Daydreaming

What wakes him up is the pelting of icy snowflakes on the closed hopper window rushing through the halo of a lamp outside. He is awake but cannot open his eyes just yet. His body feels heavy as if he was being sucked in. He needs to rely on his nose to pinpoint his whereabouts. The last thing he remembers is tearing through the plastic wrapping of a rice bag pallet with a box cutter. The familiar smell of cardboard wafts over his nostrils and this prompts his eyes open.

           Shit. Not on the job. The doc said it could never happen with those pills. Did you take your pills? Did you take enough?

He has this condition .As a kid, he struggled through classes not to fall asleep. The monotonous drone of the teachers’ voices morphed into deep and mixed-up sounds. Eyelids fluttered. Irrepressible yawns. Poor test scores. Unforgiving teachers. A recipe for a dropout. And drop out he did, his mother working countless hours at the same store could but agree with the career counsellor. What used to be a summer job stacking shelves became his daily lot.

           The depot’s lights glares at him. He is in the limelight. He glints against his accusers opening one eye and the other.

 I need to get up.

           But sleep attacks come with cataplexy. He knows he won’t be able to move for the next five minutes. By and by, his muscles will let go and he will be able to go back to work.

            Did someone see me? If they had , they would have tried to wake me up.

 He needs this job. Badly. This is the only thing he’s done. He needs the money. He needs it for Amy and he needs Amy.

“Get a life Johnson” The prick’s words echo through his head.

“Am I boring you Johnson ?” Terrible time at Amy’s on Sunday, sand in his eyes, compulsive yawning , his head smashed into the peas. Amy and her mother around him, disinfecting the four cuts on his forehead from the treacherous fork in his plate.

“Still living with your mom, son?” Amy frowned at her dad while he drunkenly guffawed.

           He wrenches himself away from the bags of rice and manages to sit up. The depot is empty. He can hear the static of Dennis’ radio and the snow outside knocking against the window.

Who’s this guy anyway? Bright teeth? Who has teeth so white? Double-breasted suit to talk about the weather? Who gives a shit whether it will be sunny or rainy?

The night before, the weather bulletin as his mother and he were having leftovers. A guy in his thirties with a warm voice gesturing before a moving map. Spinning masses of air. Blue figures all over it. Thick white arrows blowing in from Canada. The blizzard of the century.

This guy gets paid to talk about the weather. What’s his talent? Standing in front of a green screen, quipping lame jokes , his paycheck what I make in a year.

He drowsily gets up and starts walking around slowly as the blood finally reaches every part of his body.

No one around. I made it.

He looks at the clock. It is 8.30 p.m. He should have left half an hour ago.

 Where is everyone? Tim and Jim from the night shift. A big shipment is supposed to come in tonight. Fake plastic Christmas trees and lights. Big period coming in. Got Amy a diary with a heart on it.

“ You need to man up , son. My Amy can’t live with a nobody” Amy was silent , flushed, looking down at her untouched peas as she was pressing his hand as hard as she could as if saying “It’s okay. Let him talk . We’ll leave. You and I. Greyhound bus to anywhere”. But the image of the couple eloping in the setting sun fails to materialize. “ Next month, I promise”. “ Can’t leave mother with the bastard” .

With no one around, he pulls on the dangling rope which opens the folding plastic door upward drawing the curtain on the supermarket. He is not supposed to be there. He belongs to the back, only venturing in this jealously-protected world when goods are missing. Boring background music, white lights bathing aisles , scattered and stray shopping carts. Checkout unmanned, no security guard at the door, snow shoulder-high against its panes.

Excessive dreaming once again.

Hypnopompic hallucinations. He must be in bed. He must be about to wake up and sleep is playing yet another trick on him. He had them as a kid. He has always had them. The bogeyman under the bed. Freddy scratching at the door. Amy with her suitcase , her hair in a headscarf with sunglasses waiting for him at the bus stop.

Between the meat counter and the bakery, he can hear something different than the music. A sound he has already heard somewhere but which he cannot recognize ,like a smell or music eliciting blurry memories. There, between the pasta and its matching tomato sauce stands a portable pram. He folds back the awning and a small ,not two-month-old baby is babbling at him , turning its big blue eyes in his direction not sure if it can see him.

Where’s your mommy little one?

He looks right and left. There is nobody in there. Not in the depot, not in the supermarket. Is it the blizzard? The piles of cans he has built up in the morning have been knocked over.

Have they all left? Was it panic? Was it a gunman? Was it me?

The baby starts up its cute noises again. It gives him a serious, intent look as if to ask him what is next?

 You could be my way out. We could wait out the blizzard together in here. Plenty of food to feed you. Plenty of food to feed me. Then, when the storm is out, I’ll take you to Amy. Show her what I did. Show him what I can do. I’ll be a better father than the one that gave in to panic and left you stranded in the middle of a supermarket aisle. Together, we deserve better.

But he can’t wait to tell Amy and so , he lifts up the pram with its handle. The door opens, snow spills in in a bank. He steps into the dark outside with howling winds and prickly flakes, already numbed by the cold and the faint feel of sleep.