When I Can't Sleep, I Look at my Phone (Part 4)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Sam and I sat down next to each other on the couch. Silver took up the rest of the space while Pablo ran laps around the apartment chasing nothing. She listened patiently as I explained myself and what had been happening. “I’ve been having really weird dreams lately. I know I haven’t been sleeping so great lately, but when I end up falling asleep, it’s some sort of reoccurring nightmare that I have.”

“And that’s why you went to the doctor?” she asked, while gesturing towards my bottle of sleeping pills that were prescribed to me.

“Yeah…I know I said that it was just because I couldn’t sleep, but this dream I’ve been having is starting to really freak me out. That’s why I went. They took some blood to make sure there’s no underlying condition that I might be having, and the doctor suggested I just need to get back on and maintain a normal sleeping schedule. Then it should all pass. I want to believe him, but I don’t really know.” I scratched my forehead, exactly where my dream nemesis had struck me the night before.

She leaned back and started scratching under Silver’s grey chin. “Well tell me what happens. Maybe talking it out will help you. Just start from the beginning.”

I sighed. “Okay, so a few nights back I couldn’t sleep, so I was messing around on my phone. You know how when someone is pointing a flashlight at you in the dark, you can’t really see what’s behind it? Well the phone was working the same way, I guess. I couldn’t shake this feeling like something was hiding just on the other side of my phone as I was lying there. Something was just waiting to pop out and YAHH right in my face. It was almost like I could feel myself being held down by something, you know?”

She nodded, moving her fingers from Silver’s chin down to his belly. “But you were awake? I thought you said you were having bad dreams, not bad…feelings.”

“Well that’s the thing. The next time I was actually able to sleep, I dreamt that I was standing in the bedroom and watching me…us in bed. Not like in a perverted way. I was standing by the lamp, and I saw myself in bed flipping my phone back and forth trying to see what was behind it. I was watching myself live through that moment where I thought someone was standing right behind my phone. In my dream I even climbed on top of myself and hid behind the phone. That bad feeling I was getting, I was getting from myself. Does that make sense?”

She was silent for a moment. “I understand, but that doesn’t sound very scary.”

“No, it was odd, but that was just the first time it happened.” My cell phone, sitting on the coffee table next to my medicine, started to vibrate with an incoming call, but I ignored it. “The next day, Pablo was acting weird. I went in to the bedroom to feed him and he was just staring at the curtains like he was watching something. Nothing was actually there. I checked. But I took a nap shortly after that, and I dreamt that I was me in the bedroom again. I was there with Pablo and he was staring right at me. I was standing right in front of the curtains. He wasn’t looking at nothing, he was looking at me.”

Sam laughed a little. “Babe, Pablo does weird things all the time. I think his illness has had an affect on his tiny little cat brain. Remember when we first got him? He used to get in to my box of tampons and carry them around the apartment like he had just caught a mouse or something. And this chubby one,” she said while rubbing Silver’s big belly, “likes to drink out of the bathtub faucet, and he likes to wait at the front door all day hoping that a bug will fly inside. Maybe Pablo was just looking at a bug that you didn’t see.”

“I don’t think so. I really don’t.”

I’m assuming Pablo heard his name because he came tearing around the corner holding a hair tie in his mouth. “Hey asshole!” Sam yelled before getting up to chase him down. I rubbed my face with my palm and watched Silver stretch and reposition himself where Sam must have left the warmth of her butt behind. I know what I saw. I was there. I grabbed my phone to see who had tried to call. I didn’t recognize the number, so I set it back down. Sam walked back in with the cat in her arms and her hair tied up. She slid Silver out of her seat and plopped down with an angry Pablo. “Who’s a grumpy little bitch?” Pablo growled his disapproval. “That’s right! You are! Be free, my child!” And she let him go to cause trouble elsewhere.

“Okay. Remember that night you woke up because Silver had jumped on you and I came in with a face full of blood?”

Sam snorted out a laugh. “Why, yes I do.”

“Okay, so the next night that I slept, I had a dream that I was in our room right before that whole fiasco went down. I was…I dunno. I was testing out my dream powers, I guess. I tried to run through a wall, but I bonked face-first right in to it. As soon as I did that, the real me started to have a nosebleed.”

My phone started to vibrate again and we both looked at it. It was that same number. I decided to ignore it again because I knew I was getting in to the real meat of my story. Sam tried to interject. “Babe, you…”

“No, just listen. When real me went to go clean myself up, the dream me stayed in the bedroom. I watched the cats chase each other in, and I also saw this dark cloudy thing float in behind them. It floated right over to you.”

