreds, thousands — they were all asleep.

“I’m not. I’m human. I’m… Then how come I have all these memories? I was just in German class, and Warren…” I said, and suddenly I realized how quickly those memories were fading — as if waking up from a dream. My breath caught in my chest.

“You were in her dream. For a really long time, actually. You shouldn’t do that, you know that. They don’t like it when you take over for too long,” Sama said, and gestured towards a silhouette that was shaking violently.

“That’s… me?” I asked, stepping closer. She looked exactly like me.

“No, that’s the sleepwalker you touched days ago and didn’t leave until just a few moments ago,” she sighed. I could hear the lack of patience in her voice.

“Well, how do I get back? That was my life,” I said, reaching out to touch her. Alara grabbed my wrist, stopping me.

“You can’t go back. Don’t you realize? She has a mind of her own. When you step into their mind, you take over, but they’re still there. She’s shaking because she’s angry, frightened; as far as she knows, she was possessed. You were there when she was awake, you were only supposed to make sure she was safe when she was sleeping, Sama. You fucked up.”

“She’s scared?” I asked, pulling my hand away. I stared at my — her, rather — body. It kept shaking violently, thrashing to the right and left, occasionally disappearing from sight. Alara nodded.

“Just leave her alone.”

“But I have to go back.”

“No. You can’t go back. We never touch the same dreamer in the same cycle. You shouldn’t have been in her mind for as long as you did. I’m serious Sama, you fucked up.”

“So what, I’m just stuck here?” I yelled. Alara looked at me, dumbstruck.

“What the fuck do you mean stuck here? This is us. This is what we do. You have so many dreamscapes you can touch, just pick one and go,” she said, crossing her arms. “You just can’t go back to that one. Remember, you’re not her. She’s not you. You were just a passenger.”

This can’t be real. I’m fucking dreaming. I pinched myself again, harder than ever.

Nothing happened.