When I Sleep
2004-12-20 - 5:02 p.m.

When I Sleep

By Constance Plumley

"When I sleep my dreams are crazy, I'm flying over fields...I don't think I sleep for more then twenty minutes..." Golden Palominos, Victim

There was stillness, she thought, there was silence, and then there was this--She felt her thoughts becoming more and more raw and basic as the hours passed by. Her body reduced to a map of nerve endings where the tracery was bloody and thin. And there was the pain of it-- The pain that always found her no matter where she hid. Day by day things changed. She moved through the small spaces as best she could her eyes just a little more red than the day before, her limbs just a little more alive with pain and heavy with anger--her brain clicking violently like a ticker tape with each new thought that jutted in and went out, individual phrases stabbing like lightning.

Indeed something was out of place in her head, in her heart in her life--but she did not fear it, not really. Absence was old and quite familiar to her, it was the thing that had made her heart grow cold. “Cold like the moon must feel”, she thought, (speaking to herself in simile yet again) as she sat perched on the edge of her building’s rooftop. She watched the stars glow and flicker, wanting to grab a fistful of them. She grabbed at her necklace instead, and ran her fingers over the beads, strangely at ease. This was the most peaceful moment she’d had all week and she wanted to make it last. Trying to drag out the time a little, she took a cigarette from the brass case in her jeans pocket, and fumbled around for a lighter. Not finding one, she muttered to herself, “shit” half heartedly, not able to muster up even minor annoyance. She threw the cigarette off the edge, and watched it hurtle down to the street.

So, there was the matter of her cold red heart, and the matter of her seething head. Neither of which gave her a moment’s peace or any new perspective at all. “If I could just shut my eyes for a moment, if I could just get a break, this might not be so difficult”, she mouthed to herself, quietly though no one could hear, as she fit her key into the lock of the access door. Pausing in the stairwell, she suddenly remembers how it had happened. One evening, when, unable to shut her eyes, insomnia entered her life slowly, loudly, heavily-- And now it bore down on her, pressed itself against her ribcage, tightened itself around her waist. And this prevented whatever it was (breath, blood, demons, songs) from escaping her too soon--that something that wanted out. The something that screamed at a pitch her head couldn’t register.

She sat alone in her bedroom thinking too hard and too fast again about what might have been once, what could've possibly stopped this avalanche from burying her dreams alive where they stood a gasp inside her. But she knew the truth. She knew nothing could have stopped this, that this was truly all her own doing. Because she couldn't behave, because she only went to therapy when she felt like it, because she liked coffee too much, because the sky was always a dead stopped gray on Tuesdays and hard to look at. And there the excuses ran out. And she had nothing again. So, Hayden sat feeling the cold that seeped in from outside, feeling the absence of something, feeling no real desire for anything.

Sleep, or bits of what she imagined might be sleep-- came to her in sharp electric stabs-each minute of reprieve was tinged with a bit of that other world that she carried. Chaos, stars, birds, threads, sticks--tumbling, falling through her head, each image falling on top of the next until the pile of dreams was so thick it breathed, glowed and was like a carpet her dreaming self could walk upon and shred like paper if her hands were knives.

These bits of sleep that were less than restful and certainly unsatisfying grew longer and deeper each time. And quickly the chasm between her rational mind and her irrational self deepened and filled with water--water that could drown a pulse beat and floats every kind of demon. The string of days passed her sighs punctuated only by silence. And she could feel herself breaking apart inside.

She began to look at solutions…
She began to crave bullets…
And a gun to shoot them out of …

“But that would be too easy wouldn't it?” Too simple, way too dramatic, even for you!' She hissed, taunting her own shadowy face in the bathroom mirror. “No, no. Death is not good for today--Saturn is in retrograde today, I checked my horoscope this afternoon-- I'd most likely just fuck it over--end up another sad, don't try this at home kids statistic--a ready face of woe to be plastered between the after school specials and commercials for tampons.”

She began to wish for perfect bedding...
She began to wish for a perfect bed frame...
To pile it all on-blankets, sheets, fluffy pillows...

