Flash Fiction

SLEEPWALKER

by

Carol Peters
 

That girl is my other self in motion, gliding groundward, a wraith in pale leggy stripes. She's traveling out of her warm bed into the dark hallway, down the moon-shadowed stairs. Toes tasting carpet hairs.

She doesn't know I am waking from her dream.

I say stop, go back to bed. Then no, no. I urge my sleepwalker on, to pretend, to swim forward to that other place where rules mean nothing, where journeys in darkness end in boundless open space, in silvered emerald seas.

She is my sleeping self, descending the silent staircase, arriving at the island sofa, slithering down its napped length.

It's cold. Ribbons of chill cross our bare forearms. We need a blanket.

I tiptoe back upstairs. Halfway down again, Dad finds me, trailing orange and brown plaid wool.

"What are you doing, Anna? Why are you out of your bed?"

"I was cold."

"Anna, you're sleepwalking, come back to bed."

"I want to sleep on the sofa. I have to."

He can't see her, but she's there, waiting for me.

"Silly child, silly silly Missy."

Dad follows me slowly down. He tucks fringed woolen edges around the tips of her toes. He drops the numb weight of his hand across her back. Waits.

She breathes soft and safe under that large red-furred animal, sinks red leaf floating tipping settling to the bottom of the sea.

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Carol Peters lives on a coffee farm on the Big Island of Hawaii. She writes adult fiction, poetry, memoir, and children's stories.