Hot Time

It was hotter than I could ever remember it being in my dark bedroom. I lay sweating, wondering what I could do to lessen the stifling air that seemed to be hugging my body. The fan was no help. I stood up, closer to the window. No breeze. I went into the kitchen and poured a glass of ice water. It was warm in minutes. I took a cold shower. The air felt hotter by comparison. I couldn’t shake the choking atmosphere.

I lay back down in bed, my eyes heavy with exhaustion and begging for sleep. I began to drift off when my phone beeped. A picture message. “Yum Cobb salad!” Cobb salad. The LDC was texting me at midnight to show me his dinner, and all I could think was, “Cobb salad? Who gives a shit about Cobb salad? Let me know when you’re eating scallops with champagne sauce. Jerk.”

I was wide awake. It took me another thirty minutes to drift off to sleep again, and around 3:30 I was startled awake one more time. This time it was my subconscious that roused me but I was thinking about the text. His stupid text. Whatever the meaning behind it, I was angry. And I was up again.

Another glass of ice water, but this time I perched on the easy chair in the living room, next to the only window in the apartment that provided a trace of a breeze. I sat motionless in the dark, letting beads of condensation roll down the glass, across my sticky skin, and through the thick air to the wood floor below.

I don’t know if it was the ill-timed text or the ill-timed sender, but at that moment, in the heat, I felt lucky to be alone.

In the middle of the night

I woke up trembling. My sheets were half on the floor from tossing and turning so much. A nightmare. That's all. That's all. A vicious nightmare full of attacks and weak attempts to fight them off and a scary stranger and evil intentions and a horrid, horrid smile. I can only hope that my nightmares are not prophetic in any way.

I won't dwell on that. It is too real even now. I have checked my door twice. An entire glass of water in one long gulp. Then another.

And I know I can't get back to sleep again. I know this night's sleep is shot. I could lie in bed for hours reliving that nightmare and not sleeping a wink, getting out of bed tired and lethargic, unproductive during the day.

Or I could just get up.

I sit at my desk. Turn the desk light on. Put on a song. And the rain starts. And slowly, slowly, my fear recedes. I even sit with my back to the door (and don't glance around more than twice).

And I let the night sink in, working in the light of a solitary lamp while the rain patters down from the dark sky, building a little cocoon of warmth and safety with nothing but a lamp, some air, and a book. I sit sipping some ice cold water, pulling the blanket closer around myself, looking up from my desk at the first rays of sunlight creeping in through the window.

Time for bed.

It isn't very good

In the dark dark woods

In the middle of the night

In the pale moonlight...

- Enid Blyton

From a Noddy book (now critiqued as being racist and sexist and all kinds of things, but I cannot forget the hours of enjoyment derived from spot-on statements like these when, as a five-year-old I knew nothing about racism or sexism and all I knew was that oh yes, it isn't very good indeed in the dark dark woods in the middle of the night in the pale moonlight).