There's a real kind of fear to sleeping when those 3am thoughts come to find you during the middle of the day. They stalk you like the beast you deny and they follow you to your bed and they wait. I don't know how they do it.
Waiting was always the worst for me, wondering what would happen at the end, wondering if anything would happen at all... waiting is no problem for the beast. I think it likes it.
You fight and fight and at the end of it all a sweet monster whispers honey in your ear to drag you under. Into sleep. The realm where rules bend and break and bed our demons with twisted smiles on their face.
Another night. Another ocean. The beast is a shark. Brilliant lights of green and blue bounce off the walls and they calm me enough that I don't think about how strange it is for me to be on this netting, suspended from the ceiling like the kind that held my childhood stuffed animals. I always thought spiders would live in there and fall on me while I slept. Couldn't kill them because their families would avenge them.
Would my family avenge me?
My hands tighten on the roped lattice of net beneath me as the shadow of the shark passes through the tank. I'm surrounded by tanks. The one below is open and as afraid I am that the rope will break the sharks don't seem to care.
Wake up with a start and blue-green lights bounce off the walls of my mind. I miss the shark. I miss the tanks. I wonder if I'm asleep on that netting, what am I doing here, is this real?
The next night there is no net and there is no tank. The sky is big and open and there are no blue-green lights. Only ash. It coats everything and I can't spit it up like the words I regret saying to you. No regrets. Keep walking.
Follow the script.
We barely make it across the rope bridge, covered in ash, and there it is. The tank. It's big this time, square, there's only one. Audiences roar in the stands around it and everyone is there. I just want to take a closer look.
There are sharks inside.
The slope is so narrow but if they let me get close it means it's safe, doesn't it? They wouldn't watch me walk into the fire, no one would have the hate in their heart. Not like me. I slip and scramble.
The sharks don't notice me, they swim in the water like shadows too real and too close to look away from. The water feels like silken sheets. I'm awake.
I miss the sharks. I want to go home. Can someone tell me where home is?