PHANTASMAGORIC

HANNAH || Somnambulism

somnambulism, n.

sleepwalking.

Sleep.

Who knew that it could be so suddenly difficult to obtain?

The very notion of it filled Hannah with dread; an overwhelming, almost suffocating sensation that disappeared only in her waking hours. The same visuals plagued her unconscious mind practically every time she closed her eyes. Bolts of electricity streaked across her vision like lightning, bright flashes lending temporary power to the screens that loomed in her periphery. Hannah could never make out any details- she could barely even try to for, as long as she found herself within the throes of sleep, she was paralyzed, completely immobile. It was as if she'd been completely frozen, with the only tactile sensation that remained being the feeling of an impossible weight upon her chest. She couldn't breathe.

As Hannah finally managed to startle herself awake, she inhaled sharply, trying to will away that suffocating feeling. It never went away easily; it lingered until she was up and moving, providing herself a physical distraction from her unrest. She lay still for a moment before turning to face the clock on her bedside table. Its dull green glow was a welcome change from that of her dream. It was softer, familiar enough to bring her back into awareness of her surroundings, but still the uneasiness did not yet leave her.

2:06am.

It had barely been three hours since she'd fallen asleep, and that itself had been quite an effort, given that she was so unusually alert. In the few days that she'd been recovering, Hannah had yet to truly grow tired. She thought it to be vaguely unusual, but chalked it up to the general feeling of discombobulation that had surrounded her ever since she regained consciousness. Everything was ever-so-slightly 'off', and she didn't expect it to change anytime soon. Days and nights bled together, blurring at the edges until they were no longer distinct from one another. Hannah supposed that, out of everything, her sense of time was probably the most affected. Daily life progressed in a slow and almost excruciating daze; pieces of her memory flickered in-and-out of recollection.

Hannah sat up, careful not to make too much noise as she stood from the bed and crossed to the door on the opposite side of the room. Her room was shrouded in darkness- the curtains were tightly drawn, preventing any exterior lights from shining through. The only visibility she had was provided by the face of the dim clock, but she managed to leave the room with little issue, breathing a sigh of relief as she at last closed the door behind her.

It was lighter in the hallway. From the living room, pale moonlight filtered through the windows and onto the furniture, casting strange shapes in its wake. It crept into the hallway, illuminating the door opposite Hannah's bedroom, but leaving her own untouched. She trailed one hand along the wall as she followed its light, stepping out from the shadow that had claimed the very end of the hallway. As she walked, she stared idly at the objects that lined the walls of the apartment.

Perhaps it was the general melancholic feeling that accompanied the early hours of the morning, but somehow Hannah had never realized just how... empty the space felt. There were only a few photographs visible, and they were mostly older. Art pieces filled the areas in-between. Hannah had bought them for friends, or been given them as gifts by those who knew of her fondness for collection. Her own art remained confined to the small, roll-top desk in the corner of the living room, which was currently closed to avoid disturbance.

In all honesty, Hannah couldn't bring herself to look over any of her unfinished pieces. When she'd initially revisited them, the state in which she'd left them had left her mildly unsettled. Lucas had convinced her long ago to stop tearing out pages from sketchbooks whenever she grew discontented with how something was turning out. Instead, she worked over top of them with separate pieces of paper. It was more constructive, he insisted, and eventually Hannah found herself agreeing. As a result, the tan pages of her thumbnails and studies were sporadically interrupted by brightly-colored blocks of paper that had been painstakingly secured onto the original pages. When she went to look over her books the other day, however, she was a bit surprised to find that the majority of the pages had been torn out. She didn't remember doing so, nor did she remember discarding them, but apparently she must have, as they were nowhere to be found.

The few canvases that remained were a different story. Hannah had halted commission work for the sake of focusing on other duties and, as a result, she had little to actually show in terms of what she'd accomplished. Glancing at the desk filled her with the same sort of emptiness that arose from the sparsely-decorated walls; the feeling that she'd been attempting to ignore ever since she'd returned home.

Something was missing. In her home–in her very mind, even–a feeling of unshakeable incompleteness lingered. It perplexed Hannah beyond words- as far as she was aware, her life remained entirely unaltered, and she had no legitimate reason to be paying her anxieties any mind. Besides, she wouldn't have even known where to begin searching for whatever it was that seemed to evade her. Every potential lead fizzled out just as quickly as it had initially occurred to her. A frustrating process, certainly, but she was sure it couldn't have been anything terribly important. Even in their current absence, her friends would have assisted her in filling in the blanks.

Again, Hannah found herself staring back at the roll-top desk. Sighing once more, she walked over to it and quietly pulled the cover open, retrieving her current sketchbook. She kept the majority of those she'd owned in her lifetime, but most were stowed away in the storage room opposite her bedroom. The one door in her home that she never really opened; she had no need for anything within its bounds. It wasn't often that she reflected on her older works- they were made in an entirely different time, when she was in an entirely different, much darker mindset.

She closed the desk top and settled into a corner of the couch, not bothering to turn on any of the living room lights. It was light enough out, surprisingly, to make sense of her surroundings. Hannah opened the book and was once again met with the sight of various torn-out pages. They were removed rather hastily it seemed, and apparently she had not bothered to weed out the edges of the paper entirely, as the jagged remnants of the missing pages were still attached to the spiralled binding.

Looking through the still-intact pages would bring her little clarity with regards to what had been removed, and Hannah was fully aware of it, but likewise she had nothing better to occupy her time in the hours until morning. If nothing else, it would grant her a bit of insight on where her head was at just before those days that she could no longer recall.

In time, if she was lucky, the flashes of electricity and static screens would be once more replaced with dreamless slumber. The almost manic insomnia that currently gripped her would eventually wane, and Hannah would allow herself to fall back into brief exhaustion before settling back into her previous routine. That which she believed to be missing would either reappear, or vanish from her mind entirely, and take with it the feeling of unease that so often accompanies the unknown.

Things would return to normal.

The door across the hall from her bedroom would remain shut.

All that was held within it would remain unseen.

She would not have to be reset again.