I Can’t Sleep At Night, It Just Don’t Feel Right

My eyes opened quickly to see my dark shadowy bedroom.

The stormy rain outside poured on my roof, profusely entering my mind, building annoyance and pressure inside my head.

Lucinda where are you? Sleep felt like it was all I had remaining in the evening when I unexpectedly woke. Recently all I could do was look in my mirror to witness my near empty shadow and realise I’d lost everything. All I knew. Me.

The rain continuously thumped against my roof like the pulsating memories of times past, echoing behind the storm’s tumultuous collision with the roof outside.

I missed Tim. The continuation of time was missing since he had gone. Time had stopped and I didn’t have long before everyone decided my fate. Tim used to lay next to me and sometimes wake in moments like this, kissing me in a soft moment, all I wanted in the dark, middle, late and early of the night at 3:00am.

During those time flashes with Tim, I wouldn’t notice what the weather was doing. I wouldn’t care if it was clear moonlight or heavy breathing gusts pushing the leaves and branches of a tree upon my roof. There wasn’t only me under these sheets, flattened below that ceiling, or like a dot of nothing under the big broad atmosphere above. I was somebody in a relationship. I had dreams, with each dream imagining I would never lose Tim, unless he decided to leave me.

Dreams were things I missed in new middle of the night waking moments like this.

I would often open my eyes surprised, looking around the dark shadowy room, thinking about the last thought of what I saw in the dream I was just in. I recalled memories of fascination, of wander and at times of fear or exhilaration.

The wooden roof creaked as I turned to my side. That creak felt organic, like somebody was showing they were with me. Maybe it was Tim.

Some time ago, on one evening, my eyes quickly opened to a memory. A recollection of the dream I had just been experiencing.

It was on a tropical island in the South Pacific Ocean, in French Polynesia or Fiji, a world away from Tim and I’s room in the suburbs where I woke cosy in the middle of the night at 3:00am.

I looked over to see Tim laid horizontal to me, fast asleep under the sheets.

I thought of the palm lined beach and the coral reef spreading out toward the horizon. The early morning light blue sky avoided the intensity of the hot beating sun or the storm clouds that would come in the afternoon. It was bliss in all the ways that bliss should be, calmed by translucent water spreading out before our vision.

I sat there on the sand looking at Tim, dreaming inside a dream. A butterfly floated by us, Tim loved butterflies.

The constant experience within my memories of dreams was to only recall hearing a murmur, or a feeling, of what the other person in my dream said or felt. I touched his face and he touched mine. As I looked at my hand, I saw a ring on my finger. A finger I barely saw in my blurry vision, but the ring became the focal point of my sight and then I awoke.

There I lay together with the man I had dreamed about, still lying next to me. The man who shared my room and my dreams. Then I heard a creak in the roof.

It was raining, softly and calmly. The rain drizzle outside, reminded me about hydration with a shift of my hand over to the bedside table, taking a sip from my glass of water. The rain continued, building force above my head.

Tim lay passed out to the nighttime world. He was also passed out from the matrimony in my dream, recently telling me how he disliked such engagement ideas. It was all too soon in our relationship.

I decided I would go to the bathroom to relieve myself.

I walked in and turned on the light. The darkness illuminated everything in an instant.

I moved past the shower and sat my touché on the toilet. The relief came quickly and once finished, I wandered back to the dark shadowy room, turning the light off behind me.

When I arrived back to bed, Tim was covered with the blanket, his body shaped in a cocoon like position. His face was pushed over to the far side of the bed.

I laid back down with a pretend dream of sleep, before I dozed back into bliss, I noticed the 3:00am had not progressed on the older alarm clock sitting next to my glass of water. My mobile phone would set off my morning alarm anyway, and the red light was pulsating with an odd time fixture, interrupting my desired sleep pattern.

I turned the alarm clock off by pulling out the plug at the power point and went to sleep. I felt something unknown inside my body, Tim’s erratic breathing may have caused it. New dreams were sure to come.

My eyes returned to another instantaneous opening in my dark shadowy room.

The storm outside had grown stronger as it ricochetted off the roof with great force.

Tim must have plugged in the alarm clock again, as red numeric symbols stood bright and continued to read 3:00am, a fixed location in time.

Tim was gone. Déjà vu came over me.

