It was now 4:30 A.M. He had climbed into bed at midnight. He rolled onto his right side, one of the five positions he was comfortable in, and closed his eyes. After a few minutes, he checked the clock: 4:41 A.M. He moved to his stomach.

This was nothing new to Larri. For years his insomnia had harassed him. Most nights if he got three hours of sleep he was happy. Twice a week he would drink a few beers. If he got drunk enough--when he went to bed--he would fall asleep immediately. Those nights would provide the sleep he needed for the week. He had used over-the-counter drugs, and they had worked. But Larri was an intelligent individual and didn’t have an addictive affectation in his psyche. Besides, he swore to himself--one day--he would find a way to conquer his insomnia. A way to shut down his mind at the appropriate time and sleep normally.

The alarm went off, and Larri jerked awake. He had finally managed to get some sleep the night before, but it wasn’t enough. He hit the snooze button. He had learned over the years that once he fell asleep--even though he would wake many times during the night--he could always fall back to sleep. It was the initial crossing into oblivion that provided agitation.

The alarm sounded again, and Larri hit the snooze. It was his morning ritual to stop the wail of the clock fives times, at the bare minimum. He had gone to sleep specialists, all of who had given him a number of ways to fall asleep. Each of which had failed. They could find nothing medically wrong with him; other than percentage-wise he had a greater ability to remember his dreams. Larri could recount dreams vividly and in exquisite detail every morning. He could even describe dreams he had as early as pre-school. The doctors used this information and pointed to R.E.M. sleep as the most likely problem. Beyond having more memorable dreams than an average person has (their best theory was that the only sleep Larri had was R.E.M. sleep), they could find no solution to his disorder. After many years of insomnia, Larri agreed with his doctors. Falling asleep for him was nothing like the easy float into nothingness the relaxation techniques described, it was more of a plummet. That drop was what kept him awake. The other thing that baffled the experts was that Larri never had a nightmare. He had his share of strange and confusing dreams, but none were ever scary or disturbing. Larri secretly thought that this was because his subconscious was so happy that the he was sleeping that it didn’t want to ruin it by startling him out of his slumber.

The alarm went off, and Larri slapped the intrusive device. This was the time of his most vivid dreams--nine minutes of them. Each time he was awakened, Larri would continue the same dream he had been having, but incorporating subtle differences before going back to sleep. He smiled as he slept, relishing the nine minutes of fantasy he would have. Knowing it would be more to his liking this time.

The next night found Larri in bed sleeping contently. It was 2:04 A.M. In and near a trashcan by his television were the remnants of a case of beer.

The alarm reverberated. Larri stirred, but did not wake. The buzzing of the alarm worked its way into his hallucination. “…This is our finest unit. Listen to it hum. This baby is the best air conditioner money can buy…” Then he was awake. He groaned. These mornings were the worst. He had slept more than normal, but with the hangover, he needed more. He hit snooze, and was once again in an alternate realm, but it was looking better.

After the seventh slap, Larri finally dragged himself out of bed. He wanted, craved, absolutely needed sleep, but he had too much pride, to much self-esteem to call in sick. He hadn’t done it before, and he wasn’t going to start now. Not from lack of sleep, he was used to it.

Larri was in bed that evening, earlier than normal, but still unable to sleep. As always when he was exhausted, he assumed he would sleep immediately. Like every other time--even though his entire being craved it--he just couldn’t seem to settle his thought processes down enough to relax. He sighed and moved to his stomach. With such a great need for sleep, why couldn’t his mind act like it did in the morning when he had to get up? A thought struck him. He focused all of his attention on this morning, when his mind was so ready to accept rest. Slowly a hallway appeared in his mind, and he walked down it. He stopped at the end, and opened the door in front of him. He stepped through and dropped. Somewhere deep inside his subconscious, Larri knew he was falling asleep. His body spasmed as he snapped back to reality. For some reason, if Larri knew he was falling asleep, he wouldn’t. He somehow had to trick himself into not knowing.

He rolled to his left side. It had been an interesting thought, but he still couldn’t hide it when he was taking an obvious path to oblivion.

After a long day of work, Larri came home and didn’t even bother to go to bed early. He knew what the results would be. He would feel better the next day if he went to bed at a normal hour, even though he didn’t sleep any more. But if he was awake, he might as well do something productive. He used the term ‘productive,’ because there was nothing remotely worth watching on television after 2 A.M. Even though it had been rearranged a few hundred times, his house was immaculate, and his Internet bill was high.

As he climbed into bed, he lamented that his experiment the previous night hadn’t worked. But as he well knew, his mind was very active in the early morning game of alarm-tag. Then it came to him. He was trying to be at a point where he craved sleep. That meant his mind was animated and not prone to true sleep. When he went to bed the night before was the key. He concentrated and pushed his mind back to the last thing he remembered: lifting the sheets…snuggling up under the covers…positioning the pillow just right under his head…a fuzzy vision of warmth washed over him…he slept.