"But that wouldn't matter" she uttered continuing her dialogue with herself while pacing from bathroom to kitchen to living room. "Every bed feels like stone today, has felt that way. So I guess I would like to go somewhere, somewhere is better than nowhere. And I am certainly nowhere here. So I'll go out there and I'll do things, be things, buy things. Maybe I’ll find someone who is selling sleep for a good price, someone who can cut my brain to the quick and leave only the proper nerve endings.”

She dug through piles of lace and velvet, the textures pleasing. She almost forgot her purpose fondling her silks like loose butterflies. Pinning them to her chest, she tested the look of them. She chose finally a pair of velour black pants tight in the hips loose everywhere else and blue lace top with satin underlay, the sleeves loose and threatening to unravel with age. And of course no matter what the outfit, she wore her boots—Black with a three-inch heel so she could look down upon people when walking, or imagine that she could crush them like ants without caring. No one cared for her anymore, and so sympathy for others seemed like a waste of energy, a drain on her ever-diminishing resources.

Hayden grabbed her purse-- checked it for cash and cards.

She latched the door, shaded her eyes and pointed her body’s long lithe arrow ahead, toward something--pushing, building velocity, determined. Hissing from beneath the fabric her hips whispered-persuasive and swinging they lead her to it-the thing she wanted. Her eyes heavily lidded and innocent focused and would plead guilty to any crime if asked.

Less then a block away from her apartment she paused. Testing the air for signs she came up with nothing but strode along mocking confidence as she always did. People were so stale and benign and easy to fool-too bad they happened to be useful at times-she supposed that was the saving grace of humanity-their ability and willingness to use and be used.

She'd go see an herbalist...
She'd go see a specialist...
She'd go see a healer...

She stepped heavily on the dead cement, something she could bruise without leaving a mark, sure now of her destination, and pleased with the prospect of a solution.

Her quick stride was broken only once, to buy a bouquet of flowers from the girl ducked under the awning who artfully tugged at her remaining sympathy with big green eyes and dirty fingernails. So, Hayden gave her only smile of the day away and pressed some bills into the girl’s little bird frail hand. As she walked she clutched the bouquet to her side, roses and baby’s breath tapping her hips as she bounced along the pavement like a black rubber ball.

The door to the tiny shop jammed itself into her clean gray line of vision. She noticed that it was propped open with an old copy of War and Peace, which she took for a locked box at first glance. It was a sign that practical people could be found here. People that would not waste their time or hers with nonsense--they would get to the point quickly--she hoped.

‘Take this and your dreams will be easy.’
They would say ‘Take this and you will rest fitfully.’
They would say ‘Take this and you will float away gently.’

She didn’t notice the man slip in easily behind her, a blank sheet of paper into a city story being rewritten every day. He himself was as small as the punctuation left out.

Threading through the she isles passed her fingers over jars of every shape, size and contour…she then would trace their strange shapes in the air, trying to get a sense of the One she needed--.the orchid amongst the weeds…she felt for the flowers at her side again…the motion feathery and frantic...searching for her anchor…her balance…how she craved balance…maybe here with the magics and powder dust she’d find it.

Pale flickering hands caught the attention of the shopkeeper…an ordinary compact woman with a steady gaze and slightly faltering step…the result of a bone disease carried with her from overseas…(packed in her suitcases tightly amongst the memories of ancestral foot binding and other cultural wreckage)…she made her way to the tall, intense, certainly American woman and waited for her to notice. She kept an eye on the man too…the man who though nondescript did not seem to fit-his presence unbalanced the air.

The man who was a broken puzzle piece who fit nowhere anymore had spent weeks deciding whether to do it, whether to go to her in the city. Finally now he was here and he had found her, the one he dreamed about, the one that he was never even sure existed until now. Even still, she was the one he knew better than anyone else in the world. He had found Hayden, and he was not going to go away. “I have a right to her-- she is my property, I feel her inside me every day”, he thought. “She knows she belongs to me, how could she not?” He scratched his chin and felt the stubble. He waited.

Hayden spun around and faced a tiny woman. She posed her question softly,

’What do you recommend to bring my sleep back? It has run too far away this time, I’m afraid”

They were heavy words whose fall from Hayden’s lips was pillowed with silence.

She tried again, checking herself before unloosing the usual torrent of verbal thorns and daggers- the blood bits of unspoken words pooled and waited playing at the corners of her mouth. She said simply then,

“I haven’t slept in days.”

