Nocturne

“Uuuunnnghhhh,” Tabitha groaned, driving the heels of her palms into her eyes and rubbing hard to try and force herself to wake up.

Her legs and arms ached, but yesterday had been a really long day with back-to-back work and then school. She stretched up, surging her hands towards the ceiling to try and get some blood flow through her body, and caught sight of her hands. She made a sound of disgust, a disapproving croak pushing its way from the back of her throat as she took a closer look. She had definitely showered last night before she knocked out from exhaustion, but there was brown sludge caked under her nails, like she had been gardening or playing a sport in the mud. The coffee grounds at her work didn’t look like this.

Tabitha crossed the few steps it took to move from the bed to the kitchen sink in her studio apartment to scrub the gunk out from under her nails, stepping over piles of clothes and poetry and writing books from her college classes. She passed the stove and microwave, and saw the time: 10:37 A.M.

“CRAP!” she shouted, racing back over to the bedroom area of the studio and grabbing the black pants she had worn yesterday, hopping into them and moving to whip on a fresh black shirt, ripping apart a pair of socks that were bundled (these have to be clean, right?), stumbling over to her black shoes by the door. She grabbed her keys and pulled on her purse, pausing only to make sure the little bowls of food and water outside of her door had enough for the neighborhood stray cats, and sprinted, making it to her car in record time. She was still going to be late for work, but only by a few minutes. Hopefully, no one would notice.

Tabitha turned the keys in the engine and put the car in reverse to back out of her spot, out of breath. She made eye contact with herself in the rear view mirror and winced. Nope. That was a mistake. She looked exactly how she felt, with wild eyes, dried spit trailing down the corner of her mouth to her chin, and a messy bedhead. On the way to work, she scrubbed the sleep spit off and found a scrunchie on the passenger seat, pulling her hair into a tight ponytail to try to hide the tangles.

She parked and ran through the parking lot before coming to a halt in front of the door to The Black Bean, the coffee shop she had worked at for the past couple of years. She strolled in, avoiding eye contact with the customers and made it safely to the back computer so she could clock in.

“Seven minutes late, oooooh,” Her favorite coworker and friend, Jules, sang mockingly from the register. He was leaning against the counter, wiggling his eyebrows. “What, you didn’t want to spend your Saturday here?”

“I know,” Tabitha sighed. “I literally just woke up. I have no idea how I slept through my alarm.”

She hastily went to the sink and washed her hands, finally getting the grime off of them.

“It’s fine, Pete’s not here,” Jules said.

Tabitha sighed in relief. Her boss was cool, but even he wouldn’t be happy to see her come in late.

“Thank god,” Tabitha replied. “Anything I can help with?”

“Just the front area, I haven’t gotten out there to wipe down tables yet.”

“You got it,” Tabitha found a towel and cleaner and made her way to the front of the cafe, pushing in chairs and straightening up the display of branded mugs as she went. The crowd was the usual mix of Saturday morning regulars and a couple newer faces sitting and reading books or catching up with a friend.

“Hey Tabby,” one of the regulars called out. John was a friendly customer who liked to bring his laptop and spend his morning scrolling around the quiet bustling of the cafe.

“Hey, how are you?” Tabitha smiled back.

“Good, good. Did I see you going for a run last night at Willow Ridge Park? I was walking my dog at around 11 and I could have sworn you bolted right past us. I tried to say hi, but you were fast! Training for something?”

“Huh, no, that couldn't have been me. I’m not much of a runner, and I have a class at night that goes until nine. I was asleep by then.”

“Ah, okay. It must have been someone else,” John said, but he looked at Tabitha like he didn’t believe her. He shrugged, the fleeting suspicion leaving his eyes. “How’s school? Any closer to becoming the next Emily Dickinson?”

“I wish,” Tabitha laughed. “I can’t seem to write anything well lately. Writer’s block,” she said, pointing at her head.

“Well, you’ll get there. I want to be one of the first to get your book when you do get published. Signed copy!”

“You got it, John,” Tabitha replied.

The next few hours were uneventful, spent brewing coffee and shaking teas. Tabitha and Jules caught up, making small talk to help the time pass. After the lunch rush, there was a duller period of time where they were only serving to-go orders. Tabitha leaned against the counter. Her shift was soon coming to an end. She put her hand in her pockets, feeling something crumpled up meet her fingertips.

She pulled out a piece of notebook paper and uncurled the page. It was her handwriting, but the poem was nothing like she had written before. When did I write this? She read the lines over and over. Did I write this? This is really good.

She pulled out her phone to search the lines and see if maybe she had just forgotten taking notes in class. Normally, she just screenshotted or saved pictures of any important text in her phone and pulled them up on her computer later. She went to the camera app and saw a series of recent photos saved that she didn’t remember taking. The photos were blurry, taken in the dark with no flash. There was grass, a wall, what looked like the tiles on top of the roof of a house… Nothing that made any sense to Tabitha. She checked the timestamps and locations on the pictures. 3:07 a.m.? What the hell? One of the photos of the grass was taken at Willow Tree Park, where John had thought he had seen her.

She looked up, shocked. It was time to clock out of work, and Jules was handing off to the next group of baristas who were coming in. She was going to ask him about this, since he was always listening to conspiracy podcasts and talking about supernatural things he’d read online. Maybe he could help.

