Visits
Thirty-eight minutes. Longer than most of my dates.
He comes every night at 3:14. Always at 3:14. More punctual than my mother, than my GP, than death, which we’ll see about.
He sits on my chest. Weighs like an eight-year-old, or a large dog, or a drawer you never open. He stays there, quiet, and waits. I can’t move. Can’t turn my head, lift a finger, scream. The only thing that works is my eyes. And he knows it.
He doesn’t breathe. Or if he breathes, he makes no sound. Like an enormous, patient cat.
“How was your day?” he says.
And I can’t answer, of course. That’s the beauty of it. He asks, I don’t speak. The perfect conversation. Any therapist would charge a hundred euros for this silence and call it technique.
“The guy at work talked to you like you’re an idiot again,” he says. “I saw. I see everything.”
I don’t know how he sees. I don’t know where he goes during the day. I don’t know if he has other clients or if I’m the only one wretched enough to get a visit every night. I’d rather not ask. I don’t want to find out we share a demon the way you share a dentist.
“You should sleep more,” he says. Sitting on my lungs.
That’s dark humor, I suppose. Or sincerity. With him I never know. With him it’s like with my grandmother: she’d hand you a kitchen towel so you could cry and then tell you to stop crying.
Sometimes he talks about the weather. Sometimes he tells me things I never told him but he knows — the name of the girl who left me, the brand of the sleeping pill I keep in the drawer, the exact price of my rent. Sometimes, when he’s been there a while and I’ve gotten used to the weight, he says things I wasn’t expecting. “You’re a better person than you think.” Or: “It’s not your fault.” And I feel my eyes filling up, but I can’t cry because the ducts don’t work, or my dignity doesn’t, or something.
At 3:52 he stands.
Always at 3:52. Thirty-eight minutes. Longer than most of my dates. Longer than any call from my sister since Christmas.
When he leaves, I can move my fingers. Then my arms. Then everything. I turn on my side, face the wall. The room is the same room it always is. The ceiling has the same damp stain I’ll never fix.
My doctor says it’s stress. My mother says prayer helps. My ex-girlfriend says I’m dramatic.
What I know is that tomorrow at 3:14 someone will come, sit on my chest, and ask me how I am.
And I won’t have to answer.
Reminds me of that picture of the demon sat on the girl's chest. If you suffer from short dates, take em to the cinema. Minimum hour and half.
This one time, I was sleeping on the futon in a spare room to help if my daughter cried out so my wife could sleep. I woke up, paralyzed. I was asleep, but awake. Silhouetted in the doorway was a woman with long hair. In the next instant she was standing over me, screaming in my face.
It was just my sleep demon, so I paid her no mind and she went away.