Shadows

Chapter 1: Sleepless

I woke up.

For a brief moment, I was panicked, unsure where I was or what was happening.

Everything was dark, unidentifiable.

I couldn't feel a thing.

No sensation at all.

There was a nothingness.

Silence.

Nothing moved.

Nothing happened.

There was nothing.

But then, in an instant, a crack, a flicker of something unknowable, a flash of color, and I came crashing back down, and my senses were inundated with stimuli. I suddenly felt the mattress beneath me, the blood rushing through my veins, the air pressing down on my skin, my wife sleeping peacefully beside me, and I knew that I was at home.

I was in my bed.

It was nighttime.

I wasn’t quite sure what had woken me.

With caution, I sat up, trying not to disturb my wife’s slumber, and stared around our dark, little bedroom as best I could.

Moonlight filtered in through the curtains, illuminating only the wall across from me. Everything else was only barely visible, hidden in the dark.

The door to the room was still closed, as were the windows. Nothing seemed disturbed. I couldn’t hear any strange sounds. Nothing was wrong, as far as I could tell.

Only silence.

Though there was no immediate threat, my body still felt tense, alert. A lingering feeling that something was wrong. Some primal part of my brain was telling me not to relax, not to let my guard down, for there was still some danger present, even though I couldn’t tell what it was.

Something had awoken me, after all. I was never one to wake up for no reason.

More silence.

And more nothing.

My eyes blinked and I yawned deeply. I glanced at my wife, who was completely unaware of whatever was troubling me, still fast asleep, before returning my gaze to the wall opposite the bed.

I sat there for some time, watching the shadows, vigilant, still on edge.

Nothing happened.

And, as more time passed, I began to relax. Whatever had woken me up obviously wasn’t anything to be concerned about.

Figuring I must’ve just had a bad dream or something, and, without any real reason to stay awake, I decided I might as well try to get some shut-eye before morning came.

I yawned again and laid back down, and, after a while of listening to my wife’s gentle breathing, I fell back asleep.

_________

I woke up the next morning in a daze.

It was a struggle to actually get up and to open my eyes, but once I did, it felt as if I hadn’t slept at all. I was actually more tired than I had been last night.

After a few moments, I yawned and crawled out of bed, but stopped when I noticed that my wife had already gotten up. She always liked to sleep in on weekends, and I was normally always the first up of the two of us, so it came as a genuine surprise that she was already awake.

But then, my eyes slid over to the window and the sunlight pouring through the glass, and then over to the clock on my bedside table.

It was almost noon.