3:12am. Those blurry red numbers glowed softly against the overwhelming darkness; I had to blink a few times for the image to clear, and for the bleakness of my slumber to fade. My train of thought began to chug slowly, and the only words it seemed to develop were questions.
Is that the real time?
Why am I awake?
Not only had the air gone to ink, but my nose was ice, as was my hand which had strayed from under the soft covers. The questions gradually became lost in the back of my mind, for the train picked up speed, leaving the time and hopes of drifting back to sleep far behind.
I stared up, unsure of where the room ended and the ceiling began, but that didn’t worry me; I was okay with floating. The only familiar sound was that of my breath, my chest pulsing rhythmically under the sheets like a disrupted hill. Up and down. Up and down.
My eyes drifted back to the abyss above me, and the shadows began to dance, forming bizarre shapes like clouds on a windy day. With each blink a new image appeared; a slideshow of stories frozen in time as if from a memory. I tried to keep my eyes open for as long as I could in hopes to see the denouement, but the ink flooded my eyes, forcing the next excerpt to begin. They had no connections to one another but rather they were shapeshifters of their own being. They were wild. They were free. They were actors on an infinite stage, performing without a set script. The playwright was an impulse of their souls, working off of each other to complete each scene and move to the next just as quickly.
In the midst of the show a flash of color caught my eye. With another blink I turned my head, at the soft glowing numbers amongst the obscurity. 3:20am.
Written by Ella Belfry
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