Meltwater - Writing - Sleepless Sleep

Many years had passed since the last time he had slept in his childhood bed. It was one of his rare visits to his family home in the city of Cardiff. He was surprised to see his bed was in its usual place, even with the same old duvet covers which had comforted him through many a youthful year. But, as comfortable as it was for him to be lying in the protective wraps of his childhood bed and as weary and tired as he was at that late hour, he could not sleep. The journey home was always a hard and tortuous enterprise, eternal in his longing to see old familiar faces and family. Fatigue held his body with its leaden grip and all he could do was to lay and listen in the umber darkness of the room.

As he did, his mind ticked around in an unchecked fashion, jumping from sleepy idea to sleepy idea. At that moment he was thinking about clichés. He thought that many times the best words to describe a situation, or explain an experience, were always the most cliched. In the alert languor of his sleepless sleep the words that kept interrupting his wandering mind were, 'The night was dark and sultry'. He lay there repeating the line, taking comfort from the utterances as an expression of his discomfiture. He lay on his back with the duvet covering just his bare genitals and half a thigh. The rest of it draped away from his bed in a scree avalanche of cotton, that came to rest on the rough fabric of his childhood bedroom floor, which, long ago had seen many battles between armies of toy soldiers and action men. Then, the quilt had served as the building materials for dens and caves for his toys, but tonight, it was used to cover his nakedness. Contact with the duvet was not just necessary for him as a shield for his modesty, but as a comfort, as even on the hottest nights he liked to have it close to hand in case the clammy city night should turn chilly and he should need to draw it up over his body to snug his nakedness.

He rolled his head away from staring at the yellow and brown striped shadow that hung from the top of the partially opened blind across his ceiling to above his bed in a dissipating and slopping rectangle, to look out of the partially concealed window and beyond. The venetian blind's slats were half open to allow ventilation from the open window. Beyond, masked by the nights darkness, lay the back garden, the darker back wall, the cloaked back lane and further, the burnt umber silhouettes of terraced houses and chimney stacks that ran parallel to the row of connected houses that his parent's lay in. A fine and misty drizzle was slowly falling, adding to the humidity of the night. Above the row of houses opposite, the sky wore its thick sodium orange cloak, the musty reflection of many street lamps illuminating the clouds up above as well as the dry drizzle kissed pavements below. The air was still and smelt of dust, it moved even less in the room, stirred only by the snores and grunts of his younger brother who lay in the darkened corner.

Distant noises filled the air outside, slowly crawling into the sleepy room, the fondly remembered sounds of his home city. The constant gravel on the night air of the main railway lines, running behind the long terraces a few streets over the lane; the sound of the peacock's crying from the city centre castle, warbling when the still wind was in the right direction and drowned only by the quarter hourly chimes of the town hall clock; and the most distant noise, far out in the heated fog shrouded Severn, where hidden ships gave off the occasional whale like cry of fog horns. The noise was comforting, but sleep was the only luxury that interested him at the moment. It continued to be a far off hope.

It was strange to him, hearing the noises of the waterway, all his life in Cardiff he had lived less than a mile from the sea, but his local surroundings refused to suggest that he was anywhere near the water. It felt silly, he had lived within spiting distance of the sea all his life, only realising it when he had left for the depressing solitude of a far from home English sea side resort. He had thought that with the quite waterside winters he could escape the paranoid anxieties of the big city, but all he found was a different mental anguish. That of being miles from home without friends in a depressing place that wasn't Welsh. He missed his own people, there was something foreign about the English. It was comforting to be home, but as usual, the return to the city brought on the return of the city's anxiety. He sighed, thinking himself as too much a worrier, but he had always been that way and there was little chance of him changing now.

A cold and clammy sweat ran down his forehead, making it more difficult to sleep, on top of that his back was shrouded in a fine sweat, sticking it to the thin and worn sheets of the bed. "The night was dark and sultry", he said to himself in hushed tones, he then thoughtfully added, "and brown, orange, clammy, uncomfortable and cliched".

