Jack rose abruptly from the dinner table, clutching the side of the head and wincing at the sudden onset of pain. His wife rose also, putting down her fork and reaching over to grasp her husband's hand.
"What is it? Migraine?"
"Something like that" Jack said, letting his head roll back as a fresh wave of pain coursed through his skull. His young daughter, still sitting at her seat, looked concernedly at her father's face for a second before happily returning to her food.
"Listen, honey, you've been unwell all day. Go and rest, I'll do Sami's homework with her tonight."
"Thanks." Jack said gratefully. He picked up his half-finished meal and moved it to the kitchen. "Actually, I might see if I can get some sleep", he called to his wife.
"Fair enough. What time do you want to wake up?", his wife called to him from the dining room, but Jack made a non-committal noise and began to hunt around cupboards for paracetamol. After finding a packet, and pouring a glass of water, he entered the dining room again. He kissed his wife on the cheek, and his daughter on the forehead, and headed to the bedroom.
As soon as Jack's head hit the pillow, the pain in his head stopped completely. He laid contentedly on the bed for a few minutes, not bothering to pull the blankets over him. There was a noise in the room; a quiet pulsating tone that occasionally broke into a distended buzz. The noise began to aggravate Jack, who reached for the remote on his bedside table and turned on the radio at the other side of the room. After setting it to a relaxing channel at a very low volume - he didn't want anything to wake him in the middle of the night - Jack undressed whilst lying down and put himself under the covers. From beyond there could hear the faintest sound of conversation between his Sami and his wife. They seemed happy, and carefree.
*
Had he slept? He must have; without opening his eyes, he could sense that the room was darker, and that his wife was lying beside him. The radio was still playing, and seemed very loud. There was a voice speaking, a voice that seemed agitated and distorted, but it was impossible to discern any of the words being said. Despite this, Jack had the confused impression that the man on the radio was addressing him. He reached for the remote to turn it off, worried that it would wake his wife too, but instantly remembered that there wasn't a remote for the bedroom radio. Why had he thought there was?
Resigned to the fact that he would have to get up to switch off the radio, he slowly tried to open his eyes. With a jolt, he realised that his eyes were already open. The room was pitch black. Feeling around the side of the bed to gain his orientation, Jack pulled the quilt off himself and stood up. Instantly he felt his knees buckle. He felt unable to walk; not ill, or injured, but rather that the action itself was impossible, a hopelessly complicated procedure. Crawling on his hands and knees, Jack headed to where he presumed the radio was. Reaching up and finding it in his hands, he fumbled with the casing, trying to find the power switch. It wasn't there. The radio felt completely smooth, an alien object still emitting a distorted noisy human whine. He jolted as he listened; the voice had mentioned his name, or at least that was what it felt like, as Jack was still unable to make out any coherent phrases. Now panicking slightly, he stood up, leaning against the wall for support, and reached for the light cord at the corner of the room. It did not matter that he would wake up his wife. He pulled the switch.
Jack saw it, but could not take it in. The room he was standing in was not his own. The dimensions were correct, and the furniture in it - the bed, the bedside table, the wardrobe, were the right size. But there was no decoration, no components, nothing at all standing there except the shape of the objects, cubes and cuboids coloured in murky blues and greens. His wife was not there. It was as though standing in a designer's blueprint, or a child's block world. He looked around frantically, wishing things right again - but as he was doing this, the blocks in his room began to regain their features, very fast. Within seconds he was back in his newly reconstructed room, but the appearance of the furniture felt oddly fake, as though it was computer generated, and his wife was still missing.
The voice on the radio was screaming at him now, still unintelligible but with a desperate fury. Behind the voice, a hellish soundscape of roaring feedback. It all seemed too familiar. Now there was another voice, higher pitched and coherent, and it was his wife, it must be, and he shouted to her over the cacophony, but as soon as he started the voice stopped, and he realised that the other voice was him, he was talking, and it resumed full force:
"You need to wake up! You need to wake up!"
But who was he talking to? Was he just imagining all this, the shouting occuring inside his head? He ran his hands over his mouth to see if it was moving but felt nothing there, a smooth, curved surface cold to the touch.
"YOU NEED TO WAKE"
The room looked garish and ugly, a mocking pastiche of itself. The walls shifted and moved. Items on surfaces were appearing and disappearing at random, items he recognised but were out of place here, everything was out of place--
"PLEASE WAKE UP NOW!"
And now he was screaming to see his wife, to see his daughter, because it was about to end, he would never see them again, they would vanish along with everything he had now, his life--
"NOW! WAKE UP NOW!!"
And Jack could understand the voice on the radio, every word was so clear, and he knew where he was going to go, but he wanted to stay here. With his family, and the comfort of this dream world. Because what faced him outside was too agonising to bear.
He opened his eyes.
*
*
*
Jack woke up.
So must you.
Please.
It's time to wake up.
WAKE UP
***
Today I listened to 'Nudist Collection', by Bramblings.
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