Chapter 10: What My Soul Does When I Am Asleep by Stephen Simpson

January 03, 2024

Chapter 10: What My Soul Does When I Am Asleep by Stephen Simpson

My feet are pushed against the white metal locker next to his bed, and the book is open on my thighs. The large windows on my side have no curtains, but the tempered glass filters the harshness of the sun. Shards of light shine on my body while small dust particles party in the rays of sunlight in front of my eyes.

His face looks pale against the white pillow under his head. His dark auburn hair hangs in little tufts across his forehead, and I want to smooth them back, but I do not dare. The sunlight makes me feel a little drowsy. After my extra weird dream last night of looking at myself, I struggled to fall back asleep. I did not really want to fall asleep anyway. I am sure I heard somewhere if you dreamt of seeing yourself in a dream it means you are going to die, or you are busy dying. I wish I knew what was happening. I feel as if I am going to go a little—a lot—crazy.

I focus my attention back on the black on cream words on the paper book in front of me. I try to read a chapter a day to the comatose boy, but I am also really getting into the story now, and each chapter ends with a serious cliff-hanger, so I usually cannot wait to start the next chapter each day. I refrain from reading when I am not at the hospital, and even leave the book on his metal bedside table. It is strange, but it feels special sharing such a nice experience with this boy lying on the hospital bed next to the chair I am sitting on. A stranger, really. It still freaks me out how his eyes pop open whenever I enter the room each day as we arrive for visiting hour, but a couple of nurses have explained to me, he is not doing it voluntarily. It is just muscle spasms. Also, they say, it is possible he might not even be able to hear me or the story I have read so far, but there are so many contradicting evidences of people in comas, and they say it might help. I hope with all my heart it does. I hope it makes him feel wanted and appreciated, not abandoned and all alone.

I must confess, the other day I could not help myself, and I lifted his folder from off the trolley across the foot-end of his bed. I made sure my mum and dad’s backs were turned my way, and I did it quickly before I sat down and kept the file on my lap.

From where I was sitting my parents could not see the folder on my lap, but my grandma had her face turned to me. She was smiling an odd smile. The one side of her mouth went up, and the left side remained fixed in a downward curve. Her eyes were twinkling and the look on her face was urging me to open the folder and to have a look, but I could not do it. I could not flip open the file. My thumb strummed against the cardboard and flicked it up. As it fell into place, my thumb flicked it up again. I waited for my grandma to look back at my mum and then I quickly put the folder back on the table where it was before curiosity almost got the better of me.

I did not need to know who he is anymore. What his name is did not bother me anymore. I like him whether I know his name or not. Whether he knows I am here or not. I did want to know why nobody ever came to visit him.

Soon visiting hours are over, and we go back to my grandma’s house.

Isaac and I have slowly worked ourselves through the stash of old-school video cassettes stacked in the corner of the lounge, next to the large wooden unit on which the television stands.

My mum cleaned the small cottage, and now when we walk in through the front door, we are no longer greeted with a musty, damp smell. It now has a vague lemon smell, which is comforting to me.

After lunch, I pack the dishes in the dishwasher, wipe all the counters and make sure the kitchen is clean and tidy. As I turn to leave, I discover my mum on my grandma’s computer.

“You got the password?” I ask her as if she kept it a secret from me.

“I did,” she mutters without looking up from the screen. “I have to sort out some stuff for your grandma.”

“Can I go on after you?”

She does not give me an answer.

“Can I?”

She is concentrating on the words on the screen in front of her.

“Mum? Can I?” I beg, letting my voice lift a little on the I.

“In a moment,” she says without looking at me, and her fingers start to flutter across the letters on the keyboard.

Behind me, Isaac says, “Me too, Mum.”

He is now going to spoil this opportunity for me. My mum already looks as if allowing me to go on the computer is going to only happen after I have to convince her of my disconnected feeling to the world and my friends. I am hoping to guilt-trip her into allowing me onto the computer, but now that Isaac also wants to go on, she will not give in to either one of us.

I turn around to look at Isaac. “Why do you need to go on?”

“I just wanna check on some stuff.”

“I have to do something important.”

“I don’t care about your important stuff.”

I admit, at times there are moments I feel the need to strangle Isaac. Not that I ever would. He is just so infuriating.

I sit down on the chair beside my mum and wait for her to finish what it is she is doing. I glance at her every now and again, in between scrutinizing my nails closely. They need a trim.

My mum’s fingers stop their tap dance on the keyboard, and her eyes move in my direction, her face still turned to the screen. “What, Gaby?”

“You said I could use the computer after you.”

She looks confused. “Did I?”

“Yeah. Just moments ago.”

“I don’t want anyone else to use the computer. You know how your grandma is, and she doesn’t like other people using it.”