It wasn't just the hard humidity that was keeping him awake, it was the silent and unnatural noises of the night, above the familiar and comforting sounds of the city. In the quiet of the room they came like thunder, jarring him out of the sleep he was slowly trying to discover. They shattered the dark umber's and ochre's of the room with a frightening intensity. Not one aroused by the thought of some inconceivable or unexplainable supernatural terror, but from the fearful notions that he had carried away from the area since his childhood.

The house was deep in the heart of the city's inner-city, a place plagued with crime and violence and in his home area there had been many burglaries. He had always feared the approach of some unseen intruder upon the house, as he knew it was poorly secured, with easy access available from the back lane for anyone smart enough to climb the low wall. There had been many nights in his youth when he had lain awake listening for thieves until overwhelmed by tiredness. Tonight was to be a repeat of this childhood vigil.

It depressed him to think about the long forgotten past that his Gran had told him of. She had grown in up in the Grangetown area of the city, and it amazed him when she spoke of the kind of community that once existed there, the unlocked doors, the looking out for each other and the general pleasure of togetherness. He was sure that she was looking through rose tinted bifocals, as he could not place that kind of spirit in the place he knew she came from. He wouldn't even think of going into Grangetown at the present without packing a knife, and most of the kids down there now where crack smoking and uzi totting gangsters. It was getting the same all over the city, and as hard as it was to place his Gran's memories of community, in Grangetown, it was equally so in the rest of his home city. He had never known a time when doors could be left unlocked, especially around where his parents home had remained for all his life. It was the nervous return after the long, quiet time away that made him doubly paranoid at that moment. In his languid awareness he felt the anguish of his agitated thoughts keeping the much sought after sleep at bay.

He couldn't place where the short thuds were raucously coming from. There were intervals between them, minutes or seconds, he didn't know, as between the eerie noises he would find himself succumbing to sleep until the intensity of the next reverberation echoed from the vicinity of the back lane. A fearfulness was arising within him. What if the noise was somebody trying to pry open the lane door, or climb the wall. He thought to himself, in an attempt to calm his fear, 'no its too distant for that, its probably cats in the rubbish bins, or...or', his thoughts trailed off. In the still air of the lane he heard voices, low and secretive, plotting in rough Kardiff accents. He knew what to do, he had to scare them off, so he did what he always had to at those times; he got up and went to the toilet, throwing on as many lights in the house as possible. This lit it up like a beacon on a moonless night, as from the outside, the brown silhouetted house shot bright yellow rectangles into the orange tinted, still night air. He thought it would be a deterrent for the perceived night stranglers and robbers that prowled the age old lanes of darkness that his area supported like collapsed veins. He sat on the loo for a further quarter of an hour after finishing his toiletry obligations, aided in his stay by an outdated and crumpled local newspaper that carried more frightening tales of the local crime problem.

He was becoming sleepy sat on the toilet, so he decided that his debarring vigil was at an end. Drowsily he returned to his room, extinguishing the decoy lights as he went. Outside, the yellow rectangles flicked off one by one and the night air once more smothered the house in its oppressive cloak. The mysterious sounds and voices had disappeared, so he turned his thoughts to getting comfortable and to sleep. He sleepily looked over to the murky corner of the room, to the grey pile that was his brother, who lay snoring and in the same position that he'd been for the duration of the night. "Huh..." he muttered, in the direction of his undisturbed brother, "a lot of good you'd be if we were being robbed." He looked at the luminous dial of his wrist watch, its acid green arms acted as an instant soporific. They glowed back the time, quarter past three, echoed by the distant short chime of the city hall clock. He groaned and rolled over, resigned to get some sleep and feeling slightly calmed after his scaring off of the bad guys.

His mind was in a state of half sleep, where the eyes are shut tight but the brain still receives information from outside, when the scream exploded from the back garden. His eyes bolted open and his heart thudded into his mouth, over which an acrid dryness had fallen. His ears strained to catch the tail end of the high pitched scream, high and whining like a baby in a blender. He had trouble making the noises out, for now there was a loud and thumping noises in the room, fast and heavy. He tried to bring some shape to the dark and dingy forms about him. In one corner he could hear a low and rasping sound, above the sonorous thudding. The grating sound was like a grisly backing track to the techno drum thump, thump, that filled the room.

