Forty Winks

Rising from a deep sleep, Will could see nothing but lab coats rushing about. The pale faces above them were hazy and seemed only to blend into the intense white light overhead. His vision was still blurry from the medication and the room was spinning about him slowly. A sharp, nagging pain beckoned his attention. It was coming from the back of his head, just on his neck. Attempting to discover the source, he tried to lift his arm only to realize that it wouldn’t move. His arm seemed to be weighed down considerably. He wasn’t paralyzed, for he could still feel it. Nor was he confined to the table, for there was nothing tying him down. It must be another product of the drugs. He recalled being told of a muscle relaxer given “to aid in the neural extension process.” He tried again with all his might, and was barely able to lift his right hand. Flinging it back behind his head, he attempted to feel around his neck. Seconds later, his heart stopped as he felt a smooth, round metallic object protruding from directly above his spine. He opened his mouth to shriek but only silent horror emerged. What particularly struck him about it was how cold it was. It felt as though this freezing metal insertion was buried deep into his brain, sending magnetic shivers throughout his body. “Dr. Stevens, control your patient!” he heard a vague voice echoing through the air. As the shriveled, naked body lay shaking on the hard table’s surface, he suddenly felt another sharp pain. This time it was that of yet another injection. Moments later, Will was fast asleep. Again.

Hours later, he opened his eyes. There was no way to be sure that it was hours, this was only an assumption. It could have possibly been days, or perhaps only a brief interval of minutes since his latest fit of slumber. This time he could feel his eyes adjusting to the luminosity. He must have been in a different room. The light was a more subtle orange and soothing to his sense. It was also warmer, as he appeared to have been wrapped in a long beige blanket that made the hard table surface beneath him slightly more comfortable. Upon scanning the room with his eyes, it appeared to be empty. No people, no machines, no instruments. Nothing. Just four pale walls with a small gray door directly across from him. It must have all been a dreadful dream, he thought. After all, that is why he was here; for his dreams. He recalled seeing the advertisement in the paper for the first time. It must have been a week ago, assuming it was still Friday now.
Having Trouble Sleeping?
Get Cured AND Paid Top $ For Insomnia Study

He had seen this sort of thing before. Will was normally not enthusiastic about such “scientific mumbo-jumbo,” as he called it. This was different though. He needed the money, and this study was offering him $15,000 upon completion. The weekend was spent mulling over the possibility. He hated the idea of taking two weeks off from his job to become a guinea pig. “There’s no telling what these eggheads would do to me,” he thought, “and hell if I understand the first thing about scientific research.” But the second he would look into his daughter’s eyes, there seemed to be no question. He would do it without thinking. After all, Sally had held up her end of the deal, recently gaining acceptance to a top university. Now he had to ensure that he could provide for her education. This was his promise to her. She had always been an exceptional student, but with her mother’s sudden passing nearly three years ago, school became the least of her concerns.

That is about the same time when Will could no longer sleep. He was haunted constantly by the severity of the event and its effect on his own life, but more importantly, Sally’s future. If the pain of loss was too much for a grown man of his stature to endure, then what of his weak and delicate flower? It was simply not fair for such a vulnerable child to have her mother ripped away so violently. What’s more, her father was powerless to do anything about it. He watched helplessly as his wife boarded that fated flight, bound for her parents but concluding at a final destination only miles from where it left him and Sally standing, all at the hands of a few men, professing their love for the Creator. Why was it so necessary to destroy for that love? That had become Will’s burning question. He dared not bother with names he couldn’t pronounce or countries he had never heard of. In fact, the television had become a dusty relic in their home during the months that followed. Solace for Will and Sally would not be found in dwelling over the facts of what happened or plotting future vengeance. Nor would it be found in prayer. Church had seldom been a point of gathering for their family, and beginning to do so at such a desperate time would only appear selfish and hypocritical. Will did consider himself a spiritual man, but in his “own way.” Professional care was of no help either. If anything, it resulted in more harm than help. A number of times in the weeks that followed, Sally would come home bursting with tears, following sessions with the school therapist, until finally an irate and animated Will stormed into her office, prohibiting her from ever speaking to his daughter again. “That crazy shrink gets her kicks off of screwin’ with these kids’ heads,” he had bellowed. That was then.

