"Alarm Clock"

[Breaking from tradition to post a short short story. Incidentally, this is the 52nd post, meaning this blog now spans a full year!]

I’ve never been on a tropical island, so I’m glad to know that it exists in my head. The breeze is constant, warm, and gentle. I’m floating serenely along with it and I just can’t believe that the human body is capable of being so at peace. Some of the characters from that show “Lost” are here, too, and they’re examining the palm leaves. They don’t tell me as much, but I know that whatever answer they find in the leaves will tell them all they need to know about the mysterious island they’re on. I guess I’m on it, too, since I’m watching them, but it doesn’t feel that way.

When I look in the opposite direction, there’s a large round cabana, resting on stilts that are rising out of the sand. I mean to go help the actors from “Lost”, but I want to check this out first. I take no step, no movement, and suddenly I’m there. People in their bathing suits are walking around, the kind of buff careless types you see in the commercial. One of them, she’s blonde and thin, wants to talk to me and I can’t help but hope that she’ll have sex with me here in my dream. The tropical wind floats me along. There is no possible way I can feel exertion or pain. I am sinking into happiness.

Then the B-52’s are there and Fred Schneider is jumping around singing “Rock Lobster”. The song is so loud and so fuzzy that a part of me begins to jostle, begins to awaken.

I open my eyes drearily and slowly begin to register that “Rock Lobster” is coming out in intermitten bursts from my alarm clock. The fan is blowing on me fiercely and my mouth is dry from the constant current of air rippling over me. I still feel enormously at peace, though, and I don’t want to let go of that feeling. I don’t get it too often.

The time on the clock is set at 8 AM and the overly blue morning light is peeking out from behind my window curtains. I have to be at work by 9 AM for the morning sales meeting. It takes about a half hour to drive there, so if I skip my shower then I can sleep for a few more minutes. I know I shouldn’t skip it, I really shouldn’t, it’s been two days already.

What the fuck. The only place my grunginess actually shows is through the hair on my head. I’ll wear a hat. Languidly I slip my arm out from under the covers and hit the snooze button. That will give me eleven more minutes.

I don’t get back to sleep right away but I know it’s only a matter of seconds. My mind races as reflex tries to wake me up and I have to forcibly make myself relax. The shock of the first blare from the alarm clock always gets my adrenaline going. Because of that, my thoughts spin and race around in the darkness.

I can’t stop thinking about work now, and nearly against my own will I find myself making a checklist of all the things I need to get done today. In my work as a Red Bull sales rep mostly this involves making follow up phone calls and targeting lagging areas in my territory with special promotional pushes. High school is going to be back in session this week for most schools in the area, which means we can count on a big boost from the pre-teen and teen markets.

I’ll have to make a lot of calls today. I’ve been slacking a bit this week. I know I can do it, I just need to plunge into it, but I haven’t been feeling like being on the phone lately. Being the peppy Red Bull guy takes a lot of energy, and right now all I want to do is float.

My dreams are a jumbled mess of images with the only connecting factor being the continued sense that I’m floating.

It’s only a bed. Some trick of the mind has spared the normal aches and stiffness from sleep, but it won’t last.

I know it won’t. Just let me live in this moment as long as I can.

This moment is already over. Prolonging it unnaturally will only make you frustrated.

I am going to ignore this.

Of course you will. That’s the whole point of this, isn’t it? To just let sleep take you away from this life. Don’t open your eyes.

Why?

There’s only one minute of silence left from the snooze button.

I can’t help it. My eyes open the tiniest bit and focus on the 8:10 AM staring back at me. What do I do now? Just stare at the clock until it starts up again? That’s insane, isn’t it? I know it’s insane and yet I don’t want to get up. I’m so comfortable here. My bones have found their place of rest. I’ll be ready for the world at some point, just not now. Just not at eight o’clock in the goddamn morning.

I close my eyes, but have to stop myself from counting the seconds until 8:11. I’ve finally convinced myself to stop being on guard, to relax, when that song by The Cardigans comes on, the one that was really popular when I was a kid, “Lovefool”, I think. What kind of radio station do I have this tuned to?

I slap clumsily at the snooze button, missing it the first time before finally finding it. For some reason the snooze lasts eleven minutes. Who decided that? Who calculated that? Eleven minutes means I get one more hit of the snooze before I absolutely have to get up.

