Oneiric

The porridge is at a critical point when the phone rings. I don’t often cook porridge. Birthday tradition. Ritual to lose myself in. It is escape the incoming call threatens to sabotage.

The radio blares. Lyrics I once knew. And still the phone rings.

A year later. Cooking porridge again. The same song starts, I’m thrown by the coincidence. But then the phone rings too. It’s her. Only this time I’m expecting the call.

“Yes?”

“Hey,” the voice replies. Soft inflexions so very familiar.

I wait. She called me.

“Porridge again?”

Silence confirms it.

“Alone?”

Baited question.

My fingers fumble with the ladle. It keeps me from shouting.

“Is there something you want?” Rhetorical.

A sigh, from her end. “Let’s begin then.”

I slouch, stirring my porridge to prevent last year’s outcome.

“Any dreams of late?”

Straight to it. “A few,” I answer, cautiously.

“Repetitive?”

“Yes.” Truth.

“Oh?” Despondently. A pause. “How often?”

There is masked surprise in her voice. She wasn’t expecting this.

“One. Last Tuesday. A second two days ago.” I let the agony of the moment hold. “Last night too.” Regrettably.

She dares not exhale. “Severity?”

“Vivid.” I answer.

“Medication?”

“Second round.”

A sharp inhale. “How many left?”

“Three.”

A longer pause. I know what’s coming this time.

“I really think…”

I hang up.

My ladle manages three quick stirs before she rings again. Some of the porridge was beginning to stick. The curse I mouth is more vehement than need be.

“What?” I’m too brash .

“You should have reported this.”

There’s no comment on my hanging up.

“Why?”

“You know why.”

“Tell me anyway.” My tone is a knife.

The sigh, again.

“I worry.”

“Don’t.”

Silence. I don’t talk because I want her to feel it, what she has left me with.

Eventually, the void between us unbearable, I hear her voice as I remember. This time there is pity, in as much as guilt.

“How are you?”

I want to answer, talk like we used to.

“How do you expect?”

“I don’t know. Just asking.”

“Nervous.” A moment of honesty. Without hesitation. I don’t imagine she’ll have anything to say.

I hang up.

-

Work is dead. Hardly worth bothering anymore. I’ve barely filled the grinder. Might be a couple at best.

A hooded kid is spraying the brickwork outside in vibrant colours. I’ve got him painting over the psychedelic nude I’d done. Most of it covers the roller door currently wound into the ceiling. He’ll have to do that when I close up.

I remember post-porridge last year, awaiting her arrival. Receipts, torn shreds of an obsolete phone book, lined up three deep with hieroglyphs scrawled in sharpie. My wrist pumping between the grinder, the heads, the milk jugs as the customers kept coming. They were curse and cure. Each imagining themselves friend. Few an acquaintance at best. All subtly expecting a reward of camaraderie for their patronage. It’s the cordiality that was most demanding of the job. That and the incessant diversity of perfumes and aftershaves. You never can predict who’ll frequent you. I spent most of my time wondering how to stop them. Inhospitable hospitality.

I feel the fresh paint on my sinuses. They say coffee helps refresh the pallet. If that is true then people, not paint, are why it needs refreshing. It’s barely gone eight.

“How’s it?” Yorkie’s thick accent. It’s been a few days, but I always hear him before I see him. My irregular regular.

“Same,” I reply.

He doesn’t mind waiting. Usually tells me a story or two about his nights. I imagine him with cigarette in hand, darkened rooms. Perfect in the current crowds, amassing companions without trying. They cling to him as easily as the stale beer.

“She called me this morning,” I offer casually.

“Fuck,” he mutters. Toneless.

It’s his eyes, behind those glasses with the mottled frames, indifferent, sunken with insomnia, yet so very comprehending. I don’t mention the rest of the conversation though. No sense in starting rumours.

“I’ve seen her a bit,” he tells me. “Draping herself about.”

“Not a surprise.” I speak with venom. It still hurts to hear.

“So what now?”

I shrug. “Closing up soon.”

“Beer?” He offers.

I drop my eyebrows. He gets the message.

-

“They’re calling it Dreamail.” Mike says, mouth stuffed with onions and barbecue sauce. He is at his most verbose when his taste buds are blanketed in savoury-sweet.

I sip at my chlorophyll. Mint maybe. Mike’s gesture.

“You know? Because it gets in your inbox.”

Mike half attempts to suppress his snigger. It’s not a clever pun. I shouldn’t have responded to his text earlier. An emoji of a sandwich followed by a gaping mouth. He’s always lacking.

“Poor bastards have a couple of weeks before they’re full on comatose. Then they’re just a turnip in another facility. Jesus. It’s so fingered.”

His choice of language has always been colourful.

“Wouldn’t catch me within a blink. Kick ‘em out before they cosy.”

I can believe that. His greying hair and crass behaviour so very typical of what his charcoal suit once represented. His wallet thin with ration cards. The new plastic lifestyle. I don’t know why I keep agreeing to meet. There’s probably no one else.

-

A year ago, my birthday, when she first called. I admit I didn’t imagine she would. I’d never been so bold with a girl like her before. When she spoke, what I felt was such a stirring. No surprise I burnt my porridge.

-

I thumb the Le Carré book in my palms, barely registering a word, knowing full well what is happening to me. The waiting room is all pastels. Two pictures on the wall. I’m sure it should be a triptych. They are oils of a creek bed, a fallen tree rotting across it, water meandering from pond to pond. Therapeutic intentions perhaps. By the window a single pinecone rests precisely in the centre of the ledge in front. The placement deliberate.