Three years with barely any sleep would find Will slightly more open to fresh alternatives. Perhaps if he were somehow cured of his insomnia, Sally would find some normalcy in her home and be disposed to finally move on. What pushed him over the top, however, was evidently the money. He had left the meeting with Dr. Gilman on Monday afternoon, still only half-convinced of this supposed experimental treatment. With or without a cure though, he had figured, Sally would be taken care of. By Thursday afternoon, the decision was final. Notice was given to his supervisor at the phone company, who gladly gave Will the two weeks off. He then turned in his truck and had Sally pick him up from work. The ride home, where news of his latest endeavor was broken, was one he would never forget. As he spoke, Sally pursed her full lips nervously, an old habit of her mother’s that she had formed only recently. He would often look into her face and lose his train of thought. She has gotten thinner, he would tell himself. And her face was as dead white as he had ever seen. Its only sign of life seemed to be the strand of brown hair hanging delicately in front of her, dancing to the tune of the autumn breeze.

As he had expected, she voiced her reservations about the news, knowing full well that he would never have considered the idea were it not for her. She also knew that once her father had made up his mind, there would be no way of convincing him otherwise. Even her mother had never stood a chance in that situation, and neither would Sally. The following morning, he bade her good-bye, and gave her the contact information of the facility though she would not be able to visit until after the treatment was complete. His last words to her, as always, were on the tip of his tongue but could find no voice. In spite of all they had gone through together, Will was simply not the expressive type. Countless nights when his roving thoughts afforded him no sleep, she would find him sitting upright on the living room sofa. He would apparently have been dreaming of some horror –sometimes while wide-awake—and she would discover him in a cold sweat. She would proceed to tell him of her own fears, finding no shame in being so vulnerable. Speaking endlessly of thoughts and emotions, she received a reply only in deed, as her father would wipe her tears and hold her until she slept peaceably in his arms. In between memories of her lost mother, her principal fear would be revealed as that of losing her father as well. And all the while, it would only have taken a simple reassurance, even an empty one, to bring a sense of security back to her. Will could never bring himself to make that promise. Her mother had not planned on abandoning them, but someone somewhere decided that was to be done, and so it was, without any hesitation or thought to past words or pledges.

Time seemed to have stood still. There was no sign of life in the room aside from his own steady breathing. With the regularity of a clock, the perpetual rhythm of uninterrupted exhales were Will’s only sign that he was not in suspended animation. He became pensive. What did Dr. Gilman mean when he said the answers could be found in dreams? Will had never mentioned his recurrent nightmare once during their brief interview, but apparently the doctor presumed it to be the cause of his distress. It was not, though. After all, Will thought, the nightmare emerged only after he couldn’t sleep, not prior. It was always the same one, with slight variations every now and again.

It began with Will arriving at a typical jobsite, repairing telephone lines in the rural areas outside of the city. He would climb to the top of a telephone pole in the middle of a vast clearing with no buildings in sight. Reaching down for his tools, he would hear the deafening sound of a jetliner approaching at a very low altitude. The pole would start to shake, and he would drop his tools to cling tightly to it with both arms. Suddenly, as the airplane would be just overhead, he would feel the pole becoming unearthed, moving steadily upwards. With the wires ripped away, the pole would travel swiftly, higher and higher, until he could no longer see the ground beneath him. Curiously, he never felt the least bit afraid of this abrupt elevation, or more precisely, he would not have the time for terror with what happened next. Before he knew it, he would become eye-level with the plane, as it hung in the air, not moving an inch forward or backward. He had a direct view into the cabin, through a nearby window, where the present chaos was ensuing. He could clearly see the men, four of them, dark with trimmed beards, holding small, shiny objects from which everyone else seemed to have backed away. Suddenly, he would see her. His wife looked exactly as he had left her at the airport, except her face was struck with grief. There seemed to be a tense discussion underway, but Will could only see the men’s mouths moving and the facial expressions of the passengers becoming very grave. Up to this point, the dream was always the same. Next, however, he would begin to hear different voices, which oddly enough, did not appear to come from inside the plane, but at the same time matched up with the facial movements of the four men. The words were different each time, but the message was the same.

