literature

Sleep to Dream (Working Title) - Chapter One

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Somewhere in the distance, a bicycle bell rang.

It was the broken song of old steel long abused by its owner, but the sickly melody reminded her that she was home. In southern Ohio, September was in full swing. The grass of every lawn that ran the length of Claredon Avenue was coarse and yellow in the afternoon light. Overhead, a dense veil of dingy smoke from the stacks of the nearby paper factory drew itself outward to collide with the clouds. The sounds of kids shrieking in jest, a riot of water pistols, and the continual hiss of a garden hose seemed to encircle her. A few feet away, her best friend Renada was disassembling a Fischer Price record player in the dirt. Before long, it would be skillfully reassembled into something else. Renada had a knack for that.

She had always been happiest here, grimy feet dangling from the rustiest swing of the set her father had constructed in the backyard, anchored by life from every angle but perfectly and rapturously alone. It would be years before she would fully understand her simultaneous need for both company and solitude. Until then, she simply enjoyed the freedom to observe and muse on the outskirts of all that inhabited her world. She was wearing the Spider-Man t-shirt her older brother had handed down to her, the one with the juice stain, and a pair of faded blue Oshkosh overalls. The chorus of Duran Duran’s “Rio” was stuck in her head.

Without warning, the ground began to rumble. She thought it was just another train, barreling through as trains often did along the tracks that ran behind the farthest row of houses. She looked toward them, awaiting that familiar first sight of the conductor car, but none came. The grumbling grew louder; rattling the decaying chains of the swing as the sky shifted from its usual smoggy grey to a nauseous shade of green.

“Here comes the storm,” Renada said coolly, eyes still surveying the scattered pieces of plastic that were her future masterpiece.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” she replied. It couldn’t storm. Not now. Everyone was playing outside; everyone was happy. Besides, it hadn’t rained here in months. She wasn’t sure what a drought was, exactly, but she felt certain that rain was not welcome in one.

A strong gust of wind whipped the unwashed auburn hair about her face. The screen door leading inside from the yard creaked open to reveal a woman standing there, slender and porcelain, face and floral apron made whiter still by blotches of baking flour.

“Nora!” her mother called, “The storm’s coming! Time to come in!”

Nora looked again at the sky, now an inky black, and felt suddenly afraid. She turned to Renada. “Are you coming?” she asked, to which her friend just shook her head. “I want to stay and see what happens.” Whether she was talking about the broken record player or the storm, Nora couldn’t say. “It seems dangerous,” she cautioned, but Renada wasn’t listening.

A crack of thunder wrenched Nora’s focus back toward house. Her mother was still waiting, so she offered a hurried “Bye,” hopped from the creaking swing, and ran. The storm grew stronger by the second. All laughter from the neighboring games had vanished; what remained was only a vicious howling of the wind as the world lit up with lightning. Reaching her destination, Nora turned to catch a final glimpse of Renada sitting contentedly in the dirt, then noticed something new.

Beside the tool shed, at the farthest end of the lawn, stood a man in a long, black coat. At first, Nora thought she was imagining things. Upon blinking and looking again, however, he remained. “Mom,” she asked, “who is that man?”

“What man?” her mother replied.

“Right there,” she answered, pointing directly at him. It was strange enough to see someone in such heavy clothes in the middle of the summer. Even odder was that he appeared now to be calling out to her, although the rising discord of the storm and the distance between them were swallowing his words. Renada, still tinkering by the swings, didn’t seem to notice him at all. Nor did her mother, apparently, as she ignored her daughter’s inquiry, shut the screen door and secured the latch.

“We’ve got to get down to the basement,” she said, placing an affectionate hand on Nora’s tiny shoulder. As quickly as it had arrived there, it was gone. When Nora turned to follow her, she found she was alone.

The kitchen ahead was bathed in shadow and the sounds of the storm’s rage seemed to have been snuffed out with the light. “Mom?” Nora called, acutely aware of the sound of her own voice as it echoed along the walls. “Hello?” she called out again. Fumbling blindly for the dining table, she willed her memory to guide her steps and made purchase on the cool linoleum rim. Another flash of now silent lightning illuminated the room for only a moment, long enough to reveal a dark figure standing by the stove.

“You should go downstairs,” his voice urged.

“Who are you?” she answered.

Returned to the darkness, Nora fought hard to keep her eyes fixed on the spot where she’d seen him. It was the man from outside, she was sure of it. How did he get in here so fast? Why had he come here at all?

“Do I know you?” she asked, taking a cautious step forward. Before she could take another, however, he was there, unseen but close enough that she could feel the hem of his sleeve brush her knee. He’d crouched down, bringing his face level with hers.

“Not yet,” he replied.

In that moment, the storm which had been held at bay by the haven of home overpowered its walls. The roof groaned with the wind, wrenching upward, revealing a tempest overhead that consumed the brick and mortar in a steady rage. Thick droplets of rain bore down in sheets, ricocheting off the counter tops, landing in fits of angry drumming along the tiled floor. Lightning filled the room thoroughly now, revealing the pale and youthful face of her strange companion, who gripped her now petrified frame in his hands. “Lenora,” he struggled to be heard above the din, “You have to get to the basement, okay?”

“I can’t,” she shook her head stiffly, body rigid, squeezing her eyes shut against the wind. The lime green curtains that hung delicately above the sink were torn from their rod and lashed from floor to ceiling before being sucked upward out of sight. The cabinet doors thrust open as cans of food toppled forward and fell. Rogue pages of secondhand cookbooks danced violently about their heads while the walls themselves continued their crumbling. It was too late. The house was falling apart and some unknown force had arrived with its ruin, ordering her to stay put. Her mother and brothers were safe in the basement, of that she was sure, and this storm – this hostile takeover – was her burden now. It would take her, along with the windows and the hope chests and the washing machine, and all would be renewed.