The shopkeeper smirked before saying,

“Yes, I see that quite clearly.”

Hayden noticed she spoke her English with a slightly muddled British accent, indicative perhaps of a childhood in Hong Kong or Shanghai. No matter the source, she was quite taken with it, as she was will all sorts of syllabic enchantments, and wished the woman had more to say. She waited, watching the woman think. Blinking her eyes, she felt the ground shift slightly beneath her and soon found herself in a familiar frozen state.
It always happened this way, leaping upon her without warning, in the most common places.

The first time she had been only seven. Her mother had taken her to the park and after planting her daughter on a patch of grass, like an odd sort of human rose Mrs. Reese crossed the street to the bank without even a word of caution for Hayden. Alone now as she ever was, Hayden sought out the reliable company of a few ravens squabbling under a big oak tree. She approached slowly trying not to scare them; her eyes focused on the oil slick cluster and beaded raindrop eyes. In mid-step she froze completely. Every muscle and every nerve throbbed and stiffened, and as they did the world around her melted and fizzled, all the colors inverted, and what was left was a hideous, glowing mess of color that stung her eyes. After that Hayden stopped going to the park, in fact she stopped going anywhere she didn’t have to go. But the visions followed her everywhere, even to school. She began to have them more often and the world became so frightening and ugly that even the vague desire to do things deserted her. There seemed no reason for these lapses at all.

Time, though, provided the cures to her strange troubles, and she learned how to fight her visions, how to give in to them, how to run from them, and eventually, how to use them to see beyond the boundaries of sight. Hayden folded into herself slowly so as to stall the inevitable-Looked outward at the strangeness. There was something here, that was right in front of her that she should be noticing, but wasn’t. Her vision was asking her to pick something or someone out of the chaos.

All around her she could feel the vibrations of glass and the heaviness of wood. She listened to the red things scream while the purple things whispered. These sensations were all familiar, but they were wrong somehow, foreign. Everything about this tiny nook, where normally she would have felt safe, only made her feel more disconnected and wary. She tried to give no attention to the vague unease settling in her gut like a stone, tried to focus on the woman. Hayden balled her fists up tight and dug her nails into her skin to keep from fading.

The shopkeeper turned her back and selected three small bottles from a nearby shelf. The oddly shaped glass containers were marked in a precise phonetic Chinese. She handed the bottles to Hayden.

“Valerian Root, Vitamin C and Ginseng, a good combination for you. You will not sleep right away--but you will sleep soon. Shut the door on your way out, I close in one hour ”

“So much for herbs and accents.” Hayden almost laughed, walking carefully towards the door.

Once at the neatly carved archway, she removed the book carefully and set it inside. The door clanged shut behind her. Aidan slipped out from underneath the dim lights and floated off into the swirling remains of a long day--inconsequential but heavy like shadows always seem to be.

He hurried ahead of her then, sure of his anonymity in this big gaping mouth of a city. “One more stone to be broken down by the sharp incisors, determined canines--Soon I’ll be a pebble, a mere pebble!” he laughed. He knew his smallness would help him slip into Hayden’s life, into her home without her noticing. He’d be but a tiny ache in her shoe, until he wasn’t.

More than slightly crestfallen Hayden put down her bag of tricks and unlatched the door to her apartment. Sighing she fumbled through the dark, and turned on the stereo. Listening intently to the first track, feeling its’ deep chords unravel the music inside of her, feeling the beat vibrate in her fingers and toes, she danced falling into a trance state which was a kind of sleep. Bobbing her head and swaying like a candle flame, she opened her eyes to a shock of color. This was the second vision today; they were coming so quickly, almost without pause. She knew something was coming and she waited for it.

She listened deep inside
She felt the petals of the rose unravel a secret
She felt it wither then and die

All at one she knew. Frantically she looked for him--the man that wished to claim her bones, the one she’d glimpsed for a moment in the shop, but had turned away from. She felt him approach before she heard him, maybe she’d left the door unlocked on purpose so he could find her here in her living room swaying like a leaf and vulnerable

Spindly fingers tightened around her throat and in that single moment she lost all sense of where she was, the world flew from her, as a bright black raven--she was running to catch it again grabbing for the wings, - when something sharp inside her began to well up and stab at all the pent up whispers, making them louder and more insistent. And the dreamscape flooded to color all around her, and she knew.