“No one is safe,” one would say. “They are all victims of their own ignorance.” “Let us not forget the greater good.” “Would you rather die on your feet or live on your knees?”
It was like something he had heard somewhere before, in a far off time. Perplexingly, the voices had a perfect mastery of the language, which somehow betrayed the alien features he noted on the men. The voices were somewhat muffled, as though he were not in the same room as their sources. Finally, one of the men would turn toward the small window, look directly into Will’s eyes, and say, “even you cannot save her.” The woman would then turn around, but rather than his wife, Will would now be looking straight into Sally’s distraught face. This is as far as the dream ever reached. He always awoke before it went any further. Always with a racing heart. Always in a cold sweat.

In the countless months that this has occurred and reoccurred, Will never once attempted to decipher the meaning of his cruel vision. He assumed it was simply his mind working overtime, or at any rate, trying to conquer in his sleep what he could not while awake. The baffling ending in which his daughter appeared was dismissed as simply the result of her attempting to wake him in the moments prior to the dream’s conclusion. The pain of these incidents was not in their vivid reminiscence of the terrible tragedy. Nor was it in the constant reminder of the terrible void left by his wife. Rather it was in the clashing of obstinacies. The more Will seemed to rebuff this apparition, the more regularly it appeared. It was like trying to bury an unnamed horror deep into the earth, only to have it surge back to the surface by a newly tapped spring. And the deeper he would dig, the fiercer the spring would gush it forth.

There was no telling how long he had been lying on the table in the bare room with thoughts wandering. He seemed to recall his earlier mishap and just then a shudder of panic went through his whole body. Is it still there? He wondered. Lifting his arm again, this time more easily than the last attempt, he slowly began to approach the back of his neck. He was mere inches from discerning the reality of his experience, separating truth from falsehood, cold cognizance from itinerant dreams. But without any warning, the door flung open. The sudden movement shocked Will, who until that moment had been sitting in perpetual stillness. His arm quickly returned to his side. Two men walked into the room. They were both in dark suits, but only the first wore a tie. Their expressions were as plain as Will had ever seen, giving him no indication of whether harm or good could come of them. The first approached him slowly, and seemed to stare directly into Will’s eyes, curiously, but without any particular interest. The second man strolled through the room aimlessly, observing everything placidly, except for Will.

These are certainly not doctors, he thought to himself.
“Wh-who ..ar” he began, finding his voice terribly weak and stunted. “We’re here to help you, William,” interrupted the first man. “We understand you’ve been having trouble sleeping since the unfortunate tragedy of your wife.” “y-yeah, s-so you know why I’m here. What now?” he asked, clearing his throat. “Well,” the man moved in nonchalantly, “we’d like to make this problem go away, but we need your help to do it.” “I-I don’t understand,” responded Will, “I told the doctor everything, and I thought I’d already begun the tr-.” “Not everything,” the man interrupted solemnly. “We’d like you to think back, before any of this, before Sally—before that plane went down. Something happened; you know it did, as do we. We just need you to tell us what you know.” “I’m not sure what you’re asking,” a confounded Will replied. His head had begun throbbing since they entered the room and he could not grasp what it was they were looking for. “Yes you do! You know exactly what we want. What did you hear, William?”

Until that moment, the man’s voice had been very monosyllabic, almost tranquil. But now it was clear he had quickly lost his patience. The other man, who had yet to speak, leisurely lit a cigarette, and turned his back to them once again. In fact Will would never be able to recall his face, having barely taken a glance at it. “N-nothing. I swear. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!” a suddenly frightened Will responded. Several more times, the same question was repeated, with more vigor and insistence than the time preceding it. And each time Will professed his apparent ignorance. Tears were beginning to swell in his eyes. It had been years since he cried. “Christ. 96 hours and he’s still as dumb as a post,” his inquisitor finally muttered under his breath. “We’re done here. Let’s go,” whispered the other man, his first words since entering the room. And with that, they were gone.

