Night Terrors (a bit of flash fiction)

Waking from a half-remembered dream, my mind struggles to orient itself, like a drunk concentrating on trying to walk a straight line while actually staggering in all directions. I lie motionless, swathed mummy-like in blankets against the cold. I will myself not to look at the clock, something that invariably kick-starts my mind. If I look, I won’t go back to sleep easily.

2:37 am.

My thoughts shudder slowly to life, wondering fuzzily whether I really need to use the bathroom, how many hours until I have to get up. Since Bryan left, I often wake in the night and as always, I listen to the creaking sighs of everything gradually subsiding from relative warmth to chilly silence until the next furnace cycle. Outside, the wind alternately shrieks and murmurs in its restless quest for something, anything to liberate from its place and relocate in the neighbor’s yard half a mile away. I remind myself to figure out what makes that persistent banging and begin to drift off with the lull in the wind.

The next sound I hear is the low grumble the back door makes when opened carefully.