September 19, 2016 | Occasus | Issue 6 | Fiction

Waiting for Sleep

I’ve been holed up in this closet for too long. Tess used to want me to come out, though she would never admit it. The terror, the anticipation, the noises-in-the-night, bumps-under-the-bed weren’t enough for her. She wanted to see my face. She wanted to scream for her parents. She wanted them to burst in, their pajamas flying around them and their arms flung forward as if they had gone blind. She wanted them to reveal with a flick of the light that it was just a sweater in the corner, draped over a chair, or some old baseball bats and gloves under the bed. Nothing more. No face. No bogeyman. The relief was intoxicating. It sent her straight to sleep. And then, again, the noises, the bumps, the shadow behind the door looking all too much like that creature, that thing with deathly pale skin and dark holes in its face instead of eyes, that thing she had glimpsed in her nightmares. Again, again, she would beckon me with her whimpers, look at me, see me crouching over her in the dark. It wasn’t her imagination. In that moment I was real. Her heart popped like a balloon in her chest. Again, again, the scream, the parents, the blind, blind parents. The relief. The sleep.

Tess isn’t scared of me anymore. She grew up, as they say. She doesn’t look for me, and, so, she doesn’t find me. I hear she’s moving out soon, that she’s going to have a new bed and a new closet. I keep imagining this room without her, without the thin shape of her body beneath the blankets and the coo of her soft snore drifting through the slats in the closet door. I mean, it’s been so long since I’ve scared her that it shouldn’t make a difference, but it does. You see, I’ve grown used to her. Her sleeping face still resurrects the memory of those fear-driven nights. Without her, what will I be? Will I even be a monster? Will I even be me?
 
I watched her pack today. She was listening to music, humming, and throwing things into boxes and bags. The place started to look empty. She came into the closet a couple of times, and I pressed myself into the wall so she couldn’t see me. To see me without being frightened first would be too much. She might laugh. But, it’s all too much—the growing up, the barging into the closet, the moving out—so it probably shouldn’t have mattered whether I showed myself or not. But it did. It did. She tore up my home. The laundry basket, the dusty sweaters I like to tuck my face into when I’m cold, the high heels in the corner, the children’s stories on the top shelf, they all went. I have no place left to hide, no place from which I can safely watch her.
 
Tonight is Tess’ last night. I know it. I saw her crying before she fell asleep. She has taken her posters from the walls and her old baseball bats and gloves from under the bed. I haven’t decided yet whether I’m going to follow her to her new place or stay here. I can’t imagine doing either.

At least, I think, I will say goodbye. The night is dark. The air coats and covers me like black ink as I push open the closet door and step into her carpeted room. Her hair lies in curls across her pillow. I sit on the edge of the bed and look at her.

Then, my hands begin to move. They drift over her body, not touching her, not at first, not until I reach her pale neck. I’m a monster, after all. The bed squeals under my weight as I shift closer to her. She feels like cream in my hands. Her breath is warm on my knuckles. I brush her hair out of her eyes.

Quietly, carefully, I press down around her throat and hold her firmly to the pillow. Her eyes open and bulge up at me. Somewhere deep within them I find the little girl she used to be, the whimpering in the dark, the gasp, the scream. She can’t scream now. She chokes; she strikes me feebly. I can see that she recognizes me. She’s remembering, all at once, in a shock that rocks her body in the bed, how we used to play our little game. I’ve grown up also, Tess, as they say. I’m tired of games, so tired of waiting and watching you, being less of a monster because of you. I can’t sleep—I haven’t slept in seventeen years—and I’m tired. I’m tired. I’m tired.

We must have made some noise, the two of us struggling in the bed, because her mother pokes in her head and begins to scream. The sound rolls over me like music, and soon her father joins the ensemble. They remain by her bedroom door, their arms limp by their sides, their eyes wide. I turn to look at them. Their mouths fall open. I supposed they’ve spotted the dark pits in my face in place of eyes. We stare at each other; we see each other. In that moment I’m no longer a story their daughter made up to get attention. I’m no longer a memory of late nights after long days of work when they cursed their daughter for not being able to sleep. I’m here; I’m real. The closet door hangs open like their mouths behind me. Tess has become quiet and motionless beneath my hands. I touch her face. She looks frightened. Her parents have stopped screaming, and a shrieking silence fills the room. I wait for the relief. Why won’t her parents turn on the light? If they did, I could disappear. But they’ve deflated and become concrete grey, their shapes like indistinct shadows in the doorway. I try to close Tess’ eyes, but they’re stuck open—her mouth too, frozen in a scream without sound. The closet door hangs. Her mouth. My head. I listen for a bump under the bed. Cement silence fills my ears and I wonder where the fears went, the little ones, the pure ones. What kind of monster have I become?

I lower myself onto the mattress and pull the blankets up to my chin. Tess is still warm beside me, staring blankly at the open closet door. If I had eyes I would have closed them, but I am neither blind, nor can I see. I sink into the bed and wait for sleep.

ERICA MCKEEN is a third year student at Western. She was previously completing an Honors Specialization in Creative Writing and English Language Literature, but recently decided to take a less restrictive and altogether more dangerous route: art without an academic degree behind it. Her short story, "Our Eyes, Our Tongue," won the 2016 Lillian Kroll prize in creative writing, and her work has been previously published in Shirley Magazine, Minola Review, Green Blotter, The Voices Project, The Quilliad, This Dark Matter, Nom de Plume, and the fourth and fifth issues of Occasus.