Dreamwalker

I've always had the problem, even as a small child. But now, as I neared my twenty fourth birthday, it kept getting worse.

Last night, I sleepwalked. I pretty much got one hour of actual rest, with a short, relatively normal dream about being late for school and not being able to find the building. My alarm clock interrupted me before I could find a way out of the train yard.

I rolled out of bed feeling dead tired. A shower snapped me out of it a little, but I still felt rough.

I went through my normal morning routine, drove off to work.

I've had some...attendance problems, so I make it a point to leave early, especially since I worked out in the middle of nowhere. You never know what the traffic will be like.

A row of bland gray cubes in the middle of the Kansas countryside. To give you an idea of the remoteness: I had a barn and a cattle pasture within walking distance.

I parked my sedan in the deserted parking lot, folded the seat down, tried to squeeze in a cat nap before my shift. A heavy rain beat a monotonous rhythm on the roof, doing its tapdance on my windows. From time to time, gusts of wind periodically slapped extra rain against the glass, whistling thin notes through the seals and cracks in the door frames. On my rearview, my name badge danced a slight jig to the music of the purring engine.

I closed my eyes a few minutes, sat up and checked the dashboard clock. Only eight minutes had passed, and I felt no more rested than before.

As I rolled back to a reclining position, I swore I saw a figure in a black suit crossing the pavement, but when I turned my head...nothing but a wide empty stretch of pavement leading to a solitary yellow car.

I decided the figure had been a product of my sleep problem, since I had only managed four hours of sleep, actually less with bathroom breaks in the middle. Couldn't remedy the problem too well in that uncomfortable car seat. I shut my eyes anyway.

An engine started up. Thinking it to be someone with a key to the building, I sat back up. Nobody. I guess they'd only driven past the lot.

I closed my eyes a few minutes, sat up and checked the dashboard clock. Only eight minutes had passed. No more rested than before.

A mini-dream about Mom and Dad being blue pig people. We celebrated Thanksgiving in a jungle.

An old blue skinned female creature dressed in skins stabbed me with a shard of bone, cackling as she wiggled it around until blood poured out of it like a small fountain.

I fought her away and tried to run, but she kept coming after me with the bone, laughing hysterically. My parents didn't try to stop her. Instead they just told me to stop being mean to grandma.

When you're sleep deprived, your mind plays tricks on you. That's probably why my dashboard appeared to be made out of leathery multicolored animal skin, and blue figures pointed spears through the openings that used to be car windows.

I blinked, and found myself sprawled in the back seat, staring at the dome.

Noting how everything seemed slanted, I sat up and found my vehicle parked halfway up a grass and concrete island. Thank God my unconscious mind knew how to put it in park!

I pulled the car back into a normal spot, and, against my better judgment, attempted to nap again. Not like I had anything else to do for twenty minutes.

I dreamed I had been imprisoned in a wooden cage. The bars had been thickly lashed together, too narrow for me to squeeze through. Outside, a bunch of blue pig people gathered together in ceremony. A shaman, recognized as such by his skull headdress, robes and bone necklace, danced around a fire, singing and waving a staff in front of me.

A whole hour of nothing but the guy chanting, dancing and a lot of worried tribespeople staring at me. Pretty crappy dream.

I awoke, shivering and damp, on the tar and gravel tiles, ice cold droplets pelting my naked skin.

No shirt. No pants. My white cotton briefs felt like a sodden washcloth.

I leaned over a wall.

I had somehow made it onto the roof of my office. In the distance, through the sheets of pounding water moisture, I spotted the familiar shape of other offices, the empty weed choked field beyond the parking lot, the freeway, and, in the far distance, the rolling hillsides with the dilapidated old barn.

How did I get up here? I thought. And how would I get down?

Not only that, how would I get down without getting fired or arrested?

Then I remembered the ladder.

Inside, near the entrance of our warehouse-like call center, a white metal ladder led into the ceiling. I always heard it went to the roof, but I never had an excuse to go up there.

Problem: The padlock on its lid.

Since jumping would be painful, I decided to try the ladder anyway.

A few feet from an air conditioner unit, I found the ladder rungs, climbing down.

As expected, I encountered a lid, but for some strange reason it came open when I pulled on the handle, and I could enter my office's dry interior.

In my underwear.

I figured I would set off an alarm, maybe end up on some TV show about funny burglaries caught on tape.

Me, sleepwalking again, my unconscious body playing Indians in the buff.

I don't know how I got back out of the building without setting off an alarm, but somehow I blacked out and ended up in my car. I would have chalked it all up to a crazy dream, but I still sat in sopping wet underwear, and I had scratches on my body, with something like brick dust under my fingernails.

No towels, because you don't normally plan for things like this to happen. I had no choice but to make my clothes soggy by putting them back on. My car heater could only do so much.

At least I had my clothes. Sometimes I'd wake up and have a walk before I found where they'd been `misplaced.'

I napped for a moment.

5:42. My shift starts at 6. To my sleep deprived eyes, even the building seemed to be the wrong color.

I sat up, assessing the night's damage in the mirror. Hair plastered to my head, bloodshot eyes surrounded by freckled bags, waterlogged clothes. Yeah, I'm ready for work, I thought.

I slung my ID badge over my toothpaste splattered polo.

The rain wouldn't make me look any worse. I locked up, marching into the storm.

No lightning. The sky above the gray cinder block of an office resembled a Hollywood matte painting, unnaturally bright and colorful in contrast to its shadowy surroundings.

I marched to the entrance, swiping my name badge across the security scanner.

I pulled the door handle, but it didn't open. With my shirt a damp rag and my hair matted down over my eyes, I scanned my badge and tried it again.

It seemed the manager hadn't arrived to unlock the building yet...or had forgotten to do so.

I gave the door another tug, frowned at the downpour blowing through the parking lot.

I got back in my car, waited about ten minutes, tried the door again. The sensor light failed to turn green.

A familiar rusty gray pickup sped past, parking a few spaces down from me.

The lights on the truck went dark. A man with white hair and a button down shirt stepped out, marching up to the door. Harry. Not the manager.

"Won't open?" he yelled.

I shrugged, peering in the nearby windows.

Nobody occupied the visible desks, and venetian blinds and cubicles hid the other areas.

I pressed my face against the glass for a few more minutes, but didn't see anyone. Well, for a moment I thought I did, but no, just me going crackers.

Harry knocked on the glass. "Hello!"

A fat bearded figure in a Star Trek shirt stepped out of the bathroom. Tom the IT guy/call control monitor.

Tom sometimes opens the door for us. Sometimes. I watched him anxiously as he waddled down a row of desks, oblivious to my presence as usual.

We knocked, but he ignored us.

A sudden flash of lightning illuminated the ground in front of me, revealing a bloody rabbit carcass in the grass.

It had been half eaten...and the teeth marks looked disturbingly...human.

I suddenly remembered the bloodstains on my car seats.

I'd just eaten a wild rabbit...raw.