Excerpt: Hitting Those High Notes

I tossed and turned. Sleep was just not coming; this was to be expected though. After all, I was sharing my bed, something I was never exceptionally comfortable with. Abby was a nightmare ‘roomie’, she sang in her sleep. No, I am not joking. I had heard far too many mediocre renditions of Lady Gaga’s Poker Face and Beyonce’s Single Ladies to be mistaken. Luckily enough for me after she went into REM for a second time she stopped and I had managed to steal an hour or two of sleep until I was awoken by the cold. Abby was a duvet hogger too. So, at half past five I was about ready to hit Abby, my own bed was the only place I could actually get a decent night’s sleep and she’d ruined that.

I got out of bed choosing to ignore the fact Abby was still sleeping and I apparently also chose to ignore the fact I had a sprained ankle. “Son of a dancing hamster,” I muttered as I plopped back down on the bed causing Abby to shift and mumble something unintelligible about orange marmalade and pancakes. An odd combination, I thought to myself as heaved myself back up placing most of my weight on my good foot. I grabbed my glasses off my desk and I managed to make it to the door without waking Abby up but the creaky door was my downfall. After opening it and hearing its deafening creak in the darkness magnified in the silence, I looked back towards my bed and saw her eyelids flutter.

“It’s too early,” she moaned and pulled the cover over her head as I slipped out. I made my way to stairs with out too much difficulty, it was nearing dawn and there was limited light on the shadowy stairway. I clasped the banister firmly in an attempt to avoid falling or slipping on something and counted the steps. One, two, three, four, I thought. My eyes were trained on my feet just in case the twins had left something strewn on the stairs. Six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, I thought. I reached the final step and walked across the landing to the other flight of stairs. I counted each step on the way down the second flight of stairs. My eyelids felt as if they were sculpted from stone, I fought to keep them open; the stairs wasn’t the best place to fall asleep!

I reached the hall with out incident, I hobbled to the kitchen and collapsed happily on the couch smiling. I sat in the dark and silence for a few minutes with my eyes closed before getting up carefully to switch on the light. The light, which illuminated the room, was comforting for some strange reason; I pondered this as I made my way back to the couch and switched on the TV.

As you’d imagine very little was on television at twenty to six so I settled for a documentary on the Discovery Channel. I tried to keep my heavy eyelids from falling but this task was easier said than done. I must have dozed off because I woke with a start when I heard footsteps on the stairs.