...of a black room

He was now feeling completely wide awake, and for a moment was afraid that hours of sleeplessness lay ahead of him. Then the silence began to act as a drug, soaking into his nerves, and he lost consciousness. When he woke up, his throat was dry. He went to the refrigerator and found a carafe of pineapple juice. He drank direct from the container, delighted by its coldness and astringency. The watch showed three fifteen. He went back to bed trying to remember a dream about a waterfall made of pink water. His head felt heavy and confused, his thoughts running on with a life of their own, like a radio set picking up several stations at once. But he slept as soon as he lay down. When he woke, he knew had had been asleep for a long time; he felt the heaviness and dullness that comes after too much sleep. His mouth was dry again. The silence and the darkness brought on a sense of timelessness and unreality. The natural tendency on awaking is to look at the time, at the weather, to think ahead to what has to be done. This timeless silence frustrated the sense of expectation.

[The Black Room, Wilson, C.]

- submitted by Pearce, M. A.