“Open your eyes!” The stranger exclaimed, shaking her gently. “Lenora… You can do this. Just open your eyes for me, okay? Open your eyes!”

From within the mounting chaos, a bicycle bell rang.


The savage sounds of the downpour faded away as Nora’s eyelids drew gradually upward, unveiling the stationary ceiling overhead. There was no rain beyond, no rooftop devoured by a starving, violent wind. There was no natural disaster dissolving the four walls of her studio apartment. She was three decades and some seven hundred miles removed from that house in Ohio, lying comfortably beneath a mantle of blankets in the same bed in which she’d woken up every morning for the past six years.

Letting her gaze fall to the clock on her nightstand, she noted the time – 8:15 a.m. – and reached up to grab a worn orange sticky note she’d affixed to the shade of her reading lamp. On the paper was simply the word BELL scribbled in black ink. Turning it over in her hands a few times, she idly nibbled her bottom lip for a moment before forcing her body upright and slipping from bed with a sigh. She supposed she should thank her recurring and befuddling dreams; if nothing else, they did make her life much more interesting.

Her feet had followed the path of her morning routine so many times, it required little input from the rest of her, which allowed her the freedom to reflect on the night’s events. She paused at the bathroom mirror, toothbrush clasped thoughtlessly at her side, studying the lines on her face. It was strange to think that, just moments ago, she was seven years old again. Now, however, with reality’s return, a woman over thirty gazed back at her with bags beneath her sleepy chartreuse eyes. High, narrow cheeks, where once there was baby fat, seemed to cradle her sullen lips and slightly crooked nose, all barricaded behind a shroud of freckles which seemed to stubbornly multiply every year despite her lack of sun. At least the hair hadn’t changed; it was as long and tangled today as it was during those carefree summers of 80′s pop songs and playground swings.

8:30 a.m. welcomed her first dose of meds for the day, as well as the first cigarette, and she continued from there. More notes in varying colors and sizes littered the walls, desk, and refrigerator of the room she called home. Most of them were daily affirmations: Do something today that scares you, Remember who you are, and No internet 'til noon. They were part of her ever growing ephemeral utopia: Passages from the books she loved, inspiring quotations attributed to her heroes, photographs of friends and family, postcards of the places she’d been or hoped to one day visit, magazine clippings and news articles ranging from unusual stories from around the world to reviews of her favorite movies.

“When you can’t go out into the world,” her therapist had once observed, “you bring the world in to you.”

She certainly couldn’t go out into the world, so that much was true. It had been eleven months, three weeks and six days since Lenora Darby had ventured more than a few feet from her door. As for bringing the world in to her, the idea seemed so much more romantic now than it actually was. Her agoraphobia, in tandem with the anti-anxiety medication, left her predominantly numb to the beauty and mystery she once so loved about being alive. True, there was a time when the collages on the walls served as a necessary reminder of what she was missing. Anymore, however, they seemed like a mere affectation of life, as though she were trying to fool herself into thinking she cared. Most of the time, she felt either nervous or nothing.

That was, of course, until the dreams began.

Several weeks earlier, after a particularly exhausting day of behavioral exercises, Lenora had collapsed into bed and dreamed of an empty art gallery. The exhibition was one of distorted limbs and mournful oceans. She’d stood before a particularly melancholy piece, studying it closely, unaware of her sleeping self some incalculable distance away. Moments later, she heard that same bicycle bell just out of earshot. Her eyes were then drawn from the canvas to his silhouette, standing in a far and shadowed corner, quietly watching her. His presence wasn’t threatening, nor was she made anxious by his immobility, and for a while the two simply looked at each other. Eventually, the dreamworld began to ebb and shift into someplace else and when it reformed into a crowded waterfront, he was nowhere to be seen.

Every night since, on the edge of that bell’s fractured song, the stranger appeared. Sometimes, he would speak, but the words were often indecipherable, and the distance between them remained great enough to keep his features from view. Lenora had no talent for lucidity, and therefore never recognized him; only upon waking could she register his arrival and consider his significance in each, often otherwise unrelated, dream. Surely, he was an allegory of some unexplored feeling, pursuing her across the dreamscape until she uncovered his import and coped with whatever it was he represented. And yet, she couldn’t shake the unusual and overwhelming sense that he didn’t actually belong there.

This morning, after leaving the weather-torn remains of her youth behind, she found those suspicions had grown exponentially. Sitting down at her desk, she procured the heavy dream journal she’d received at her last therapy session, took out her pen, and began to recount the dream’s details on an available page. She had dreamed of that place, that catastrophe, that ringing bell, that strange man – all of it before. But something had changed. This time, he had called out her name. He had tried to protect her. He had broken the expanse between them and touched her in a way that felt more real than the wind or the rain or even the fabricated fear brought forth by the storm.

This time, she had seen his face.
The first chapter of my most recent nose-dive into lengthier fiction.

Sleep to Dream is the story of an agoraphobic editor and a bipolar artist who accidentally help one another overcome their conditions by way of shared dreams. The title is absolutely going to change at some point, and this will likely be the only chapter I'll post here at dA. Additional chapters will be posted in a password protected section of my web site: littlehellion.wordpress.com (I've been building a small group of "beta" readers - if you'd like to be a part of that group for some crazy reason, please don't hesitate to contact me.)

:heart:
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