This was the thief who was stealing her sleep.

And in her mind she caught the bird, she had the life inside the pulse beat and the wing- span and she was choking it, feeling it squirm and writhe beneath her heavy hands. Its’ tiny black eyes were fluttering.

And on the other side of Hayden’s dream, Aidan felt powerful. He felt as holy as he had been the day he took the first one, stole the first need. He felt this need like a drug, his only drug—her desperate need for something essential. She had that something inside her that blackness and sensitivity that made it that much sweeter. He would get it all out of her that sweetness and he would take it in to him, and become more perfect. Lost in thought, adrenaline pumping, he hadn’t actually looked at her face. Loosening his grip he spun her toward him, violet-faced and shaking. Her eyelids were fluttering like wings.

She felt the swollen heart squeeze, writhe, and make a fist in her palm--, fingers ghosting around the ventricles searching--, nails puncturing the thin flesh of the strong organ. She could feel the sleep in there blue and pulsing, electric and alive with a drone akin to a restless hive of bees--a comb full of bustle and honey where the queen was dreaming Hayden’s dreams…

Aidan felt her loosen then like a shadow-and panicked his heart quickening to counteract the muted life droning only inches away from his beaded, frenzied flesh. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, he knew. Something was just not right here, so he loosened his grip slightly to allow this wrong thing he had captured a chance to flee and try for its life because the exhaustion of it would make her weak and pretty and defenseless again like she was supposed to be. He looked away from her for a moment and noticed a black bird perched on the sill of the open kitchen window. He should try to close it, he knew, but he didn’t want to let Hayden go.

Sensing her chance, feeling the moment quicken, Hayden slipped out from underneath, heat propelling her forward, shaken hands stuttering a message in the darkness, feet stumbling and weakened. Aidan chased after, following the white flashes of flesh as they scrambled and scraped against the floor. He reached for her ankle as a child reaches for a kite tail and caught it--brought her down to the floor with a thud softer than he had expected--blood on the new kitchen floor tiles, a bruise flowering on her prone hip-gory domestic details shining all around her -- the stack of pots in the sink, the drawers all compulsively opened and shut and opened and shut-- and now just out of her reach-and in the periphery a red bird perched on the rough bough of the window sill. She kicked, a tiny baby again, new to the world and fighting its own terrible panic.

