I once read an article about how to fall asleep. The article said that to fall asleep consistently; you should visualize yourself in a small boat and stare at the sky. Just float and let your mind take you somewhere far away. I have been using that visualization to help me fall asleep ever since. Last night when I woke up on the boat, I didn’t realize I was awake.
The night sky was overcast and hazy, with light pollution from the city reflecting across the clouds. That’s why I noticed something was wrong. When I visualize myself on the boat, I see the moon, stars, and the mottled expanse of the galaxy, not a wall of clouds and a few hazy stars.
However, I was definitely on a boat. The skiff gently bobbed in the water as I lifted my head. I was lying on the sole, the night sky above me, with a cold limp arm draped across my chest.
I saw the hand first, then followed the pale flesh to the wrist, forearm, elbow, and shoulder until I looked down directly into the lifeless eyes of a young dark-haired woman. A thick liquid trickled from her smiling crimson lips. My mind refused to believe it was blood. I thought I was dreaming.
Closing my eyes, I breathed in through my nose for five seconds and out through my mouth for ten. I spoke to myself in a calm, measured way. A mantra of “wake up, just wake up” spilled from my lips, but the press of the woman’s cold form against my side never left me. I opened my eyes again.
She stared at me wide-eyed, unflinching, dead. I tried to pull away. Slowly I shifted, but the boat’s movement pitched her form against me. I felt her cold leg slide over my thigh and pin me to the sole of the skiff.
The smile on her dead face seemed to grow as I slid away from her.
I panicked and sat up in the small boat too quickly. My head throbbed, and my vision blurred. It was hard to breathe. My chest seized with every short, shallow pant. The edges of my vision began to darken as my head lulled to the side.
Her smile is so red and so wide.
I fell over the edge. The cold water of the lake woke me up and cleared my mind. I turned over to my back and floated. Gazing up at the overcast sky, I force myself to calm down. To think.
Once the panic subsided, I noticed the world around me. A familiar bridge. A beach. With long strokes, I pushed myself through the water to the beach.
My clothes were shorts and a T-shirt. I went to bed wearing these clothes, and now they were wet and sandy and covered in lake muck. How did I get here?
The boat bobbed in the distance. Ripples on the lake drew my eyes to its lonely shape. It looks empty, but I know a smiling corpse lays inside it.
As I turned away from the water, I heard laughter. Rich, throaty female laughter resonated from the middle of the lake. I did not look back. I just ran.