Burn, Baby, Burn by Michael Seale (Chapter 19)

 Chapter 19

Sleepover

The blackness shattered with a scream. I awoke outside of Kimber’s house. Actually, she woke me up by screaming. I have no idea how I got here; I mean my car is here so I must have driven, but I know that I didn’t drive. The last thing I remember I was sitting on my sofa watching Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp fight at the OK Corral. 

“Are you sure you remember nothing?” she asked. After she had finally calmed down, it was two in the morning she had been asleep. She woke when she had heard a tapping on her bedroom window. 

“No, I don’t. I told you I was having another hallucination.” I told her for the fifth time.

We sat on her sofa in her living room. She had on a gray Friends T-shirt and a pair of super short pink shorts. Her hair pulled back in a ponytail and she didn’t have any makeup on. She was definitely cute. But that is neither here nor there. 

I asked her to repeat it all again. 

“I was asleep. It had been a long dinner service, I didn’t want to go out afterwards so Trish and I had a drink at the bar, especially after that creep slapped me on the ass. I was home by 12:30. You had left five messages on my machine. I took a quick shower and went to bed.”

 “I didn’t want to deal with you tonight. So, I went to sleep. I guess an hour, and then I hear a tapping on my window.” She takes a deep breath and yawns. 

“Like I said, I go to my window. I wasn’t really expecting anything. I thought it was a dream, but I wanted to make sure otherwise I wouldn’t be able to sleep. So, I pulled the curtains back and there you were. I barely had time to register it was you. It didn’t really look like you at first. When I screamed, you collapsed.”

“What do you mean it didn’t really look like me?” I asked for the fourth time.

“You were different. I don’t know. Your skin was pale, your eyes were black.”

“Was that it?”

“You looked distant, like you weren’t really there. You scared me.”

We were both quiet. The only sound was the ticking of the refrigerator in the kitchen. 

“I need to sleep,” she said. “You should just crash here on the sofa.”

“Are you ok with that?”

“Yeah, sure.”

She gave me a blanket and a pillow. I kicked off my socks and shoes; exhausted. Not knowing if I could sleep, though. Thankfully, I hadn’t heard anymore ringing. 

Could I have driven myself here without knowing it? I wondered. Is that even possible? Sure, sometimes I drive and realize while I’m driving that I haven’t paid attention at all to anything on the road for the last few miles, but to drive here without even knowing it. How could that be?

I listened to Kimber; move around in her bathroom and bedroom. Her roommate wasn’t home; she slept at her boyfriend’s house most of the time. It surprised me she had let me stay. Maybe I have a chance after all. 

“Kimber,” I called. “You said I called you a few times?”

“Go to sleep, Mike. We talk to tomorrow; I’m too tired to think anymore.”

“Okay,” I said. The problem was, I had never called her. I unplugged my phone as soon as I walked into my apartment. This is so strange, I thought.

Sleep was calling to me. My eyelids were heavy; it felt as though they weighed a ton. Thankfully, I fell into a dreamless sleep.