She snapped back into the scene--things popping back into place one at a time, first the walls, then the sink, and then the walls. She lay beneath him, like a pinned butterfly-and faded back to the darkness, where she flapped her wings, where no one could see. This was happening to her. This was real. And there was something she knew about him but couldn't remember. The dreams brought about by the initial blackout were fading, and she was loosing what power she had.
She could feel him coil around her like a snake, sweating cold and wet, eyes slit and focused on her porcelain skin where he had ripped open her blouse, his coarse hair sweeping over her eyelids, his cold hand over her warm mouth--as if she could scream now, as if she hadn't yet lost the capacity to form words in her animal fear. He should know that when you pin a butterfly it doesn't scream or cry, it just flutters in panic-- She lay prone and squirming, overpowered, laying with the snake knowing that somewhere she had the power to charm him away, but could not touch it. It was then that the Raven flew in from its perch on the windowsill, and began darting around the kitchen, bumping into walls and screeching over the two writhing bodies.
Aidan lifted his head to the see the bird fly at his face, frantically flapping its wings. He moved one heavy hand off Hayden, trying to swat the raven away but failing. Each swipe Aidan took only caused the creature to swoop lower until it was level with his right hand. He felt a sharp needle like pain in his hand then, and pulled it away from Hayden’s chest in one awkward jerk. He shook his bleeding hand furiously at the bird, which was making it’s way back out the window.
Hayden’s lower body was still pinned down by Aidan’s legs, but her upper body was free. She reached out grabbing his face and lowering it to hers. With her free hand she jammed her fingers into Aidan’s right eye, not flinching when she drew puss and blood. Aidan fell over on his side, as Hayden rushed to her feet, heart pounding, and limbs aching. Quickly, she made her way over to the counter where a slicing knife was drying in the dish drain. Aidan had risen to his feet, and was now trying to corner her, one hand over his injured eye. For a moment they engaged in a frenzied dance, moving left and right, Aidan trying desperately to back Hayden into a corner. But it was useless; Hayden moved to the left and circled around behind him, holding the knife to his back. Aidan went stiff as he felt the tip of the knife.
Hayden rose up on her toes, slipping one hand around his waist like a lover. She whispered in his ear “You have something that belongs to me, and I think you know what it is. I’ve felt you, you fucker; you’ve hurt me long before today. Give it back, and I’ll let you go—Keep it for yourself, and I’ll drive this knife into your spine. You’ll live but you’ll never walk again.”
Aidan sputtered and let out a few labored breaths. Impatient, Hayden pulled away and drove the tip of the knife into his back .She expected him to fall, but he staggered towards the door and had it opened before Hayden could close the distance. Breaking into a run down the stairway and into the lobby, Aidan reached behind him and pulled out the knife. He moaned in pain as he ran out into the street, trying to keep steady as he cut a path through the early evening traffic of Manhattan.
Hayden charged after him, shoving startled commuters out of her way, as she pushed forward. She didn’t have enough breath to shout the angry mantra whirring in her head; It’s-mine-give-it-back-it’s-mine-it’s-mine, her head throbbed with the noise of it, her run now slowing to a jog. Hayden’s vision blurred then and she dropped to her knees, holding her head. A man crouched down beside her, he was saying something but she couldn’t hear what it was. Putting her hands out beside her on the cement, she rose to her feet, and steadied herself. The man put a hand on her shoulder, asked if she was okay. She wasn’t okay. She knew she wouldn’t be okay until she found Aidan and got her sleep back—this hideous amplified noise in her head, her Technicolor visions, her constant pain would continue until it killed her.
A deep thunder had begun to roll in the distance as the darkening sky gave way to rain. Hayden felt the first droplets hit her cheeks as she broke into a run again. She’d lost him, he was surely gone now, a mile away at least, but she kept running if only out of pure rage. Ahead of her was a line of dimly lit windows, punctuated by the wooden door of the herbalist’s shop. As she moved closer, she saw that the door was glowing bright red. She pushed it open, and spotted Aidan at the back of the shop. For a moment her vision blurred again, and the room swayed beneath her feet. She snapped back to attention to see Aidan threading through the crowded isle beside her with the knife in his hand.
Shoving an old man into the shelf of tonics, she ran after Aidan and pinned him up against the storefront window with all of her weight. Aidan raised his arms above his head bringing the knife down above Hayden’s shoulder. Hayden reached up and grabbed his arm in mid arc, snatching the knife away from him. The blade was glowing red, and the handle seemed to vibrate. She tightened her grip on the knife, and shoved it just under Aidan’s nose. She was deaf to the noise of the patrons around her, immune to the frantic voice of the shopkeeper rising above the din.
Hayden moved the blade slowly up over the bridge of Aidan’s nose and over to his left eye. Why hadn’t she seen it before? It wasn’t in his heart. It was in his eye! This one intact eye now glowed an electric blue—the color of her sleep. Hayden cracked a sly smile, and jabbed the knifepoint into Aidan’s eye. He screamed in pain, and it was deafening, but Hayden couldn’t hear it. She took her nails and scooped out the loosened eyeball, and gazed at it, put it to her ear and listened to it. She could hear the heavy buzzing sound of the moist organ in her hand, and she was satisfied. Hayden raised the eye overhead, holding it like a wriggling worm, and dropped it into her mouth. She opened her eyes and watched the scenery fizzle, and finally fade to black…the a deep, glowing red…
She floated up into her skin, as if emerging from deep water and tried to focus her eyes. She swallowed, but felt nothing her parched throat. The apartment was dark but for the red glowing buttons of her stereo, and the soft light coming in from the cracks in the blinds. The cold room swelled with music. Feeling unsettled, she stood up, and looked out the living room window. She sighed in relief as she saw that nothing was there but a tiny black raven, looking for something to eat. Hayden began to move again to the music. Just as the track ended she paused, she listened to the silence….
Hayden felt him approach before she heard him; maybe she’d left the door unlocked on purpose so he could find her here in her living room, swaying like a leaf, vulnerable. She crouched down and waited for him.

yesterday - tomorrow