Wakeup Call

When I was a child, I would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night to find myself surrounded by creatures lurking in the dark corners of my room, waiting for their chance to pounce. The first few times, I'd screamed until my parents came to the rescue. After a year or so, I had grown wise to the trick. I'd turn on the lights and watch the monsters change back to the harmless objects that defined my life during the day. 

Tonight, the objects had conspired against me, and the only light to cling to pulsed out of the misused window front, which had switched to a late-night teleshopping show.

The flickering image of a single-use kitchen appliance illuminated my suit from behind, blurring its contours and rendering its front in shadow. Its gait was initially unsure and clumsy, but with each step, it found its footing more, seemed to fill out, gained physicality. I began to think that there was a body beneath the fabric.

I couldn’t move.

It was as if our roles had been reversed. Try as I might, my body remained glued to the bedsheets. All I could do was helplessly flail my arms around. It felt like I was moving them through an ocean of molasses. The suit ignored my pathetic attempts at escape and continued its advance. By the time it had reached me, its body had become a tangible fact, but its features remained indecipherable. The figure got onto the bed, straddled me, picked up the ramen bricks from the tray, and shoved them into my mouth, all at once.

“EAT! EAT, YOU LITTLE BRAT! THIS IS ALL YOU SHALL HAVE! STARVE OR DIE EATING!”

The bricks scraped against the back of my throat. I could feel a pool of blood forming in my mouth and spilling out onto the bed. My body forced me to cough the obstruction back up, forced me to throw my head around - it was all for nothing. The figure's grip on my chin was hard and unrelenting. Its hand felt cold and bloated, like it shouldn't hold any power, but the strength with which it constrained me was frightening.

While I was fighting for my life, a gross, canny laughter clanked out of the receiver. It barely sounded like laughter at this point, too distorted by out-of-date consumer-grade technology to register as human. I couldn't stand it. I never did. And yet, I had put up with it all my life. Only now did I realise it. All my life, that inhuman crackling, that inhumane pop, that horrible laughter had been there in the background: Mistranslating the world, telling me what they thought I needed to hear. 

All my life.

If nothing else, I refused to let them score my death scene. I managed to cough up a chunk of ramen and, for a split second, saw the sink from my dream. All that time as I stood by, feigning indifference and waiting for someone else to step in, that knob had been within my reach. 

I realized what I had to do.

Through the molasses, I reached out to the bedside table. The teleshopping show got stuck in a loop of some smiling presenter pleading with me.

“Don’t touch that dial! Don’t touch that dial! Don’t touch that-“

The second voice joined in. The first voice followed suit, then a third and a fourth and a fifth, sixth, seventh… Here it was in all its glory, that demonic choir, that cacophony of a hundred figureheads now commanding me not to do what needed to be done:

"DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL!!!"

Unable to turn my head, I relied on muscle memory to find the holes, twist the wheel, and dial the number:

1…

1…

9...!

There was the single click of a disconnected call. 

The figure froze for a moment, then the receiver dropped onto the bed. The hand's grip on my face loosened. I let my head fall onto the pillow. All blood and refuse flowed out of my mouth. As I faded away, I watched the figure get up. It gently put the receiver back in its place, picked up my suitcase, and made for the door. Before stepping over the threshold, it turned around and gave me a nod. This was the first time I could make out its face with any clarity. I recognized it. I saw it every morning as I got ready for work.

***

I was woken up by a sunbeam caressing me.

I spent a while blissfully swimming in the border regions of wakeness, dreaming of a curious kobold carefully prodding at my eyes. Suddenly, the image of the animated suit flashed into my head. I was immediately wide awake. My eyes scanned the room for any evidence of the night's events: 

Somehow, my bed was stainless. The food and the wagon were gone. So was my suit and the suitcase, though. So it hadn't been a dream...? Then again, maybe I was just a victim of burglary... As I considered the matter, my gaze landed on the clock on the left wall. It was already noon.

I had missed breakfast.

If I had been robbed, the criminals at least hadn't found my wallet. I had stashed it in the first drawer of my bedside table before I went to sleep. The loss of my clothes was still quite an inconvenience, though. I couldn't exactly go out in my underwear... After some investigating, I found a pink bathrobe and a pair of slippers in the closet. The robe hung very loose around my thin frame and buried my hands within itself, but it smelled nice, and the fluffy fabric was comforting. While looking around for clothes, I also noticed that my socks had been left behind on the floor. I didn't bother with them. Socks and slippers just don't go together.

I knew I should be scared of the repercussions of sleeping in, but somehow, I didn't feel any need to rush myself. I opened one of the windows and leaned out. I could finally take in the view that had been hidden from me the night before: A dirt path lined by tall, sturdy trees gently swaying in the breeze that led into the deep blue horizon. It was a beautiful day.

I made my way downstairs. Not a single person crossed my path. Even the lobby was entirely devoid of people. A bit uneasy, I stepped up to the counter and rang the bell. 

...

No one came. For a while. I started tapping my fingers on the table. Why hadn't they done their wakeup call, anyway? Really, it was quite an inconvenience. The bulk of the professional development conference would have been over by the time I arrived. Not that I could pop in looking like this. Or that I knew how to get there... We had come by bus, so there had been no need to familiarize myself with the directions. Come to think of it, I didn't even know the name of the location!

For the first time in many years, I had to ask myself: Where am I supposed to be?

I thought I heard muffled whispering coming from the room behind the counter. Without another thought, I turned away and left the hotel.

The dirt road I had seen from my room opened up before me. I imagined Mimiko running into the distance, smiling and beckoning me to follow her, her long black hair falling against her back like yet-to-be-woven threads dangling from a loom.

I still didn't know where I was supposed to be, but I knew where I would go.

Mimiko... Your little mollusc is finally coming home.