Sleep

Sleep

Nolan Lucas opens his eyes and immediately starts looking around his bedroom. For the past 6 months this has become his normal morning routine. Most people might grab their phone and check their social media or sit up with their eyes still half closed cursing the start of a new day. Nolan no longer has any social media accounts. He had Facebook which he at one point did use pretty regularly. Grabbing his phone from his nightstand and checking to see if anything good was going down in the World of Facebook was how he started his days. But those days feel like a lifetime ago. In some ways it was a lifetime ago. Actually, it was a different life in all ways. Most parents who lose a child will tell you that their life has completely changed. And that was true. Nolan has had a number of counselling sessions dealing with the fact that his life has dramatically changed in a way no parent can ever imagine. But this was different.

Ceiling fan. Bedside table. Dresser. Closet door.. No changes. The big things rarely change. The one time a major object changed was the time he finally acknowledged that something was happening. It was easy to tell himself he was going crazy after the car accident that stole his five year old daughter from him two years ago. That type of trauma that would cause anyone to go crazy. Not to mention the lack of sleep since that time and no one would fault him for falling off the deep end. Then his wife leaving him 3 months later after the accident because in her words, “Its just too much.” 

Anyone in their right mind would lose their right mind. But it was his dresser that had always been under the bedroom window. One morning he woke up and it was no longer under the window that looked out onto his backyard. Where his daughter's Playskool princess castle still sat and as far as he was concerned always will. 

When the smaller objects would change you found a way to justify them. One morning he woke up and the purple walls that he painted because it was his wife’s favourite colour was suddenly a different shade. He remembered picking the darker purple although he had no choice in the colour he was at least given the responsibility to choose which shade his bedroom walls would become. The dark purple walls were now a light shade of purple.  A few weeks later as he was laying in his bed forcing himself to get up he noticed his ceiling fan looked different. “You never had a design on you,” he said out loud to his once plain white ceiling fan. 

But what it all meant? Not a whole lot as far as Nolan was concerned. What exactly did it matter anyway? But why it’s happening is something he could not get past. It's like having a popcorn kernel stuck between your teeth. It didn't change your day to day life in any meaningful way but you still could not help thinking about it. And even when you weren't thinking about it you’d still catch yourself trying to get at it with your tongue. Until you were finally forced to stop whatever you are doing and remove the annoyance any way possible. The dresser being against the opposite wall that one morning became Nolan’s popcorn kernel. He grabbed his phone from his bedside table and instead of browsing Facebook like he would in that past life, he found his way down a rabbit hole. The crazier the explanation got, the more it began to make sense. Well, maybe not make sense. It was all as far away from making sense as you could possibly get. As an adult you tend to think you know exactly how the world works. It's fun to think of magic and the paranormal being real as a kid. But as you get older you start to realize none of that is actually real. After four hours of reading about the same thing happening to other people, he came to the conclusion that when he would go to sleep, sometimes he would wake up in a different reality. How it happens no one really seems to know. The differences between realities are often so small that most people would not notice them and if you did you’d just convince yourself you're imagining things. 

Over the past six weeks Nolan woke up on three different occasions to minor changes. One morning he woke to a book he had never seen before sitting on his dresser. Two mornings later the book was gone. Then a week ago he went to bed wearing his favourite Metallica t-shirt and woke up wearing a Guns n’ Roses shirt. He wasn’t sure if he should consider the overnight wardrobe shift as a major change but ended up labelling it minor because it really made no difference in the grand scheme of life. And the more he thought about it, the more he realized even the moving dresser wasn’t that major. It was definitely interesting and the fact he was able to unwittingly slip into a new reality at random was something he never would’ve believed possible. But once he left his bedroom and continued on with his life nothing was all that different. Until two days ago. The last time he went to sleep. That was a major change.

The routine each morning was the same. Open eyes and look at the ceiling fan. Since he always slept on his back that was the first thing he would see. Then turn to his right and  look at his bedside table. Then make his way around the room with his eyes. On this morning he didn't even reach the first step with the eyes. This morning he didn’t need to use his eyes to see the change. This time he felt the difference. The thought of looking at the fan or checking the colour of his walls didn’t matter. Why those insignificant changes meant so much to him before he couldn’t say. When you sleep in the same bed with someone for years and then one day you start sleeping alone the emptiness becomes almost unbearable. Laying there motionless with his eyes still closed he reached out with his left arm that felt way too heavy. Feeling like his heart was about to explode out of his chest. His shaking, sweaty hand landed on a shoulder.

“Just five more minutes mom,” the unmistakable voice said. Nolan had heard his wife say this so many times over the years whenever he would wake her up. Still not wanting to open his eyes he told himself he had finally lost it. After all he had gone through the last couple of  years his mind had cracked and who could blame him? As he laid there, the sound of a door opened from down the hall. A sound he hadn’t heard in two years. A sound that he continued hearing for months after the accident. A sound that he missed every single morning he woke up alone is his bed. His eyes were still closed but he could feel the tears starting to fill them up.

Footsteps.

Tiny Footsteps.

Slowly coming down the hall towards his bedroom.

When you live alone you get used to the feeling of an empty house. Sensing someone laying beside him was unmistakable. So was the sense of someone standing at the end of his bed.

“Morning daddy.”

He didn't realize how tense his whole body had become until he heard his daughter's voice. He opened his eyes, releasing the ocean of tears he had contained in his tightly closed eyelids. Still holding onto his wife's bare shoulder, he saw his beautiful little girl smiling at him at the side of his bed. He knew at that moment that he could ever take the chance of going to sleep ever again and he was okay with that.