My bed is my sanctuary: my respite for retreat, the permanent and reliable stasis of every night to recharge and mull over the day’s happenings. Swaddled by the warmth of blankets and the wispy touch of satin-tinged sheets, there is nothing like a good night’s sleep full of pleasantries and sweet dreams. It is a sacred thing, one vastly underappreciated.
How I long for that experience to return.
For quite some time now, my subconscious enjoys playing a pernicious game, toying with and tormenting me in the late hours. It took sixteen years for the dam, constructed of tainted memories, to fracture. Now, it shamelessly disembogues its virulent innards all over the unknowing figments of my past selves.
Where is the agency of being able to stop such mercilessness? Because I am not a willing participant. My mind forces me to remember through the hazy gossamers of fading surety; the ones tangled around years of memories fighting for relevancy. Does the surrounding furniture in my room — such imposing, towering objects that live to be eternally silent — laugh at the ludicrousness of this daily occurrence? Do they mock me, the only other ones who truly have been privy to my plight?
I am left to wonder, paralyzed in the place I should never be. Yet there is no mistaking the phantom touches that prick my skin, tracing every inch of the gooseflesh that arises; mimicking and taunting simply because they can.
A familiar scene plays among the blank ceiling above me, one of the canvasses for projection — only now, the camera’s lens has been swapped for something a bit more sinister, more depraved. Curiosity entangles itself around it like a snake, perhaps perched above that very dresser that I swore chuckled unprompted. In a bellowing voice, it asked me: May I pique your curiosity? Aren’t you interested in remembering? Since you’ve seemed to have forgotten for so long.
Ah, you remember now, don’t you?
A crude attempt to force my body into a shutdown ensues, snapping my eyes shut. Go to sleep. Just go to sleep, I tell myself. But if I do, I would find myself no longer sitting amongst the audience; rather, I am the actress, frolicking about my room of the past with wide-eyed innocence.
In a frantic gesture of appeasement, I search about for the button to rewind or stop — but none appear. Instead, there is only a fleeting pause, the timer ticking in the upper corner of my phone as the seconds pass. Distract, distract, distract, I repeat, the mantra ingrained in me. But the reprieve is always temporary, no matter what physical manifestation I do to prevent it from returning. Because even if it gets forced down to my toes, the remnants will soon rise. They will clamor their way up my legs, snaking in predation as they get closer and closer to their goal. They will swirl about my stomach, clambering on the organ to make it do flips for their amusement. They will gnaw at my fingers, the ones desperately trying to defend themselves, until only a set of dusty bones remains.
It’s alright. There’s nothing to be worried about.
Who pressed the play button?
I wish to reply, to say anything, but my mouth has the consistency of cotton. To unhinge a jaw of metal is near impossible. Instead, I find myself zoning out as the room dwindles around me; my consciousness wavering high above my body like I’m no longer here — just empty.
The voices that echo around me from that lapsed time hum distorted and inhuman, as though the frequency of sound doesn’t exist. Certain phrases slice through the air as they flash around me, marring my skin with each grating cut.
A pithy command pulses through the noise, the voice clear and absolute:
Come here.
From beyond, the realization overtakes me, only for a thick fog to encompass it. The details are smudged, dappled out as though too much water was poured on the paint creating it. The motions flail about, stunted and choppy and hanging onto a blazing moment that wouldn’t understand its own grandeur. My senses become pulverized to an odd torpor, the remaining feeling so visceral I want nothing more for it to stop. Every word, every movement, every feeling is a hot iron branding me to remember.
Soon, a blank face addresses the solitary audience, despite the knowledge of its true appearance. Sometimes, the sentences are halved, where the actions scream louder. The sound waves oscillate as they crest above the curves. Mumbling, then coherent. Muted, then roaring.
I’m not going to hurt you. You can trust me. It’s okay. I promise.
The movie continues, despite the surrounding acts having been destroyed through time. It loops incessantly; the beginning, middle, and end replaying above the score of a sad threnody. No matter how many times I take my seat and beg and scream at the actress to do something different — to walk away, to leave, to run, to hide — she never listens. She is unable. The string tethering her to the scene was not crafted by her own hands.
In a microcosm built of its own destruction, the ending is always the same.
It is only when I become so fatigued from fighting these smothering thoughts that I can drift into a void of pure darkness, a solar system away. I know that this bed did not ask to be a vehicle of time travel, nor to be a theater playing a film repeating in perpetuity. But I have learned that my mind is a fickle thing, often cloaking truth within the relived pain.
But is it such a greedy thought to wish for a different ending?