He struggled with his mounting terror to bring some perspective to the room, realising the rasping noise was his brother snoring soundly unaware of what was going on. Now he was fully awake and the beating continued. Suddenly, through the thumping, the scream came again. It was shrill and childlike, resounding from the back garden. The realisation of what made it jumped on him like spring heeled jack, and with that realisation, the thumping slowly started to subside. It was no more than his terror filled heart, in its adrenalin soaked beating, attempting to depart his throbbing chest. The screams were no more than two tabby cats fighting in the back garden. He once more looked to his brother, who grunted his appreciation to the tune of the soulful cat duet in the moist night air, and then for the first time that night, rolled over in his sleep.

The crying continued, but now it was acting as a lullaby, as he once more resigned himself to an earnest journey to the dark realms of sleep. Between the cries and whines of the felines, no other sounds could be heard bar the still movement of the city's slightly stirred dusty wet air and the distant aquatic tomes of the lonely ships. He felt himself being lulled into the comforting silence of his so called 'Dark and sultry night'. Around him the sombre greys and browns hung about the silent chamber, heavy, peaceful and benevolent with the restful atmosphere they produced. He felt himself finally slipping into the beyond, his eyes were shut like lead curtains and through his relaxed state of semi-unconsciousness he could feel his body and limbs shaking and spasmodically jerking, as they broke out the pent up, rigour mortis like, days tensions.

It was at that unmemorable point, before the brain finally slips into its resting dream state, that through his clouded and deadened senses he heard a dreadful scraping noise, right above his head! The techno beat thump, thump, of his heart began again as his fearful body injected adrenalin through his system, waking him instantly. He straightened his ears to try and make out what the sound was. It appeared to be coming from the attic above his room and this terrified him. As he was trying to comprehend what the sound was he remembered that the attics of the whole terrace were connected, making an unobtrusive walkway above the bedrooms of the whole street. Any roof borne intruder could descend into a house at random, to get away with what he could carry through the attic door. The thought of the burglars in the roof made his heart beat louder as he pictured them slowly plying open the loft hatch and this made it even more difficult to perceive what was making the noise. On top of that was the hollow rasping that was emanating from his sound asleep brother.

Through the deafening melee of sounds, the noise in the attic got louder. It was a scraping noise, like a corpse being unceremoniously dragged across the rafters. His heart leapt into the cosy coloured secretions of the room with a pounding fury. The scraping continued for what seemed like a low and grating eternity, every peak in the sound's range cut into his flesh with the intensity of a dull, straight-bladed razor. It continued, as deep beneath his skin imaginary worms and maggots crawled through their red and wet playground. He shook himself to try and rid the deathly feeling. He listened as the noise reverberated ever onwards, until after a flesh crawling and sweat soaking eternity, it began to break into a new sound, high and shrill it came....coo, cooo! "Christ," he said to himself shakily, "It's a friggin' pigeon!".

As quickly as it had came, the beating of his heart and the crawling of his flesh died away, although the deep orange brown humidity still left its mark on his skin. Once more everything began folding in on itself, as the wraps of the profound sleep once more began to enshroud him. As he began to succumb, he was sure he could hear sounds coming from downstairs, but it was too late. Whatever it was that was making the sounds would have to wait, as he was in no fit state to do anything about it. The lethargic tentacles of the sleep octopus had finally smothered him, dragging him fighting to the murky depths of the sea of dreams.

He awoke. It was light out and the room now glowed with the early morning palette of yellows, whites, oranges and pale blues. Golden streams of visible dust-massed sunlight flowed in stripes across his naked face and body. In the corner of the room his brother still slept. At once he remembered the sounds from downstairs, he leapt out of bed and dashed downstairs to check that his parents' uninsured possessions were still there, worry lined his face as he burst into the living room to find......

Everything was in its proper place, apart from the sofa and armchair, upon which sat his mother and three of her female friends, who had almost spilt their coffee with laughter at his naked and dramatic entrance. He immediately blushed and smiled at his scowling mother, made his leave and went back to bed, cursing his paranoid imagination.