/yesod

Tag: alarms

  • alarm

    alarm

    I hear the door opens as she enters, the floorboards creak as she approaches the bedside, feel her palms on my shoulder as she shakes me awake.

    “You have to wake up, you have to wake up, you have to wake up…”

    Insistent, urgency in her voice.

    I twitch, struggling against the paralytic bonds of sleep.

    When I open my eyes, I am alone in the room save for the pale light of morning coming in through the window.

    It was not my wife’s voice I heard, not her touch that woke me—no, just the spirit of this place, this house of ours, coming to rouse me on my day off.

    I lay back and consider going back to sleep.

    The real question, I tell myself, is whether or not you’re going to choose to believe in these sorts of things or not.

    It’s a fair point.

    I get up and go downstairs where I relate the events of the morning to my wife.

    And then I check the house, just to m able sure everything is safe.

  • alarm

    Last night at 3AM the alarm clock on my wife’s nightstand went off, without any cause or reason.

    My wife never uses the clock for anything other than to tell time. It’s been sitting there for years. No one had been in our room, no one had any reason to fiddle with it or set an alarm… but it went off in the middle of the night.

    All by itself.

  • daycare rescue

    Somehow, I have become two people. There is the adult version of me, as I am now. And there is the teenaged version of me.

    Together, we are plotting to rescue my youngest daughter from her daycare. The details of why she needs rescuing aren’t explained but, armed to the teeth and sick with worry, we make our plans.

    (Even in my dream, the proximity of guns and children disturbs me. My younger self tries to reason with my older self, to convince him that it’s better to go to the police. But he/I refused.)

    We sneak into the school one night — something else that isn’t explained, why it’s nighttime — doing our best to bluff our way past the receptionist. Explaining why there are two of us is difficult.

    My older self is relieved when my teenage self says “I’m her older brother” — good thinking, kid.

    We do our best to keep the guns hidden as we make our way through the halls. But one of the kids sees the sawed off shotgun my younger self carries under his/my trenchcoat and we’re off to the races.

    Teachers and parents and children scramble everywhere in a panic. With the police on the way, we rush into a classroom and get my/our daughter out safely. No one has been hurt, no one has been caught.

    But back at the house, the police are waiting — painting the cheap stucco walls of our neighborhood with screams of blue and red.

    My older self says “Take care of her for me…” leaving my younger self to hold onto his/our daughter while he/I (the older version of me) leads the cops away. He doesn’t get far. And neither do we.

    It is terrifying, stressful, and heartbreaking. And I am relieved when I wake.