Microstory 376: Calm

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Luxury

I know I said I wasn’t going to change the titles for any of these last couple dozen stories, but something happened to me last night (at the time of writing). I’ve always had a sleepwalking problem. I’ve gotten out of bed and tried to do things that don’t make any sense like turning the light on a poster, or looking for markers to write a greeting card I didn’t need. I’ve battled flying monsters and swiped imaginary spiders off my body. This particular episode was the worst it’s ever been, though. I was dreaming that I was sleeping in army barracks. An enemy snuck into my room and attacked. Your brain has this feature that basically paralyzes your body so that when you dream of running, your legs don’t actually move. Sleep paralysis is when your brain walks up without deactivating this feature. Sleepwalking is when the feature deactivates without waking you. This meant that I started fighting back against the attacker. I shoved my little nightstand and TV tray to the floor. On it were my glasses, remotes, jewelry, and this little glass toothpick holder my great grandmother left me, along with a few other things. During the fight, I tried to run out the exit to gather reinforcements. On my way, I knocked my television off the cart, into the wall, and down on my foot. One strange thing about my sleepwalking is that I can’t open doors. I guess it’s good that I’m not likely to end up in walking through traffic, but in this case, it made things worse because I couldn’t escape my enemy. I started slapping the walls, looking for the doorknob, and running into other things. Fortunately I recently moved my bookcase to the other room, because I probably would have thought it was a staircase. I finally woke up to cuts, bruises, and a shooting pain in my shoulder that’s still here. Sleepwalking has many causes, but in my case, it comes out of stress. I have a lot of responsibilities, and I’ve made a lot of mistakes that I’m trying to correct now. I’m feeling rather overwhelmed about it. A truly happy person is not completely free from stress, but they also know what calm is.

Life Extension

Microstory 6: True Story (so...NOT microfiction)

So, I have this sleeping disorder that causes me to sleepwalk, but it's really intense. I never think I'm in a different place, or anything. I always think that I've woken up. But the truth is that the dream I was just having bleeds into reality. I will spend a minute or two compelled to do whatever while gradually realizing what's going on. Last time, whatever I was dreaming about gave me the impression that there was something painful on my face. I don't know what it was, but it caused a burning sensation. I jumped out of bed, stumbled into the bathroom, and even turned on the light so that I could rub off the mysterious substance. Then I woke up and went back to bed.

Today, I drove a palette over from the warehouse to assembly. There is a gap between the truck and the dock, so we drop this dock plate to connect them. It's super heavy and cumbersome. Once I was done unloading, I lifted the dock plate by myself and ended up stepping right through that gap. I lost control of the plate and ended up smashing my face into it as I fell. But not just anywhere on my face. No. It was the exact same spot that I was trying to get the mysterious acid off of while I was sleepwalking the night before. Who says I can't tell the future?