The receptionist, about a hundred and twenty, noise coming from her earbuds while she scratches away at the keyboard. I watch her eyes dash between three screens. It’s a weird dichotomy of acuity and the wrinkling shell. She hardly glances up.

Eleven minutes, then he calls me in.

“Hi Doc.” I find the seat nearest the rice paper divider. Anachronistic.

“Can I ask you something?” He waits for no reply. “Why do you call me Doc?”

“Can I ask you something?” I don’t wait either. “What’s your receptionist always listening to?”

The doctor gestures the voice recorder. “Notes,” he grins. “Lots of them.”

I grin too. I don’t know why.

“Let’s begin then. Any dreams of late?”

I’m not surprised. The most uttered sentence of the past twelve months. There isn’t the same concern I heard from her earlier. He’s more professional. But predictable.

“Anyone living with you?”

I almost scoff.

“Housemates?”

A shake.

“Neighbours?”

Another shake. Benefits of living above work.

“Okay. Well, I think we’re at that point.”

I sink into my chair. I knew it was coming.

“There’s a few options, but space locally has been running low. Would be best to make up your mind in the next twenty-four hours. Otherwise.”

He doesn’t need to clarify the otherwise.

“I’ll be frank. Long term isn’t looking good.”

On my way out he hands me the brochure. Hotline on the back.

-

The bus is late. Always is. Even with the empty streets.

I recognise my route number. No need to wave. A girl with a sheer top and last night’s mascara already has the driver’s attention.

There’s half a dozen others spaced out. I offer my seat to a lady at the next stop. Habit. She’s clearly offended at my innocent accusation of age.

Someone stirs. There’s a yell. The driver shouts.

Mascara girl is dozing off. Her head drifting back towards the glass. Commuters are panicking, clambering across seats. Hysteria. Not me.

-

The kid has done a thorough job on the roller door. Erased her with abstract shapes in blues and yellows. I remember painting nervously, meticulously, as she blushed with my progress. I remember so much of her following that first call, on me, my mind, my future, my roller door. Then gone. Just sentiments.

I shrug and roll up the metal. There’s an old couch behind it where she’d fall asleep in my lap at sunset. Who knew?

She did this to me, and that’s not why I hate her. It’s her absence now it’s done.

I know why she’s out at nights. I yearn for intimacy too. But she’ll be gone before her head settles. Before she can ‘cosy’, like Mike said. Can’t chance it.

I grab Le Carré from my bag again. Habit. There’s no motivation to open him now. Instead I see the brochure the doctor gave me. That fucking logo. A heart-shaped locket, with its stupid keyhole. Symbolism perhaps unintended. It’s everywhere. On buses, billboards, window fronts. The inevitable prison.

They’d tried to ease the apprehension, as much a mystery then as it is now. All they can offer is mandated custody. Anyone left will either work for them or fill their beds. Hotels, hospitals, hangers and warehouses, all refitted as everyone fumbled for a solution. There they were, with a guiding hand. The sceptics saw it reaching for cash. I’m sure every government reciprocated.

‘SOCIALLY DISTANCE YOUR SLEEP’ the header reads. Apt advice.

There’s a diagram, two nondescript figures laying in embrace. There are horizontal lines for eyes indicating sleep. Arrows emitted from one head, absorbed by the second. A paragraph about brain waves, the vector of transmission. It’s all so straightforward when read like this. The ABCs. What they don’t explain is how it feels.

They make you contact old partners. Anyone who slumbers within ten metres. They list symptoms. No one knows when it sets in, its incubation, so everyone is forced through the awkward phone calls where pleasantries are quickly dispatched.

The questions are the worst. The accusatory tones. Any dreams? Self-preservation is priority. No one wants to be infected. As if this is an infection.

I wonder how many of her trysts now end with lovers rushing to part. I wonder how she measures intimacy now.

The brochure talks about the medication. How it suppresses certain brain activity, limits others to exposure. Sometimes the symptoms pass, apparently. They did for her. I don’t know anyone else so lucky.

I remember her in frightful fits, terrified to go to sleep, so worried about what it meant. I kept her veins pumped with caffeine, her body awake, days at a time. We didn’t understand. I didn’t understand.

I pop a pill. Two remain. Enough for the weekend. They’ll be here before that though. Now I’m the risk.

Something the doctor said comes back to me. I had asked him what to expect.

“Patients often report the repetition of their dreams.” Charisma woven through the practised line. “They become more vivid. As best we can tell from MRI, this signals sections of the brain shutting down. End-stage.”

I keep thinking about how she caught it. The trouble was doubt. It’s the only reason I can explain her leaving. I’d supported her as best I could. If only I could hold her once more.

I lay back and try to sleep. Definitely shouldn’t without the lamp signalling so in the front window.

The doctor’s voice in my head again. “So what have you been dreaming?”

I shrugged.

“It can help to talk about it.”

Lies. He probably wants to write a book about this once the epidemic eases. If.

I sighed. “Just a day. Nothing special.”

“Describe it for me.”

-

The alarm rings. I see the amber glow of the streetlights outside.

My belly rumbles. Hunger. Should probably open the shop soon. But there’s time still, so I spark the gas burner.

The porridge is at a critical point when the phone rings. I don’t often cook porridge.