Isaac laughs in the background. He says in a parody voice as if he is mimicking an old scary movie, “People are hacking me.”

My mum reprimands him, “Not funny, Isaac.”

“Yes, it is,” he insists and then he bursts into laughter again. He holds his arm wrapped around his waist as he laughs. Apparently, he finds his own joke beyond hilarious, even if the rest of us do not even register a smile.

I choose to ignore him and ask my mum again, “So can I quickly use the computer? I won’t be long; I just want to check what my friends are doing.” I make my voice sound sad and sulky. “I am really missing home.”

She looks at me long and hard. I can sense her thoughts race around inside her head as she bites the inside of her cheek. Eventually, she pushes away from the table. “Ten minutes. And don’t download anything or click on any links. At all.”

I smile. Not too happy. “I won’t, Mum.”

As she slides out from behind the computer, I slide in to take her place. I am filled with a feeling of indescribable bliss. A feeling of connection is right beneath my fingertips. Soon, I will open the portal to my existence. I click on the Facebook icon and then log in to my account. The red numbers above my message icon far exceeds the numbers above my notification icon, but I do not have time to read through all my messages, and I just do a quick scroll by on my news feed. There have been some parties, movie nights, Amber is bored stiff and wants someone to talk to her on SnapChat, Rosie and George started dating, Craig broke his leg. I like and comment on a couple of things until my chat box pops open at the bottom right-hand side of my screen.

Peter: Where you at?

Gaby: Australia.

Peter: Why?

Gaby: My Grandma’s sick.

Peter: That sucks!

Peter: You left without saying? It’s been a month without a word from you!

Gaby: There was no warning.

Peter: We had plans!!

Gaby: I know. I’m sorry.

Peter: When will you be back?

Gaby: At the end of summer. Hopefully. My Grandma will be coming home with us.

Peter: It started raining the day you left.

Gaby: There’s no sunshine when I’m gone :)

Peter: Right!

Peter: I thought…

Peter: Never mind.

Peter and I have been doing the ‘I like you—I don’t like you’ dance for years now. He has always been in the same classes at school with me. I go to a mostly all-girls school. It used to be only girls until they decided to integrate some boys as well during my first year at Grammar School. With only five boys in a school with over five hundred girls, the competition is stiff. Then, out of the blue, he asked me out on a date a few days before we had to fly across the globe to another country, sixteen thousand, nine hundred and seventy-three kilometres away from home. I was excited and agreed to meet him at the movies that Saturday. I really, really like him.

I hesitate before I type. Just do it, my mind insists.

Gaby: Is that movie night thing still on when I get back?

Peter: Yes.

He does not say if he waited for me or not on the day we were supposed to go to the movies. I am not sure if I should apologise. What if he did not wait long? What if he was not even bothered that I did not show up? I would rather not know.

Gaby: Great.

My mum walks past me to the kitchen and says, distracted, “Be quick, Gaby. I still have some things I want to do on there.”

Gaby: My mum’s kicking me off here. Gotta go. Bye. TTYL

Peter: Txt me.

Gaby: I’ll try.

Quickly I log off from Facebook before I can see if he replies and I have the compulsion to reply again. He will probably be dating someone else by the end of summer anyway. No use depressing myself about it right now. I quickly search for the forum where I found DarkHorse the other day, and then I log in.

Confused_Soul: DarkHorse? Are you there?

As I wait, I scroll through the other topics on the forum and see he is talking to another couple of people about their own weird dreams.

Then he replies.

DarkHorse: I wondered what happened to you.

Confused_Soul: I don’t have long. Just want to say we had to leave in a hurry. Sickness in the family. I’ll organise to make an appointment with you at your office when we get back.

My mum calls from the kitchen, “Two minutes, Gaby.”

I do not wait to see if DarkHorse replies and I quickly log out of the forum.

“All finished,” I call. “Thanks, Mum.”

I walk back to the kitchen as Isaac starts whining, “Can I go on, Mum?”

Leaning closer to my mum, I quickly peck her on the cheek. “I’m going to have a quick shower before we head back to the hospital.”

Her eyes glance up at the kitchen clock on the wall. “Be quick.” She puts her hands on my shoulders and turns me back to look at her. “I’m sorry about all of this.”

I frown at her. “It’s not your fault.”

“I know, but I still feel a little guilty you have to be here and not at home, spending time with your friends.”

“There’ll be other summers to be bored in.” I smile up at her. “Don’t worry about me. Are you okay, though?”

“I’m okay.” She forces all the air out of her lungs in a long sound and then takes a deep breath which lifts her shoulders. “I am glad your grandma is going to be okay, and I am so grateful she was awake when we got here.” She leans back against the kitchen counter behind her. “It would have been just awful if she was still unconscious, or even if she was…” She clears her throat. “When we got here.”

