I stare awake at the ceiling. The crinkled paint seems to shift in the dark, and I think I hear them crawling, too. It sounds like a swarm of bees alive with a furor unmatched by any.
I lay catatonically in bed, trapped as the shadows sit up and dance around me. They start singing, and there’s this discordant sort of diminished chord reverberating through the large room as I join in with some silent screaming. But somehow, my voice is what creates the disharmony.
And then I wake up.
I stare awake at the ceiling and try to convince myself that I am most definitely not, with complete certainty, watching the crinkled paint shift in the dark.
And then I wake up.
This time, I close my eyes and squeeze them shut. But then I see even more shadows.
And then I wake up.
I break away from the bed and turn the lights on in the bathroom. I stare straight ahead, sure as day in the rising sun, that I’m staring right at the monster under my bed, the one keeping me in that seemingly endless mental loop, the one keeping me awake and asleep and trapped in the sleep and awakeness, whichever it is in the moment, the one that can break me free from it all, the one who holds all power over how the crinkled paint looks to me, the one who decides how many times I have to wake up before I really wake up, in the mirror, in front of me.
It feels strange. Even more strange than the bees in the walls and the choir of invisible, intangible, inexistent dancing shadows. Scary even, scarier than all of that.
Maybe that’s why the bees were buzzing and the shadows were dancing—so I didn’t have to hear or see or feel the clear, sensical truth. So I instead could hide it behind all of the nonsense I knew wasn’t real. So that I could fake waking up as a sorry excuse for seeing the truth when I was only seeing yet more nonsense, nonsense I made to hide every sense that scared me even more.
I stare awake at the ceiling. I admire the crinkled paint, sitting still and catatonic. I don’t even see the shadows in the dark. I let my thoughts break free and dance and sing about.
Contentedly, I sleep.
