Mi Luna

Masquerade

You glance at your alarm clock. 5:05AM. Damn! Too early to get up for work yet too late to really relax and let yourself fall back asleep. You pause for a moment, weighing your options. To sleep more or to just admit defeat and get up? You are doing a 9-5 shift at the local cafe, and while you are wide awake right now you know full well you will have a hard time staying awake later on. "A hard time staying awake at a coffee shop too!" you mentally added and smiled. Undecided, you get up and trudge a sleep-stupor trail to the bathroom in your little apartment. Ha, little is more of an understatement. More like a small room to you, perhaps. But, you can afford it, and you have your independence. "If only independence was free," you sighed out loud and stepped into the bathroom without flipping on a light. You know your way well enough in the dark, and the boogeyman only lived in your closet if you left the door ajar at night.

You use the toilet and begin washing your hands absentmindedly. A strong, sour smell starts emitting from the sink, and it is so powerful that you can even detect it over your perfumed hand soap. Your lips pinch together in a tight grimace and wrinkle your nose in disgust. "What the hell is that?!" Drying your hands on a towel by the sink your left hand immediately goes seeking the light switch. You can feel the switch brush against your fingertips when you see something out of the corner of your eye reflecting in the bathroom.

A startled gasp escapes your mouth, and you look directly in the mirror. Nothing. You stand there as if daring the apparition to show itself again. The first wisps of morning light caress the eastern sky in the bathroom window, but your apartment has become eerily quiet and still. You no longer hear the comforting hum of the fan in your bedroom nor your white noise machine churning away a faux ocean. The hair on the nape of your neck begins to stand erect, and those once forgotten childish fears of the dark and creatures in the night come back to life. A little more frantically, your hand reaches up to the light switch again desperate to cast away the fear eroding your calm.

"Mi luna ..."

You leap slightly as if the whispered voice was spoken right behind your left shoulder. Gooseflesh breaks out across your arms, but you attempt to regain your calm and laugh at yourself. Shaking your head, you chastise "Don't be a wuss!" You turn on the faucet, fill your hands with the coldest water the tap can produce on short notice and gingerly splash it into your face. Cold drops of water fall from your nose and chin and plop down into the sink. You get a sensation that you are being watched, and instinct tells you that a tempted gaze up into your bathroom mirror at this moment would produce a real phantom. A looming figure is standing there shrouded in the darkness except for glowing, ochre orbs in place of It's eyes. "Don't look. Don't you dare look!" You grip on the edges of the white porcelain sink and your knuckles turning a matching a white by your death grip. The chilling voice calls to you again and your blood is kissed with ice.

"Mi luna ..."

"What?" you retort, unsure to who or what you were speaking.

"Sleep," the voice urged.

"Like hell!" you call back into the darkness defiantly. The butterscotch orbs fixed upon you burrow into your soul and weaken your resolve. You cast a tepid laugh into the dark. "No thanks. I'm good! Believe me, when a disembodied voice calls out to me in my bathroom in the middle of the night, sleep is the last thing on my mind."

"Your humor isn't appreciated nor wanted. You WILL sleep." The clown's voice wasn't requesting any longer but commanding, and as if hypnotized you turn and walk out of the bathroom back to your bed. You burrow under your covers. Keeping your eyes wide open you pull the covers up to your chin and tremble in fear. Your eyelids become surprisingly heavy as if small weights were tied to them and slowly begin to fall shut. Realizing what is happening, you snap your eyes back open in protest.