I looked at my shadowy face in the mirror against the wall, coming to realise that I lost everything. Nothing made sense in these moments without Tim. He hadn’t decided to leave; I finally took the responsibility of doing this to us.

I felt his kiss in a shadowy, faded way. Was he there?

Then I saw his figure leaning over from behind me in the mirror. He smiled softly at me. Softly but penetrating in the instant his lips caressed me.

The rain felt stronger than the window frames could handle, the creaking from the roof became more progressive, making me visualise friction coming from Tim’s soft smile.

I couldn’t return to sleep, of course I did not want to return, I’d felt something I knew before. Did I really see Tim? I wanted to know what was happening, why was a continuous 3:00am illuminating my space and where on this planet had Tim gone.

I suddenly screeched, ‘Tim!, Tim where are you!?’ and I was met with nothing more than a creak in the roof.

A lightning strike flashed light in the room for a split second, and I saw Tim’s face staring at me from the mirror.

‘I’m watching you.’ Whispered Tim. I knew it was Tim, but I couldn’t see clearly.

I screamed, picking up the alarm clock and throwing it at the mirror.

The rain calmed with the impact of the alarm clock, giving me a feeling of sudden respite from this torment in my head, starting to surround my physical space. I was unsure of how real all these moments were.

The cocoon shape gradually began to reappear and grow on Tim’s side of the bed. I hit it angrily, but it wouldn’t disappear, having form without a solid shape to take each strike I gave it. The silhouette weaved around my impactful punches in a way I couldn’t understand.

Then suddenly the cocoon flattened, disappearing downward to become a flat sheet. But once it flattened entirely, it let out a huge pulsating thump, causing an impulse to trigger my run to the bathroom. I jumped in the bath, scared like I had only felt once inside my body, once inside that dark shadowy room. Where could I escape? Yelling ‘Tim, Tim!’ repeatedly.

Then I could hear something above. The creak in the roof had moved, or maybe another creak had appeared in the bathroom, sitting high above my skull inside the roof structure. The rain began to strengthen again, and I felt a water drop hit my face, then another and another, more and more, bit by bit until the roof gave way to reveal Tim’s imposing face smiling at me.

The rain plummeting from above continued forcefully, framing Tim’s gigantic face as he stared blankly down at me, flying above with wings that stretched out like a moth. His cocoon may have morphed him into this new creature I saw before me, and I didn’t want to see his eyes stare blankly at me any longer. The wings were dark and grey, the opposite of a beautiful butterfly’s wings.

‘You did this’ he whispered in amongst the momentous chaos, ‘You destroyed me.’

Raging water flooded the bathtub, and I was starting to gasp for air as it moved cyclonically to trap water inside my mouth. I began to suffocate.

This creature, once known as Tim, had a perspective of truth. I did do this. I got rid of Tim. I killed him.

I once wanted freedom from my desire for his longing, I remember that night all too boldly. His slow breathing, gasps for air in desperation. I had hurt him with poison laced food at dinner time through a fear, a survival instinct because I loved him too much, so much, and in every possible way.

I knew he would hurt me.

He had now returned to hurt me as I knew he would.

I was suffocating from what felt like cascades of water blocking my respiratory canal. In that moment I realised that time stopped missing me. My time had come when I could have had the survival of Tim to see us together, but the control of love and possible disintegration grew too strong within my paranoid mind.

I looked into Tim’s eyes, above me, and he smiled softly once more.

I deserved this end. Tim knew I deserved punishment. It all started from my fear of pain in love and not accepting the positive opportunities created through romance. I thought he would’ve removed me soon from his life, but I became the villain to him.

I tried to take my last breath, but I couldn’t.

Blank.

The rain subsided and the home lay silent.

Moments later a small butterfly flew up over the buckled roof, through a window and on to the bathtub. The place was docile but filled with debris and rummage from the crazy storm that had just passed.

Karma had worked its magic, Lucinda was gone, Tim had sadly passed and the sun shone light over the roof of the once dark shadowy rooms. Everything was reborn and enlightened to ensure the betrayal did not remain; deceit and trickery were gone from the home.

The roof then reconstructed itself and returned with the frames or pillars it always held in place. The Butterfly sat for a moment, a moment of thought about what had just occurred to bring life to death, before flying away as the rays of sunshine over the space gave way to calmness.

Tim had assured Lucinda of their relationship being forever and until the end.