He was in that state where you’re not quite asleep and not quite awake, where sometimes you wake yourself by shouting a word that isn’t quite a word. Then he sat upright in the bed and called out, “Sarah?” He remembered that she was gone. He struggled with the feeling that there was a dream he should be able to recall.
He stared at the glowing numerals on the alarm clock, fumbled for his glasses on the bedside table, then looked again, and a third time. He pulled out the drawer. Nothing there to explain this disquiet, but it was somewhere to place his attention.
He crossed the braided rug to the bathroom. He splashed water on his face, half-dried it on the crusty towel he’d left on the edge of the basin. When was that? Thursday? Times and days had become muddled as soon as he boarded the first trans-Atlantic flight.
Back in bed, it took him several minutes to remember that he’d taken off his glasses to wash his face.
Note: This is a fragment that I wrote in today’s Spectrum Center workshop, “10,000 First Drafts.” The exercise was to reuse something from an older piece of work. This began with the first sentence, which I salvaged from a story that never went anywhere beyond the first couple of paragraphs. I’m not sure where this is going next, but it felt like a good start.
March 17, 2008—I’ve added something more to this story.
March 25, 2008—See also Exercise #49.
I don’t know what happened to the story that never went anywhere, but this one certainly is. I like the sense of disorientation and confusion you describe. So, what’s the rest of the story?
This one certainly is…going somewhere? Or also going nowhere? 🙂
I don’t know the rest of the story yet, but I plan to work on it some more.