EVER HAVE ONE OF THOSE NIGHTS?

Have you ever had one of those nights? You know the kind that never ends, when you keep waking up and you don’t know why? When you think you’ve heard a noise and then you wake up and you don’t know what it was. And then you can’t decide whether or not to get out of bed to investigate.

Have you had one of those nights when your body aches and the air is still-to-stultifying, so that your nose plugs up and you can’t breathe? So you roll over and the other nostril plugs up too, and you roll over and now both nostrils are plugged up and you throw yourself onto your back and gulp for air through your mouth. Now your throat gets dried out and you’ve twisted and turned so much that your sheet keeps flopping over your face like a kidnapper’s cape.

So you get up and pace till you can breathe again and though you don’t feel sleepy, you’re weary and you know you must get some rest, so you climb back into bed, stepping over the blanket you’d long since tossed to the floor.

Then you lay there, and you lay there, determined to relax, so determined that you’re actually tense. Finally, some time in the wee hours, sleep overcomes you, unbeknownst to you because you think you’re still awake but you’re really dreaming—and you wake up screaming at the man in the dream.

Or did you ever have one of those nights when your bed partner snores? (Aha! Got you there.) You push your partner to a side-sleeping position and the snoring stops, so you snuggle up, maybe spoon position, maybe leaning your back on your partner to prop yourself up. And as soon as you get comfortable, your partner shifts positions. So you wiggle and squirm and get settled again, arm wrestling the sheet off your face again. And your partner starts snoring again.

And all this in the same night! And yet there is more!

You start hearing voices—through the wall. Home from a night on the town, these voices are talking and laughing loudly, and you listen in but all you can hear is a disconnected word or two here and there with no context and no syntax. And you lay there wishing them all dead—the way your body feels.

So you bang on the wall and pummel your pillow and flop. Your bed partner grumbles and frumps. And now you’ve been laying so still on one side, your pillow plumped up so much that your spine resembles the bottom arc of a wagon wheel and your shoulder is aching and hot, but you persist in relaxing until your whole arm goes numb and you’re forced to shift positions, which wakens your bed partner and he or she rolls over—and promptly resumes the drum roll of snoring where he or she had left off last time you’d wakened him or her.

Life gets tedious, don’t it?

By now dawn is breaking and daylight filters through your now itching red eyelids, and just before the real sleepers’ alarms start jangling, you swear the stars that twinkle are crackling and hissing like the Northern-lights. Or is that your ears ringing?

So you lay there, panting with exhaustion, craving sleep, real sleep. You’re so tired you actually doze off. You did, didn’t you? How can you be sure? You struggle up on your elbow, your neck aching, to see the clock. It’s four a.m. and you can’t get back to sleep, but you’re determined to do just that. You lie still. You wonder if you should get up anyway.

And while you lay there thinking about it, you can feel old age settling in.

Next thing you know you’re wakened by the snort of your own snoring. You roll over, feeling dead to the world. But the world is out there. And it’s not satisfied with that. It just comes on in. It comes as the sound of doors slamming, car doors slamming, car engines starting up, car engines revving, cars driving off—in annoying succession, waking you each time.

Finally, sleep.

But the young punk next door pounds out, slams his car door, powers up his souped-up charger, revs it like a diesel truck labouring up a steep hill with an overload, slams it into gear, and screeches along the driveway to the pavement, up the street, around the corner and what should have sounded like into the distance.

You’re ready to sanctify killing.

You go through the tortuous business of twisting around to see the clock. Six-thirty and no bed partner, who long since had given up and retired to the couch.

You go back to relaxing, from the toes to the heels, up the calves . . . there’s still time to get that quarter-hour of restful REM sleep.

After about five minutes you give in to temptation and you sneak a look at the clock again. That can’t be right. You squint. You blink. You try to get some tears washing over your dried-out eyeballs. Yep. It’s seven-thirty. Now how did that happen?

You hope that this is not insomnia, because if it is, you might just as well have got up and written a story about it.

So, do you give up?

But, hey!!! Wait a minute!!! All those cars—the neighbours were going to work!!!

You bounce out of bed and step off, only to be stopped by the pain in your shoulder, your neck, your upper arm. You shake it off, get into the tub, take a quickie shower, get dressed, and grab your car keys.

You reach for the door knob. Your bed partner’s voice stops you. “What?”

“I said, where are you going?”

“To work, I’m gonna be late, g’bye.”

You slam the door behind you.

Something clicks through the slot from the back of your brain to the front. You reopen the door. “What did you say?”

“I said you don’t have to work today.”

“Why not?” you ask snappishly, feeling annoyed.

“Because, silly,” says the calm voice, “You’re retired!”

“Oh. Oh yeah. Eh-eh.”

“Besides,” adds your partner, you’re sure, with mischievous glee, “It’s Saturday.”

Your body sags with fatigue. You settle for breakfast and wonder: How in the Hell are you going to get through the day?

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So, did you ever have a night like that? And that wasn’t even a night when you had this and that and the other to worry about. That was just a night.

Oh. Wrong question. What DO you do when you get a night like that?

--Bryce the Third