1
Somebody calling my name. Too far away. Obscured by the confusion of murky dreams. Nothing seems as it really is from beneath the membrane of sleep, just as the light and the colour and the sounds of the surface world are not the same to that beneath the sea.
I don't even recall what I was dreaming. For a time even the sound of my own name made no sense. I was hearing another language altogether, or maybe I was trying to block it out. Maybe I had been an eel, no different to that which I had witnessed muddying the waters of the pier that one recent day. Just one senseless part of a greater writing mass, seeking meaning, or maybe happy for a complete lack of.
Gradually 'Steven,' began to mean something as the dream changed shape, colour, tone, sound, touch. She began to sound familiar, her hand pulling me out of the depths, snatching me from this silly troubling feeling that I did not belong where I was.
'Steven,' she now hushed, her hand gently rubbing my bare shoulder. I inhaled my first breath in what felt like a lifetime, opened my eyes to the stinging wetness of saltwater. Sweat, not tears. Covering me from head to toe. Oily, hot, suffocating in its own strange way.
The room was dark but as I rubbed the blurriness and the wetness from my eyes, I could see the faintest shade of blue touching the bedroom blinds.
'Mum?'
'You were having a bad dream, nearly shouting.'
'I'm sorry,' I murmured.
'It's not your fault,' mum assured. 'I'd have let it run itself out but you stopped breathing.'
'Ughhh...' I groaned. 'I've soaked the bed. What time is it?'
'Half five,' she groaned also. 'I've got to be up in two hours.'
'I'll get up and shower,' I said, sitting up at the edge of the bed. 'I'll make sure you don't sleep in.'
'Are you sure you're okay?' mum asked sleepily. 'Poor baby...'
'I can catch a nap later,' I assured her as I stood up unsteadily before shuffling out of the room.
2
Fresh from the shower I dressed down in a vest and loose drawstring shorts for the morning. I had my writer's group to attend at noon. Before then I wanted to air out and relax, and not much else in particular. Over coffee I checked my emails in the dining room study. 7AM came quickly, and with thoughts of waking my mother for work, other thoughts...
Barefooted I climbed the stairs, the warm sunlight of a more promising morning coming from the bathroom window, painting the landing in a vista of golden beams pushing back the shadows of night, their residue clinging on in jagged black streaks amid the texturing of the white artex walls.
It was my turn to gently shake her awake now. In the fading dark of the bedroom, her golden hair a mess of troubled rest, her eyes still behind heavy lids, her open mouth pouting, I heard no sound, no breathing, and stood deathly still as I made out the gentle rise and fall of her chest.
Helpless to stop myself, to do anything else, I bent down, brushed the hair from her brow, and kissed her forehead, causing her to stir. Again Sara lay still, and again I kissed her, this time over one shut eye. Again she stirred, took a deeper breath, awakening.
'Seven o'clock,' I whispered, kissing the tip of her nose. Mum's eyes tightened shut, crinkling the bridge of her nose, and mischievously I kissed the tip of her nose again. Mum rolled from her side and onto her back, her unfettered breasts rolling to join the rest of her at their own pace, but beneath the covers I saw only a trace of their outline.