Will was still in shock at what had just taken place. He took a moment to try and process it, but when he could not do so, resorted to piercing screams. “I’d like to leave now,” he yelled. “You can’t do this to me!” “Get me out of here!” He climbed off the bed slowly, attempting to stand. His legs were too weak though, and he collapsed onto the ground. The shouting continued for some time, until the exhaustion of the moment enthralled him. A strange scent had begun to fill the room since his outburst began. “I didn’t sign up for this,” he mumbled to himself before finally dozing off on the cold white tiles.

More sleep. It had become a sadistic cycle. Pure rest came to Will’s body for the first time in ages, but it was simultaneously coupled with the tormenting anxiety over his present state of mind. What had he gotten himself into? At present, the game seemed more dangerous than he had ever anticipated. This time he arose to the sound of the door creaking. The lights were off in the room, and he found himself back in his makeshift bed. The opening of the door let in a small streak of light, with which he saw the mysterious figure enter the room, and slowly close the door. The momentary silhouette was seemingly that of a woman, with long dark hair and eyes wide open as if trying to fully absorb the being before her. He would not wait to react this time.

“What’s go-” he began to demand, but a soft and swift “Shhh” cut him off, along with a hand pressed firmly against his mouth. “I’m here to help you,” she whispered. “Yeah, you and everyone else in this nut house,” he snapped back angrily “You’re an Outlier,” she continued. “When people are brought here, it is because of strong suspicion that they may have somehow come across information vital to national security. Very often, these individuals don’t even know they have this information, probably coming across it in the course of their daily lives. The DREAMCATCHER is a DoD tool developed to overcome that unfortunate technicality. In most cases, if the ‘patient’ has any important information stored subconsciously, the DREAMCATCHER can extract it. Every so often, however, we come across cases such as yours, where that information is buried too deeply, so to speak, and cannot be retrieved by conventional methods. Those cases are called Outliers.” “But I don’t know anything! I swear on my wife’s grave, on Sally’s life, I don’t have any information, conscious or unconscious,” he replied, raising his voice in desperation. “The DREAMCATCHER knows you have it, even if it can’t recover it. And they’re planning on keeping you here until it cracks you. You’re probably that important to them,” she concluded thoughtfully. “So how are you helping me then? Can you get me out of here?” “I’m afraid that would be impossible,” she replied. “You have no idea where you are. We can’t exactly just walk out the front door.” “Well then what good are you? You think by telling me some outlandish story about what they’re doing to me, you’re helping me?” “Exactly,” she said without missing a beat. “I’m here so that you can later understand what’s been done to you. I’m here so that you can have a chance at a normal life when this is all over.”

Her words made little sense to him. He wanted to yell at the top of his lungs and reveal his frustration to her and anyone else who might be listening. But for some reason he could not. He did not want to believe her, but he did. It was foolish to trust her but he needed to. “Wh-who are you?” he asked finally. “That’s not important. Just remember this,” and with that, she bent forward and planted her lips on his forehead. Essentially, the kiss was just a diversion, for she slipped something into his right hand and closed it. “Keep it hidden,” she whispered softly in his ear. Without awaiting his response, she turned around swiftly and slipped out of the room. Another streak of light and Will could see she was in a white uniform of some sort. She must be one of them, he thought. Why would she risk her own life for his own? Unless this was just another element of their sick game, feeding him stories in the hopes of getting whatever it is they want. But what could they possibly be getting out of keeping him locked away in this room? Just then he thought of her. His poor Sally. What must she be thinking? Does she even know about any of this? He wanted more than ever to return home to her. How thoughtless and idiotic he was to leave her alone and walk willingly into this trap. Or did he? The peculiar nurse seemed to imply that he was somehow brought into this against his will. Too many questions, and thinking about them in his blank state would get him nowhere. One thing was for certain though, some way or other, he had to get home. This was Will’s final deliberation as his mind faded out of the world of coherent thought and into a foreign place in which he was growing far too comfortable.