Larri woke the next morning with the first real sleep he had experienced without alcohol in a very long time. He stretched, then turned off the alarm before it had a chance to perform its duty. He smiled. As he did each morning, he reflected back on his dreams. He frowned. His drift through limbo had only offered what had happened to him two days ago. Almost event for event, the day had been relived. Larri shuddered. It wasn’t such a horrible day that he didn’t want to go through it again, but he only wanted to relive those things he chose to. He never wasted memory on the unimportant, and now he knew he had. He sat up and threw off the sheets, but he couldn’t escape the feeling he was doing it exactly as before.

Staring at the ceiling, Larri decided that his attempt at sleep had worked, but only partially. He wasn’t willing to sacrifice his day, haunted by shadows of ones he had already lived just for the sake of rest. His day had almost become the nightmare he never had, trudging through something over and over, unable to break free. All this while, going through his normal daily routine was too much for him. He couldn’t simultaneously experience the present and the past and hope to live out a functional life.

Then it came to him. He had successfully found the key to sleep, but he had relocated in the past, what if he aimed his intentions forward? Larri jerked upright. His mind was swirling. Saturday was the next time he would drink. What if…what if he projected himself into that night’s rest?

He fell back to the bed. If he were to do this, he had to pinpoint the time. When did he go to bed on Saturday nights? It varied. Sometimes it was early, sometimes after dawn. Larri rubbed his brow, then curled up in the fetal position. All he had to do was pick a specific time and make sure when Saturday rolled around that he would be in a proper sleep situation. 2:30 A.M. That was the proper time.

Larri closed his eyes and pushed towards his designated sleep relocation. The visions behind his eyes calmed, and the sights slowed from a frenzy to a crawl. He felt himself drift into a type of serenity he could remember, but never experienced. There was no drop, no plunge into oblivion, but an easy float. As always, he walked down the hallway, but when he opened the door, warmth enveloped him. He promptly slept.

The next morning Larri felt good, very good. He showered and dressed before giving his dreams a thought, but when he did, it almost floored him. Before, he felt like he was doing something he had done before. Now, he felt like he was going to do something. The feeling kept with him the entire day, and that night he decided it wasn’t too bad of a thing. Sensing what was going to happen before it did was a gift. That night he repeated his relocation to sleep. The next morning he felt the same, only MORE same. Quizzically, he went to work, unsure of what to expect and quite pleasantly surprised. Even though he was experiencing recurring events that hadn’t actually happened yet, today he felt a step ahead of what was transpiring around him. The day went well. Very well.

The next day went even better. He was living something that he had dreamed for the third time now. Each day, he was getting better at it. It was like hitting the snooze button in the morning when he could alter a dream more to his liking. He knew what responses would be, including his, and now could refine events to work perfectly.

Larri smiled to himself. He had found the key to the future, AND he slept amply enough to capitalize on his newly found innovation. He grabbed his pillow and kneaded it for a second or two. Regardless of how his slumber passed, he knew he would enjoy it.

Two months passed, and Larri was at the top of his game. His career was moving faster than he could imagine, his social life was booming (he had a girlfriend for the first time in almost 2 years), and he felt--for the first time ever--that his body, mind and soul were finally synchronized. His house gathered some dust, and he lost touch with his chat room friends, but he didn’t care. Life was too good.

Before going to bed one night, he checked his schedule. The nights of drinking were clearly marked. Through trial and error, he had been able to convince everyone involved in his life that he had to have Wednesdays and Saturdays free. He tapped his pen against his lip. What if I relocate a week ahead? His body jerked, but he kept the pen from puncturing his right eye. What if I relocate a month ahead, or even a year?

Larri got a drink of water. His plan had been working flawlessly. Did he really want to alter it now? He sat back down on his bed. If it had worked 2 or 3 days ahead, why wouldn’t work 2 or 3 months in advance. He looked at his planner and scribbled in the dates. “All I have to do is make sure I’m drunk on these dates.”

He picked a seemingly harmless week and decided that would be his vacation. He circled the Wednesday of that week and wrote 2:30 A.M. Larri nodded to himself, “This is my new relocation.” He lay in bed, snuggled up and pushed his mind to the date he had picked. The tunnel appeared before him, and he casually walked down it until he reached the door. He opened it and stepped through.

The drop was not the plunge of his former insomnia; it was not the float of the described techniques; it was the step into sleep that he had always had with his relocation. This time, instead of images gently melting into harmonious bliss, they swirled into a fiery chasm of pain and agony. Then there was nothing.

Larri Knight lay in his bed facing the ceiling. His body stiffening, as his cold, lifeless eyes faced forward, staring at nothing.

© 2009 Ravenai