Sleep Tight

Chapter Six: Dream III

The brightness of my phone blinds me, but the light is heavenly.

I can't believe I've had it in my pocket this whole time. For what has felt like multiple hours, I've been locked in a cement room with only a lit torch on the wall. It's dark, musty, claustrophobic—I feel like I'm gonna suffocate. And despite my calls for help and a few desperate punches to the walls, nothing has changed. I don't even have a recollection of how I got here; I just am.

My arm hair stands on end. I try to use my phone, but my fingers are clumsy. They hurt from the futile punches (the pain is subsiding fast, though), and they shake from trepidation that whoever locked me in here will appear.

With the screen lit up, I see a single message on the lock screen:

The water stings.

The words have no meaning to me so it's easy to brush them off in an instant. But I can't open my phone past the lock screen with that message plastered on it.

At first I think it's my sweat messing with the thumbprint. I rub my thumb on my shirt till it's no longer clammy, and press it to the home button.

It still won't read.

I try again and again and again. Nothing.

I restart it and vanish into darkness when it goes black. Turing it back on feels impossibly long. I spam the "on" button as if it will speed it up—it doesn't. Sweat from my forehead drips onto the screen. The screen finally lights up and I press my thumb to the home button. Nothing. Nothing. NOTHING.

My face twists, creating wrinkles like bark on an ancient tree. My eyes burn with tears, and as they do so, it feels like my skin is pulling away from them. I've finally broke.

Suddenly, the cement room disappears from around me and I'm completely blinded. My eyes burn for a new reason now. An intense light. It's so bright that squeezing my eyes shut doesn't bring blackness, rather a blotchy red and orange.

It takes multiple minutes, but I flutter my eyes open for brief periods, familiarizing them with the light, then shut them because it's too painful. I repeat this at shortening intervals. My eyes water like a faucet, but I'm beginning to gain vision through the pain.

At first, I don't understand anything around me. Not only is it bright, but it's scorching. The heat felt nice when I first escaped the cement room, but now I feel sticky with perspiration. My cold sweat has turned hot.

My senses are overwhelmed. Everything, including the ground, is severely reflective. My skin burns. The air is salty. A roaring sound surrounds me; a familiar sound, but it seems impossible to be true: waves crashing.

Through tearful glimpses at the ground, I'm able to see what I'm standing on. Sand. It twinkles like Christmas lights beneath my feet. I wipe the tears from my eyes and shift my shoes in it. It's just like the sand I've seen on California beaches during summer break. It's soft, fine, tan.

Slowly, I lift my head. A harsher area of light hits me and my eyes water profusely. I avert my vision to the sand, then through squinted eyes, look back up.

An endless expanse of water is in front of me.

The water is blue, so blue, tropical blue. Waves tease at the sandy shore and crash against rocks sticking out of the water. The sound would be soothing in any other situation.

I look around me. A small island strands me in the middle of an ocean. A single palm tree stands in the center of the island next to a rotting, rickety shed. The island is similar in feeling to the comic books types with a stranded skeleton leaning against a palm tree.