Excerpt: Somniverse

In those final fleeting moments of consciousness, Todd tried hard to hold on to the knowledge that sleep was here and that he needed to dream. He needed that to be normal since the rest of his life seemed to be falling apart all at once. He repeated the word dream in his head as consciousness slipped away, giving way to rest and dreamless sleep.

Sometime in the middle of the night, Todd bolted up on his couch screaming. He wasn’t quite sure why he was screaming, or even what he was screaming for that matter. The sounds coming out of his mouth felt primal, guttural. Intense fear and panic surged like adrenaline through his body, pushing him up off the couch in an instant.

Before he retired to the couch earlier in the night, Todd turned off all of the lights in his condo except the lamp in his bedroom on his nightstand and the lamp on one of his end tables in the living room. As he bolted up from the couch, he instinctively began flipping every light on he owned. Over head lights, closet lights, lamps… every light had to be turned on or else. He wasn’t sure what that else was, but the consequences of failing to illuminate the condo felt dire.

A minute into his rampage, Todd’s senses returned. He looked around the apartment at the lights blazing back at him, then down at his hands. He had new scratches on his wrists and forearms.

“What the hell?” he said.

Todd sat down on his couch and stared at the scratches. Had he injured himself that badly while sleeping? He had to be dreaming for something that intense to happen. And what the hell was that feeling when he woke up? He’d never felt that helpless nor had such a sense of urgency about something as inane as lights in his life.

A glance down at an old Entertainment Weekly magazine on his coffee table sparked a memory. On the cover, Julianne Moore was positioned in some sort of contortionist pose with a co-star in a movie she was apparently starring in… something recent. It wasn’t the movie he was thinking of though. Her hair sparked the memory… red hair. It made him remember something or someone. Where had he seen someone with red hair recently? Had he dreamed it?

He shook his head, made a tour of his condo turning off all the lights he’d so diligently turned on, and went to bed.