“I know, Mum. But everything is going to be okay now. Next week they’re starting all that Physio and stuff, and by the end of summer she’ll be able to go home with us.” I smile encouragingly.

I cannot image the scenario if my grandma was dead when we arrived here that day, a little more than a month now. It would have been just horrible.

Isaac calls from the lounge area, “So can I, Mum?”

She replies as she turns away from me, flicking the switch on the kettle, “Five minutes only. And I am serious, only five minutes, Isaac. I have things to do.”

I turn to leave the kitchen, and she asks me, “Are you still having those strange dreams?”

“I am.” I am not sure how much I must say. I do not want to trouble her even more than she already is. She has enough to worry about at the moment. She looks tired, and there are deep, dark circles under her eyes.

She looks me in the eyes as if she is looking for something deeper. Something other than me just talking crazy. She wants to see if there is any crazy in my eyes as well. Empathetically, she says, “You know dreams are just what they are—dreams. Things and images our minds amuse themselves with when our bodies are doing nothing else. The things we dream aren’t real, and they are not reality. When you dream and you think your soul leaves your body, it is most probably an idea or something you picked up subconsciously after you read a book or watched a movie, or even heard somebody say something. You should not let it bother you as much as you do.”

“I know, Mum. It’s okay, and you really don’t have to worry. I'm okay now. Most of the time, I do not even remember my dreams anyway, and the ones I do remember are just too weird to even consider as being real. I was just being silly, believing my soul left my body after I went to sleep every night.”

She smiles, relieved, and then turns back to the kettle. “You just have a vivid imagination, that’s all.”

“I know,” I say as I walk out the room.

In the bedroom I am sleeping in, I get a change of clothes and my toiletries. The shelves in the bathroom have been wiped clean of dust and circles of shampoo and bath soap, and the rim of the bath is now clutter free. It is not stacked with empty and half-filled containers anymore, so I have a place to drop my towel, without having to worry if it will get soaked when I have to leave it on the floor.

As I wait for the water to warm up while holding my hand under the spout, I wonder if my mum is right. In our modern society, everything is based on actions and we are always rushing toward one place and thing or another, but when we sleep, we are mostly inactive, and in one place for about eight hours a night. Is my belief of my soul leaving my body only a flaw in my personality? Maybe I have not been dying every night; maybe there is just something wrong with me. I vaguely remember my dream with my grandma where she basically compared our brains to computers, and maybe I have a virus or there is a glitch in my thought processes and in my brain. Maybe my code was written wrong.

When the water feels right, I pull my clothes from my body and step into the shower. I let the warm water cascade over my body and for a couple of minutes, I just let it wash over me.

My dreams are so real, so vivid, and most of the time I know for a fact I was there, doing those things. I know for certain it was not a dream. Even if I do not remember my dreams clearly, or what I did for the eight hours I am asleep, when I wake up there are a couple of seconds where I feel a little disorientated and I know it was not a dream, because how can a dream feel so real? I must stop telling my mum about my crazy dreams. As it is, she does not believe me and will most certainly start thinking I have a mental disorder or something, and besides, she did not really need the extra worry right now. Maybe I am just dreaming, and my mind is making the dreams more important than what they are. It cannot possibly be real anyway, and I should stop worrying what it could mean because it is probably nothing at all. Even if at the time when it happens, it seems profound and has in a way started to alter my beliefs and also my reality. Suddenly, I wonder if my soul is immortal, a part of me, the most important part of who I am, will I somehow survive death?

Annoyed with myself, I quickly wash my hair and my body and then step out of the shower cubicle. I rush through drying myself and get dressed. I walk out of the bathroom in a haze of fog, just as my dad comes out of my grandma’s bedroom to the left of the bathroom door.

He looks haggard and tired, beyond the tired sleep can fix.

“You okay, Dad?”

He smiles. “I’m okay, Sunshine. Did you leave me some hot water?”

“It was still boiling hot when I got out.” I smile back at him. “There’ll be more than enough for you, as well.”

I walk past him to the bedroom and then start to dry my hair.

Thoughts fill my mind, even though I try hard to concentrate on my hair instead. Most religions believe in the idea of a soul, so the mere idea of a soul must be important. Some believe our physical view of the world and everything around us is an extremely limited one, and that the dimensions of reality are much wider than our current ideas will allow us to believe. Even greater than our mind can ever imagine for it to be even remotely real.

Admittedly, a part of me is interested in the idea of my soul travelling to places and meeting people, even though I do not remember them when I am awake. I have always been fascinated with all things supernatural. But then another larger part of me is afraid, because I know it must be a little bit like dying or what if I am leaving my body vacant for perhaps hours at a time without me even being consciously aware of it? What if an evil, menacing spirit decides to squat in my soul's vacant home?

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