What happened to Day 10? Somewhere, I lost my way. Timely prompt, that: Nightmare. Today’s assignment is to use the inspirational prompt posted on WordPress’ Daily Post page, where you can get inspiration for blogging or writing (usually one word or a phrase), a focus for photography, news about classes, and lots of WordPress news and information. 

Today’s prompt is Nightmare. The alternate prompt is Back to the Future. Hmm. Neither resonates with me, but I need to choose one. With my loss of a Blogging Fundamentals day, it seems appropriate to address Nightmare. (The appropriateness only needs to make sense to me.)

Today wasn’t all that different from any other day, but there were little clues that all is not as it should be. First, I awoke at 1:00 PM. None of the pets got me up earlier. Since I am an insomniac, it isn’t unusual for me to still be in bed when Hubby leaves for work. He doesn’t even kiss me goodbye anymore, claiming he doesn’t want to wake me. The truth is that he’s put on a few pounds and doesn’t want to climb the steps more often than absolutely necessary. But I always hear him collaring the dog in the bedroom to take him for a morning constitutional, and that didn’t seem to happen today. When I awoke, Mutt was asleep at my feet, clearly not in distress. I couldn’t believe I slept through the usual coaxing and commotion when Hub tries to get him ready to walk. 

And the cats–both were in their usual early morning places, the little female between the pillows, the young tom against the back of my knees. The clock is clear: one PM. Why aren’t the cats hunting lizards? Is the clock wrong? Did we have another one of our daily power outages earlier than usual, and did the clock start at 12:00 again? Maybe it’s that sleeping pill I took last night. I have to be pretty desperate to use them, but I was going on five consecutive days of one or two-hour sleeps, so yeah; I was desperate enough to take the pill. It took until 1:00 AM to kick in (4 hours!), but finally I got so groggy that I barely made it up the stairs to crawl into the bed. When the pill kicked in, it did so really fast. The last thing I remember was arguing with one of the cats to make room for me. Then everything went black.

Usually when I take a sleeping aid, I end up with weird dreams. Usually, they’re kaleidoscopic visual trips out of the acid movies of the 1970s. Strange things happen in even stranger lands. But last night, nothing–nothing but blackness until I opened my eyes. 

Slowly forcing myself up and dropping my feet to the floor next to the bed, I reached over for the clothes I wore yesterday and tugged them on as quickly as my rubbery limbs could work. The pets, usually stretching awake when I start to stir, kept right on dozing as though I hadn’t budged. Weird, I thought to myself. SheKat should be rubbing against my back, and HeKat should be scolding me to get downstairs and give him a treat. The cats hadn’t budged. Mutt should have been bouncing all over the bed with his favorite ball in his mouth, expecting me to wrest it from his mouth and throw it down the steps for him to chase. Instead, he rolled onto his back with front paws comfortably flapping over his chest and hind legs spread and bouncing toward the bedspread. Well, he’s having a pleasant doggie dream.

Making my way across the room to the door, I felt a bit woozy. Not dizzy, really, and not quite light-headed. Just a bit unsteady. I climbed down the steps slowly and carefully, holding on to the banister in case I got worse. Afternoon sunlight bathed the bottom of the stairs in an almost neon orange glow–except we don’t get sun there any time of the day. 

My foot hit the floor at the bottom of the stairs and I stepped into a kitchen filled with the whirling kaleidoscopic colors and two-dimensional images straight out of the acid movies of the 1970s. 

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#educ_dr