That’s pushing it. Will you really get up or will you decide to call in sick?

I could do that, yeah.

You’re already behind at work. Jim is patient with you, he really likes you and you know this, but he has to get up and work just like you.

God, I don’t care. I just don’t care. Someone else can sell the energy drinks to the kiddies. Things taste like ass anyway.

Jim is the one who hired you, who advanced you up from route driver to sales. Red Bull might not be worth believing in, but what about him? He believes in your potential.

I can make it up to him. He’d never fire me.

Maybe HE wouldn’t.

I am at a family dinner now. The idealized 1950’s kind, with dad and mom at the head of the table and the kids on the side. I’m having a plate full of quesadilla for some reason, but it looks less like that and more like someone just decided to barf a bunch of cheese onto a platter and call it a dish.

My legs are hot. I have five of them now and they all represent someone at the table. I have to fulfill the tasks set for me by them. When I do, that leg will leave and my own legs won’t be hot anymore.

You should get up. It won’t be hard.

The smallest leg is Suzie and she wants a table centerpiece full of flowers. As soon as I realize this then her leg leaves.

This is an annoying dream, isn’t it?

It is, and I’ve gotten rid of Junior, who only wanted his SAT scores (2400? That can’t be right.) but I think Suzie is back. Her leg feels smaller though, and I can’t see her…

Do you prefer this life over the one you’ve created for yourself?

I think so. The father leg is lecturing me about going into the space program and the mom leg has left to clean up the dishes or something. One of the other legs is still around but I can’t figure out who it is or what it wants.

If you don’t have the get up and go to be an astronaut then there are plenty of other people who do.

The father leg is talking to me but my legs don’t feel so numerous or hot anymore. I feel the breeze from the fan but I shove that thought away as quick as I can, before I realize that I’ve awoken. Too late. I can’t see the father anymore, but he still exists beyond where I can see. He is still there.

We’re still talking, you and I. You refuse to leave. It’s a sign of laziness and no one is going to believe whatever excuse you give when you show up late.

I’m so comfortable, though. I’m so frustrated. I just want to sleep, why can’t I be allowed to just sleep? This is obviously the way I was meant to be.

Do you believe that?

I’ve always believed that.

The alarm is on. The eleven minutes are up again.

No it’s not, I don’t hear any music or anything loud or…just under the torrents of air buffeting my ear there’s a tiny voice. The radio station must be between songs. The alarm clock isn’t tuned exactly to the station, so washes of static occasionally run through the DJ’s speech, but I can hear it. I could just leave the alarm clock if it’s going to be this quiet. I can sleep and ignore it.

You’re going to sleep until you feel like getting up?

That’s what I’m going to do. I’ve decided. The world can run without me.

Slothful.

Whatever. No one will truly miss whatever I was going to contribute to the world today. Comfort awaits me as soon as I slip into dreaming. This is how everyone wishes they could live their life. Master of their own fantasies, sheathed in comfort without care or responsibility. If you put the human race to bed, we’d thank you.

Truly?

Of course. Can’t you feel the gentle touch of this existence? Who does not envy such a thing?

What happens when you pass into sleep?

Then the physical world falls away and I am truly free.

This is what you want?

More than anything.

Then I will give this to you.

I’m giving it to myself.

Open your eyes.

The marginal buzz of the alarm clock once again enters my awareness, but I can’t hear anything coming from it. Maybe the DJ is talking quietly and I can’t hear him over the fan?

“Sleep”, a voice calls from the alarm clock. “I am coming.”

“What?”, I whisper weakly. I am obviously on the edge of sleep, where the real world and the mind mingle in odd and sometimes unsettling ways. Still, I might as well shut off the alarm clock, otherwise it might wake me up again.

“I am coming”, the clock says as I reach out towards it. I pause and suddenly I hear a slow progression of heavy footsteps on the wooden steps outside my door.

NOW I am awake. “Who is it?” I demand roughly.

“You will recognize me.”

I jump out of bed and unplug the alarm clock. Outside, the steady footsteps draw nearer. Desperately, I search my room for anything that can be used as a weapon. Anything at all…

Then I realize, the voice coming from the alarm clock…it was my own.

The door to my bedroom creaks open.