“Jules,” she said in the parking lot, showing him her phone and pressing the paper into his hand. “I think I did something in my sleep last night. I think I wrote this, and I’m pretty sure I was outside.”

He reviewed the pictures. “Hey, this is great!” He said about the poem, nudging Tabitha with his elbow.

“I know,” Tabitha said, her voice high with panic. “I know it’s good, but I don’t know when I did it.”

“Ok, well maybe you were just tired so you don’t remember. It’s not a big deal, not like you killed someone or walked off a cliff. Sometimes I drive home and I forget that I ever even got in the car.”

“No, this is weird!” She urged him. “Something is wrong with me. I know I’ve been tired lately, but this isn’t just being tired. I’m doing things at night and I woke up tired today like I didn’t even get any sleep. How is that possible?”

“Hmmm, I hear you. Okay. I don’t know. But,” he paused, thinking. “What if you put some night cameras in your apartment? You can catch yourself sleepwalking and see what you’re doing.”

“That’s not a bad idea. I still don’t feel great, but I can try that. Thanks,” She nodded to herself, heading to her car before pausing and yelling out, “Wait, can you cover my shift tomorrow?”

“Fine, but you’ll owe me!” Jules called out after her.

Back at her apartment, Tabitha had set up night vision webcams that were made for people to spy on their babies. She only needed one inside of the apartment since it was so small, and one right on the door outside in case she left. She tested the cameras, making sure the motion detectors were functioning and checking that the sound worked. The one inside was recording her, and it felt weird to see herself on her phone screen, sitting in the middle of the room on the floor like a madwoman with the cardboard boxes strewn everywhere.

I’ll clean up tomorrow, she promised herself.

The outside camera was also working. There were a couple of stray cats who had started following her around ever since she fed one, so she left food and water out for them every day. When they went up to eat, she received an alert on her phone that motion had been detected and saw a recording of the cats basking in the sun and eating their meal.

She set the cameras to record before she went to bed, and hoped that it was just in her head.

The next day, Tabitha awoke and the first thing she felt was how much her leg muscles ached. Her calves, glutes, and quads all pulsed with a dull pain as she flexed her limbs in the bed. Then came the brain, turning on. She reached for her phone on the nightstand, and her fingers tapped the bare wooden surface. She looked over the bed and saw her phone on the floor, unplugged from the charger.

The lock screen of her phone was flooded with notifications from motion being detected on the cameras. She opened the app and tapped on the first recording, taken at 1:03 a.m. The camera’s night vision had thrown her apartment into greyscale, but she could make out her own figure sitting up in bed. She tilted her head to the left, then to the right, before standing and padding barefoot to her desk in the corner.

Tabitha watched herself pull out a notebook and begin writing. There was no light in the room, so there was no way she should be able to see what she was writing, but she scribbled quickly. Her posture was upright, and her hand moved fast, like she knew exactly what she was doing. The next few camera recordings were triggered by her quick hand movements, ripping the notebook paper out when she was done and moving on to the next page. This continued until 1:47, when she dropped the pen and stood. She walked to the door, avoiding the mess on the floor but not looking down, as if she had memorized where the piles of books and clothes were and didn’t want to disrupt them. Not like Tabitha normally walked around, tripping over the things she was too lazy to put away. She unlocked the door, opened it, and stepped outside.

The second camera picked her up in the hallway. Tabitha watched herself crouch down by the bowls of food left for the strays. She put her head close to the food, like she was smelling it. Not even just smelling… like she was sniffing at it. Suddenly, she tilted her head and looked directly at the camera, and for a moment, Tabitha thought she saw a red reflection in her eyes like a camera flash had gone off. It was gone quickly, as she turned her head backhand stood up straight. Tabitha watched herself walk out of the frame.

The final clip was her coming back home, at 3:11 a.m. It showed her climbing, climbing up the side of the building to get up to the hallway. Tabitha lived on the third floor, and the hallway was half indoor half outdoor, overlooking the apartment garden. Quickly, with her bare hands and toes, she watched herself scale up the ledge with freakish grace and enter the apartment. Then, she walked into the apartment and simply went to bed.

“Oh my god,” Tabitha whispered to herself. “What is happening to me?”

That night, she stayed up, sitting on her couch in front of the coffee table that doubled as her kitchen table. She kept all the lights on, turned on the television, and drank espresso until after midnight. She read the collection of poems that her sleep-self had left for her, and she was aghast to find that they were all better than the next. Each one was progressively more raw, in the best form of the style she had been honing for years. The nighttime version of herself was a better writer, and that was painful to admit. But it was still her, wasn’t it? Even if she couldn’t remember, and even if she couldn’t duplicate it now… it was still her.

She wanted to catch the change, or see if she could feel something. Maybe if I just don’t go to sleep, it’ll be fine. But she knew that wasn’t a solution. At some point, she would have to go to sleep, but she was scared of what would happen.

In spite of the light and the sounds from the television, she must had fallen asleep. She woke again to soreness, the lingering taste of coffee spoiled in her mouth. In front of her on the coffee table was a new page, left for her to find.

This time there was no poem, but a short message, written in her handwriting:

Give me the night. You can have the day.