The Nightmare Sonata I

The rain wet the brick and wood; over years the brick and wood had split and softened, to let water seep through to the furnishings and artifacts of humanity the building had long since stopped being a shelter for. A slew of the downpour burrowed relentlessly into the filth that was once a corner of the carpet, in a draughty room where Luke and Jessica sat, crouched, huddled and hugged together. Each watched the other sleep, taking turns to shake the other out of their inevitable narcoleptic panic. It had been six weeks since the nightmares had come to every person in the world.

Luke was dozing now, far above the currents of revitalizing dreams. As he looked down inside himself, he felt that he could every other flow of sleep poisoned now, a sea marbled with abominations and malevolence. Eyes steady, breaths passing through the room regularly as the clocks that once ticked away time awake and time asleep. Propped awake by love and driven to obsessive attentiveness by deprivation and fear, Jessica felt as though every inhalation passed over her face, and every exhalation rattled the windows. She timed the pause between each, worrying away at the notion that panic might have infested Luke's system and she had not missed it. It gnawed back at her, the possibility that she might already be too late, Luke gone, lost to her, a mixture of too little sleep and too much of the nightmare, the new cocktail driving everyone out of their minds.

Behind his eyelids---did they flicker?---Luke was wrapping his thoughts up like a broken limb. If he'd have been in his father's generation he would be counting sheep. His father never knew anything like this, though, he said to himself. Then the last thing he did awake was to pulling unconsciousness around himself like a thick, soft blanket: heavy, warm, dragging him down, down, warm, down....

Jessica heard Luke catch his breath. Just the once. Then a slower, shallower rhythm. She steeled herself. A quarter of an hour, of the sleep he needed, they both needed, sucking like honey or milk; then wake him before the toxins surfaced in the supply, a stirred-up sediment full of headache and madness. She strengthened her stare, as if the gaze of her eyes alone could constitute a raft for Luke to climb onto, negotiate the treacherous waters ahead. Oblivious to the pouring rain and the far-off shouts of crazy men she rememorized the smudges and bristles on Luke's once pretty face. They had both been pretty once. Without noticing it, and without looking for a moment away from her husband, she began to weep tears; they raced, each one alone, down her rapt face.

Like switching on the lights in a dark warehouse, a dream started to fill up Luke's head. Fluorescent flickerings, one far in the distance, then one close to. He began to think about when he was young, his father the farmer. A sunny meadow, running across it and he convinced himself he smelled the grass and his own child-sweat. Every dozen strides he tripped over a divot in the field, twisting his ankle but it didn't hurt, couldn't hurt or he'd have woken up. Sometimes he would trip and float, reach the ground yards ahead of him before sinking onto it.

In the distance was a cottage. It was so far away, whitewash white gleaming back at him, a focus that the day was revolving around. Every leap should be taking him closer, but the cottage was still at the same point near the horizon. He tripped and flew, and there was no difference; he ran on, and there was no difference; he tripped, looked down, and when he looked up again he was suddenly inside.

Compared to the gold and vibrancy of the field, the cottage felt oppressive. Each wall seemed to breathe rot and old plaster towards Luke, much like the room in which Jessica still watched over him. He knew where to go, where he had to go, and took silent steps towards the foot of the steps leading up to the attic. From the ceiling came a rustle and a shifting of weight. Heavy, human weight.

---There. That last one. Was that rushed? Was Luke now somewhere else, breathing in some other mildew? Was he walking slowly up the stairs yet? Jessica bit her lip. At the beginning they had both told each other of their nightmares, before the curse had thickened and become so strong that they had to wake each other up. Should she wake him now?---

The slash across his body, from right hip to left ear, digging through bones and arteries. Jessica had always rescued him from it, but in his guts he could feel it as if it had already passed close to them. In those guts something said: death. His heart hammered. His head had steel hoops, tightening rocks against his temples as he got to the top of the stairs and stood in the darkness and there was a swish behind him and then he was awake and Jessica was shaking his shoulders; through tears of worry and fatigue she was stammering as quietly as she could. "Luke", she said. "Luke. Come on. Wake up." He continued to surface, rising to wakefulness as his heart rate and blood pressure lowered themselves to meet his mind half-way. Close, as usual; not too close, and at least Luke had had fifteen---or was it twenty?---minutes' sleep.

Now it would be Jessica's turn. Luke knew that she could have a little longer than he could (but she needed it more). The cycle could then repeat: fifteen for him, twenty for her. A dozen more iterations and one of them might be rested enough to leave the apartment, dodge the gangs, look for food.