Yesterday, I was okay. I woke up in the night at the sound of screaming. Was I dreaming of screaming? I was dreaming of screaming and I woke up, and then I slept again for three more hours.
XEBAROF
The word stares at me from the notepad in which I have written it. I’m unsure now of why I have done so. It must have been a dream. My handwriting is there, on the page, but I have no memory of writing it down. The ink is blue, but I have no memory of owning a blue pen. Now there sits a blue pen next to my notepad, but I don’t know where it came from. Printed on the pen itself are the words ‘Behavioral Sciences’. A CD comes to mind from my younger days and long ago, Behaviour. Outside, the sun shines through wispy clouds in the horizon. Looks like an overcast day. Yesterday was overcast, too. Yesterday there was no pen, and the notepad remained empty.
Yesterday…
A woman knocked on my door and I looked through the peephole to see who it was before I opened, but I couldn’t see her. When I opened the door to investigate, there she was, a girl, I thought, selling cookies maybe! Something wasn’t right to me, and I worried it was noticeable on my face as she turned to me and started talking. She had the eyes of an old exasperated woman and her voice was raspy. A chill had run down my spine the instant I saw her, and I couldn’t help but take a step back. Please, I wanted to say, please! I wasn’t sure what I wanted to be pleading for, so I remained quiet and wide eyed. Immediately, she informed me of a planned power outage later in the day and was giving me details, but it came too fast, oh god! Someone was going to come and they were going to fix a thing in the basement, or some such place, and the power would be out for a couple of hours. In her hand was a piece of paper and a pen and she held them out toward me. I grabbed the paper and touched her finger as I did. It was cold! It was cold! Did she want me to sign something or read? What was the pen for? I tried to sign on the bottom without reading the printed text, but when I was done writing I found I had managed but a squiggly line with no discernible feature. I handed it back. She said thank you and smiled a fake smile at me. I had to close the door. I had to close it.
A pen yesterday and a pen today. The thought of touching the pen now seems awful. The thought of it! My hand nears it, decisively, and grabs it with the tips of two fingers, and the pen is cold. What if the pen is cold! Why is the pen cold, ask my eyes? They bulge now, inside me. So what if they are? So what if they are! Now the pen is in my hand, and it is cold. Sometimes, at times like these, my left leg begins to twitch, and so it does. What’s wrong with me? The pen is transparent with white text on it, and it sits full of blue ink, and it smells of synthetic oil. The notepad next to my bed is for logging my dreams, but I see now that I have written nothing on it. It’s brand new, and on the first page glistens the unknown word. My hand gets to work.
XEBAROF
I write the word again. Only now I see that it wasn’t me who wrote it the first time. It’s not my handwriting. It never was! In what state do I exist in if I cannot tell my handwriting from another’s? I write it down one more time.
XEBAROF
It never was me. Not the first time, nor the second. What am I seeing here? A new notepad, a strange word now written three times on it. Is it possible that I merely have dreamed of writing these words before? Have I just now, this very instant, awoken from a strange sleep? My hand protests and writes again and again until the page is full. See this now. No two words match in handwriting, and I am forced to conclude that it was indeed I who have written these words, for the conclusion now is that I myself have lost my handwriting as I slept, and that I now have none to call my own. I have dreamed, then, I see, and this is my log. Perhaps there was a meaning to it which I expected to remember.
A loud clack echoes through my bedroom and the lights go out. Someone has shut off the power to the building. Through my window on the fourth floor I see two blue vans parked at the entrance. It’s the repairmen. They have come now with their planned power outage. My hands now are warm, and the notepad remains where I have left it. My dream journal. It’s not tomorrow, I now see. I’ve had a terrible nap and my mind is wonking out. The woman didn’t come by yesterday, but earlier today. It was today that I half signed the paper I didn’t read. The windows are closed, verified. The door is closed, verified. XEBAROF. A dream of mine, forgotten. With my eyes closed, I think back to bed, and fill my lungs with a cool air and a subtle smell of garlic.
Earlier…
My phone had rang, and on the other side was my mother. She asked if I could come to see her during the weekend, and I said yes, but the call was abruptly cut. When I tried calling her again she rejected my call and texted me saying that she’d call me back tomorrow. So I came to bed, having learned of a planned power outage, and I called my mother again, nonetheless. She didn’t answer the phone, letting it ring this time until voicemail picked up. Hey, I said, I tried calling you back. I wanted to say something else, but there really was no reason to. Instead I accidentally recorded a few seconds of extra silence as my mind reasoned with this conflict of want and need.
Now, my bedroom is dark. It wasn’t the morning light coming in through the window. Clouds have taken over the sky and it’s late. A small brown bird pecks on the windowsill on the other side of the glass and for a moment it pauses and it looks at me. The bird shifts its head from side to side, eyeing me. Suddenly, the life of a bird, out in the cold, is attractive. Flying in the darkness, unknowing of the many things I know. Birds don’t have handwriting. I speak out loud to remind myself that I can. Hello, is the word that comes out. Mundane and predictable, of course, so I try again. Help me, is the next set of words. My eyes shake for a moment, and something in my chin or neck scrunches in such a way that my eyes dislike. There is a knock on my door again. Who might be on the other side?
The peephole is empty again and the doorknob is cold. It’s her. It must be her. She’s come back! Soon I will see her and her strange eyes and in her hands will be the paper I signed. I couldn’t manage my signature, and she will know. The blue vans are out there and the men are fixing the thing somewhere, but now they’ve realized I never read their instructions, and I never signed the thing, and she has come now to straighten things out. Oh my god. From beneath the door come a pair of shadows moving around on the other side. Now she has knocked again. Three times, now. She waits out there. She waits for me. Can she see my pair of shadows on her side, standing three feet from her? Does she know I am here already? Bird, come back and take me.
I open the door.
The woman looks up at me with her strange tired eyes. In her left hand she holds a flashlight and in her right hand is a notepad. She tells me that I gave her the wrong one earlier, and hands me my own notepad. My dream log. It’s not empty. The notepad is old and the pages are full. My dreams, recorded. Now she asks to have hers back.
XEBAROF
It was never my handwriting. It was her handwriting. It wasn’t a terrible nap, it was just a nap. How could I not have known this? Who am I, now? Unable to discern these things? She asks for her pen, too. ‘Behavioral Sciences’, it says on its side. She says thanks and goes away and disappears into the darkened, powerless hallway.
There is a new entry on my notepad. A single line in a new page.
OEBAROF
I read it carefully, and write it down again with my own hands.
OEBAROF
Now the handwriting matches.