There’s no telling how it happened this time; whether it was the drugs, gases, or just sheer fatigue that sent Will into as deep a slumber as anyone has ever known. This interminable progression dulled the line between fantasy and reality. For insomnia is not simply the condition of one who is continuously wakeful; rather it is a state of permanence in the enigmatic world between consciousness and oblivion. Nothing can harm or help while one endures the elements of this place. There is no good or bad, only confusion; no right or wrong, only disorder. Even life and death become towering peaks separated only by the valley of eternal lamentations. During these months, Will had literally transformed into something unearthly, for neither sun nor moon could alter his state of eternal transcendence. Even following his abundant provisions of artificial sleep, he could never return to a previous state of consciousness. His senses were like a shorted fuse. There was no black and white, only endless shades of gray anywhere he could turn.

His latest repose continued for days. When he finally awoke, his beard had grown long and his eyes had trouble staying open for more than seconds at a time. He was back in the original room. White lights and people rushing about. “Ah, he has finally awoken.” It was Dr. Gilman. Will wanted to speak, but words seemed distant and futile. “You and I have plenty to talk about,” the doctor said cheerfully. Within moments, the room was cleared except for the two of them. Will was on his hospital bed, fully dressed as the day he came in.

“With the aid of my treatment, I’ve come to some important conclusions regarding your disorder. It appears as though your condition was created by your inability to cope with the loss of your wife. This, in turn, has caused you to become delusional, often creating fantastical scenarios in your head.” Will tried to speak, but his tongue felt numb and would not move. Primitive grunts were all he could muster. “Oh, don’t try to speak, my dear boy,” the doctor chimed in gleefully, “because of the treatment, it will be about forty-eight hours before the stimulants wear off, allowing you to resume normal bodily functions such as speech. Now, as I was saying. You somehow feel responsible for your wife’s death, although you also know you have no reason to suffer for what was essentially a horrible event completely beyond your control. Your helpless witnessing of the tragedy repeated persistently in your dreams reveals that rather clearly. You have created that situation in which you are close enough to observe it firsthand, yet too far removed to do anything about it. That has given you a feeling of helplessness unlike no other. The metallic implant you conceived while in our care was the first step toward recovery. It was the beginning of the end of your shouldering the unnecessary blame, as this foreign object in you was essentially the result of someone else wishing to do you harm. This scenario, however, continued into the situation with the two gentlemen who questioned you about your foreknowledge of the events. This appears to be a demonstration of your internal conflict between what you now know, but could not have envisioned beforehand. The nurse figure, I presume, is simply a source of comfort and understanding which you have not found elsewhere. With few words, she has come to know you almost as well as you know yourself, including your deepest vulnerabilities. She was also somehow able to make sense of your unending predicament by convincing you that your loss was in reality about something far greater than it appeared. And finally, the Sally figure is a simple case of ‘sensitivity substitution.’ That is, a highly intricate delusion of your own creation to replace what you have lost. In this instance, your wife.”

As those final words were uttered, Will’s heart stopped. He knew speaking was useless, but a longwinded string of howls and grunts persisted as Dr. Gilman rushed frantically to calm him down. “I know this comes as a shock to you. It is something you have believed for far too long without question. You do not have a daughter, Will. You never have. There is no Sally. I’m sorry. Why don’t we just get you home so you can get some real rest?”

The shock Will felt at that moment could not be adequately expressed even if he had been able to speak. In fact, the unintelligible noises that emerged from his throat said all there was to say about what he felt. He did not believe it. Sally was real. She was his daughter. She had always been there, he could not simply have made her up. She existed in as much as he did. But wandering desperately in the world between consciousness and oblivion, there was not much Will could do. He desired badly to go home, but upon his arrival, was afraid of what he was deep down certain to discover. A house with no Sally. Not a trace of her did he find. Everything he remembered of hers was gone; vanished in an endless instant since walking that vanquished line. Or was it ever really there?

By nightfall, he had not moved, lying awake and asleep. Fidgeting slightly, he noticed some thin item fall from his pocket, to which he proceeded to release one final howl before a dying silence filled the air. He kicked the chair from beneath him and from it fell a crisp dollar bill. On the bottom corner of the note the words THIS IS REAL were written in thick black ink. With the chair fell his last grip onto the slippery slope of life, while an unyielding rope above welcomed him into the arid gorge of death. Will would sleep once more.