BEEP

In my dreams I’m skating on a frozen pond. I’ll never make it to the Olympics, but I’ve got skills. I enjoy it. I love winter—the way the snow crunches underfoot, trees glimmering with frost. When I would tire of skating, I liked to scoop up a handful of fresh snow and eat it like a snow cone. I’m taking a second to relish this dream, this memory, when an ear-piercing beeping causes me to bolt upright in bed.

I’m sweating, panting, my heart racing. Was it part of my dream? The green glow from my alarm clock tells me it is 1 AM. With a groan I close my eyes. I imagine taking a bite of that snow—BEEP.

Again, I sit up in bed. I couldn’t have dreamed it. With a sigh I shift my body, groping for the wheelchair waiting beside my bed. I had been paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident a couple years ago but in my dreams I could still skate. Letting out a string of curses I fumble my way onto my wheelchair and wait for the beep to come again.

Minutes tick by, reflected by the glow of my alarm clock. Furious, I roll out into the living room. It occurs to me I have never had to change the batteries in my smoke alarm. Looking up at the ceiling I can see the blinking green light on the device. Even if I could reach it, I had no method for removing the batteries.

It also hadn’t beeped since I had awoken. Grabbing a set of ear plugs from the bathroom I shove them in my ears and clamber back into bed. After much adjusting and fluffing of pillows I try to return to my dreams, but the beep is just as loud as it was before.

Furious I roll out of bed to my wheelchair. Grabbing a broom, I used the tip of the handle to bash against the smoke alarm. I wanted to smash it to bits, but I only succeeded in setting it off. The noise was nothing like my dreams, but it was loud enough to wake my neighbours. Rolling out into the hallway, I can see one of them has already shuffled out of her apartment in slippers and a bathrobe. She’s helped me with the odd job before and is quite familiar with my apartment. Without a word she grabbed a stool and took the device down from the ceiling, shutting it off.

“Sorry for waking you,” I apologized in response to her sleepy mumbling.

I was tempted to smack the device again, the handle of my broom already bent but instead I tried to return to bed. I was thinking about how the pear trees still had frozen fruit dangling from their branches the last time I had gone skating. How they would fall into the snow with a muffled thud. The beep was still there though, loud and shrill. It seemed bent on keeping me awake, taking me away from my pleasant bipedal dream-memories.

I tried again and again to get back to that frozen pond, snowcones and frozen pears but the BEEP persisted. Sleeping pills and heavy pain killers kept it at bay but I couldn’t dream using those. I tried sleeping everywhere except my bed. I must have been cursed I thought as my days passed in a sleep deprived haze. Would the beep follow me into death? I wondered. I hoped not as I waited at an intersection. A large truck was coming down the road, but I didn’t see it as my wheels rolled beyond the curb of the street.

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Written by Kelsey Reich on August 15/2021 in Ontario, Canada.