Sleeping Trouble

The cactus died today. Following just a week after the loss of the cat, it seemed sadder than necessary. Though she never really cared for the cactus, she'd learned to love the cat. The double loss drove home the fact that there is not one single living thing left that has ever lived in this house. Other than her, of course.

The recent ones she knew of first-hand. The sweet little old lady died from a sudden aneurysm. The gruff but kind-hearted old man grieved himself into a heart attack not a year later. Earlier inhabitants are all gone too - cancer, car wreck, even a suicide.

Maybe not suspicious, but certainly unnerving when she thinks about it. Especially if the thinking about it occurs in the middle of the night, when sleep plays hide-and-seek and old houses creak and groan.

Distant thunder grumbles. She fluffs her pillow and turns it over for what must have been the hundredth time. She ignores the red numbers glowing from the clock on the nightstand.  She doesn’t even want to know what time it is, or she’ll start that dang sleep-math. If I fall asleep right now, I can still get 4 hours and 10 minutes of sleep.  She wonders if normal people do that?

She wills herself to keep her eyes closed and concentrate on breathing slow and steady, trying to turn off her overactive mind. After what seems only a few minutes, a flash burns through her closed eyes. Thunder crashes so close she jerks upright in bed, electricity raising the hair on her arms. 

When the lightning fades, the room is in complete darkness. The power is out, taking not only the glow from the nightstand clock, but the night-light down the hall and the security light outside the window. More lightning and thunder quickly follow, and in the flashes she sees the shadows of trees whipped by strong winds. The shadows seem to reach toward her, tugging her to the window. And seemingly against her will, she is standing at the window staring out into the storm.                             

Her brain can’t make sense of the images as the lightning flashes. A fence, tall spiky pillars stretching toward the sky, a face at the glass. She shrieks and jumps back, scurrying back to the bed and its sense of safety.

I did not see a face at the window. It couldn't have been a face. The window is six feet from the ground outside, and it’s storming. No one is out in this weather peeking in windows. Still, she lies staring at the window, unable to sleep.

Sometime before morning, the storm moves off and she sleeps. She wakes with a foggy brain, gritty eyes, and one thought. Am I going crazy?