“Babe, no-“

“Silver never jumped on your stomach. This cloudy thing hovered over you, and Silver jumped up to check out what the hell it was. The thing looked right at me and it slapped you. That’s what woke you up, not the cat. You yelled and looked right at the thing. You grabbed a pillow, and I think you were trying to throw it at this-“

“Stop.” Sam leaned forward and grabbed my hands. “Silver jumped on me. I remember. I woke up when you left the room, and I sat up a little because I was wondering why you didn’t just use our bathroom instead of the one in the hall. Pablo jumped at Silver, and Silver jumped on my lap trying to get away. He didn’t jump on my stomach.”

“But you looked right at the thing. I saw you yell right at it.”

“You weren’t in the room. How do you know what happened? Look.” Sam stood up and pulled her pants down as I watched her bewildered. “See?” She pointed at her upper thigh. There were two scratch marks that had been healing. “This is what he left me after he jumped on my lap. I was awake. No dark cloud. Just a dark cat, and a fat grey cat.”

I stared at her, not really knowing what to say. It was all so real in my head. How could I have been so wrong? My phone started to vibrate again, and Sam grabbed it out of frustration. “Hello?” she answered. “This is his phone, yes. Yeah, he’s right here, hold on.” She extended the cell phone to me while taking her seat down next to me. “It’s the doctor you saw.”

I grabbed the phone from her, still dazed by what she told me. “Hey, doc.”

The doctor’s familiar voice came through the other end. “Hello. How are you feeling today?”

“I don’t…I don’t know.” I really didn’t.

“Well I’d like for you to come back in when you get the chance. Your blood work came back, and there were some…discrepancies I’d like to address. We may need to run some more tests, even. But first let’s just get you in so we can talk about what the lab found, alright?”

I agreed. He wasn’t able to schedule me in until the next day, so I knew I would have another dream ahead of me. After I got off the phone, I told Sam what he had said, and her frustration immediately turned to sympathy. “It’ll be okay,” she said. “Whatever it is, we’ll get through it. You’ve got me and two furry ones rooting for you.” Silver purred his agreement next to her.

Night time came which meant another pill would go. I swallowed and drowned the mammoth thing with an entire bottle of water. I filled it back up and placed it on the nightstand on my side of the bed. Once again, and much to my envy, Sam was knocked out almost instantly. It took a few minutes before the medicine kicked in. It was enough time for me to lie in silence and just let the darkness of the room encompass me. My eyes had just started adjusting to the darkness when my eyelids started falling.

Dream me lived again. I sighed and stared at myself. It looked like I might actually be asleep. Weird. I could hear the cats on the other side of the door, so I lied down to look at them through the crack. Silver and Pablo were having a feline royal rumble, using the hallway as their wrestling ring. It was hard to make out which one was winning. They both whined a lot. One bites too hard and the other bites back in retaliation. It’s really just a practice in escalation.

Silver plopped on to his back with his mouth open wide, head thrashing from side to side, until he noticed me. He let out a soft meow, and suddenly, two cats were sniffing for me under the crack in the door. Pablo was brave enough to stick an arm through to try to get at my face. He stopped and I could see his eye looking back at me. Something in it was shining. Something from my side of the door. I turned around and saw the curtains. They were highlighted almost as if sunlight were trying to peek through.

I stood up and looked at the nightstand next to my bed. The time read barely after midnight. How could this light be shining? I walked over to the curtains and gently pushed them aside. They gave way easily and I peered out in to our apartment complex parking lot. A pair of eyes stared back at me from the distance. The eyes were set vertically instead of side-by-side like a normal face. And the human-like silhouette they were attached to seemed to be spinning slowly. The body was standing upright, rotating slowly, but the eyes, one on top of the other, focused on me in the window. Almost as if they were detached. The sky was a crimson red, with heavy clouds that looked as if they were barely passing over the rooftops of the three story buildings. They glided along the sky much too quickly, and they pulsated as if a magnificently large heart was beating right behind them.

The rotating body had moved closer, almost against the wall of my building, and now the eyes were on top of the head. There was no neck bent to look up, just eyes that seemed to float along the surface of the body as it spun slowly. I never saw it move or glide or do whatever it had to do to get this close. That’s when I noticed the rumble. Somewhere, there was a steady rumbling sound, gradually getting louder. I stepped away from the window and sat on the floor. I covered my ears as the sound grew louder and more intense, physically shaking me in my bones.

I woke up with my head pounding and my body soaked in sweat. Otherwise there was only silence except my ears had a slight ringing in them as if I had just come from a noisy concert. I didn’t move a muscle, and just replayed the dream in my head. What did it mean? Did it even mean anything? I wasn’t even sure what really happened, to be honest. I just knew that I would see the doctor soon, and hopefully I would have an answer for this madness in my mind.

I'll have to stop for now. But here's your obligatory picture of Silver just doing normal cat things.

The finale