I screamed. “Help! Help!—somebody—Help!” I couldn’t move, as often happens in these situations. I wasn’t tied to the bed. Nobody had a gun to my head. The only person holding me back was me. “Help!” I squirmed and shook, my head rolling around the pillow as if it were full of spiders. Yet I couldn’t lift my head. I knew what was happening, too. I was conscious but not, between both worlds, dreaming and sleeping. “Help!”
I could hear somebody in the hallway trying to pick the lock to my door. “Help!” Footsteps crept on the wood floor. The door to the fire escape clicked shut. I saw a man fiddle with the window beside my bed. “Help!” The roof over the staircase blocked the light from the city and kept his face dark, a face shaped like an old friend. I wondered if he was dead. Where was I? He might be dead. Nobody would have told me. Even if they wanted to, my phone only accepts iMessages and death threats from the utility company. Maybe he was another friend. “Help!”
It’s five a.m. I’m trying to process all this. Except for a lamp’s bendy arm holding light over my keyboard and the computer’s screen casting white flames on my eyes, the apartment is mostly dark. Beside my desk, I can see my bed through the doorway. I feel haunted. Light coming through a window nobody can crawl through forms an elongated rectangle against the wall above my pillow. The light is red, descending from a tube wrapped around the hotel’s balcony across the street. My apartment looks like a sinister brothel. I live here. “Help!”
As far as I know, I’ve never screamed in a dream before, not like that. I want reasons. An underlying cause must exist. I mean, sure, I’ve been stressed lately, more than usual. My anxiety has been acting up again, stealing my breath. My hands might tremble. I get dizzy. I can’t think. “Help!” I’ve been working fifteen to eighteen hours a day and have a deadline approaching. And I’ve built walls. Let’s not forget about the walls. I’ve carefully stacked books around and on my desk and on top of the desk behind my desk, on the heater to my left, and by my feet. I can barely see over them. They’re on the floor, too, and rise and curve around me and meet the walls I sit between. So many walls. “Help!” Can anybody hear me? I want to know. I want reasons. Could it also be that my daughter received her first phone yesterday? “Help!” Bring me a straight jacket and carve out my eyes. The eyes? “Help!” What will happen now?