Sophia awoke slowly, her apartment dark, "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" spilling over it. What happened to the neighbors? They kept their lights on at night. All night. A lot of lights. Anyway they were gone and her apartment was invisible.
She turned on a light or two, put on coffee, poured a bowl of knobs and twigs. The TV wouldn't start. Sophia looked out the window to see if the mail had come but it was too dark to tell. She started to drink her coffee.
It woke her up. Gradually she became more aware, the still, dark apartment all around her, "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" alarming as usual. She stopped the noise in a hurry. Her old neighbors kept their lights on all night—what kind of light would reflect all the way into her room across the alley like that? They were gone though. She got up. It was hard to find the light switch.
Today, Sophia thought, I'll have something different. No more twigs. I'll make an omelette. She made an omelette. In her dressing gown she started to drink her coffee.
She was slowly waking up. She stared, remembering her apartment, then dragged her eyes around in the dark. The alarm clock. "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer." What a mockery! she thought. She turned it off and got up.
Something caught Sophia's attention as she turned on the TV. It stayed blank. Two events from the day before returned to her, and suddenly it represented Supreme Meaning itself to her that she had got up and drunk her coffee every day for 14 years solid, plus some days.
She finished her beet gravy on mustard meringue, then called work to say she might be feeling sick. No one answered as she started to drink her coffee.
This time she woke up with a jolt.
That can't be right, she thought.
She walked up to the window in her pajamas. She looked outside. There was nothing outside. The window wasn't dirty.
The moment she got out the door, Sophia woke up in bed. She opened the door.
She did it again.
The phone line worked, but nobody answered. Her apartment was on the ground floor so she tried a window, tearing a left pocket in her palace gown as she climbed out, but she woke up again.
This time after she stood up she went back to bed. She tried to sleep.
Her dressing gown pocket was still torn. That bothered her.
She called 911.
"Hello?"
"I have an emergency."
"Where are you?"
"In my house."
"We'll send you the mail."
"I don't want the mail, I... I want to get out!"
"We'll include the details. Occupy yourself."
She called back. The station was playing an REM song. She put one of Neptune's ex-satellites back on the hook.
With a sigh, she lay on the floor and drew a picture in melting crayon.
A bird started to sing outside. Sophia looked out the window. The street was lit a rainy color. She saw an ambulance. It stopped in the driveway. The bird sang louder. Lights were flashing.
The phone rang.
"Yeah—Yes? What's going on!"
"We're coming in."
The front door opened and a portly, seven-foot bear/hippo stepped in. Sophia turned away, then turned back again.
"This is too ridiculous! Seriously, am I asleep?"
"No. But here," the bear/hippo grated, "this will help you." Ze produced a manila packet. "Here."
The packet was labeled "Sleep Refresher." Sophia opened it.
"First you go to sleep. Then you wake up," read the page inside. "Most people go to work after that."
"What?! This doesn't help at all!" she cried and pushed the bear/hippo's stomach.
"My suggestion to you," the bear/hippo said, "is to be a rocker."
"A rocker??"
"Be just like a rocker switch."
"What? Why?"
"We call it a Sleep Semanticizer™. Reclaim your dreaming from your waking."
"You think I can
lift that?"
The bear/hippo threw the TV out the window. Then the TM. "Clearly. Now go back to work."
"Where's work?"
"You mean you don't know?"
"I can't remember."
"That's because you forgot to write a note." The bear/hippo scribbled on a gray post-it with a white permanent marker.
"It says 'Go to work.' I'm sorry, that still doesn't help me." The creature nodded and produced another. "'Go where work is. You will remember?'?
Um—"
Sophia'd leant back too far—and fell outside. Outside. Outside the mansion she sat with a thump on a giant, soft-serve, leather-bound, green-sounding, jungle-shaking, trunk-hollow toad. Stared. Stared, stared at the sky's iris through its contact lens. It was the sunrise she had smooshed in orange crayon over the linoleum. But it was real. Better.
Slowly, she began to listen to crushed notes delivered by a glacier out of sight, switching and swashing and swishing and swatching from a thundercloud up there.
She ate an orange, one bead at a time.
The toad filled out some papers for the IRS with a patter of goosebumps.
A tree grew down from the sky, then stopped to ask for directions when it spotted the peel.
"I've never given lightning directions before," she said, interrupting the angry unfurling of leaves.
"No," said the lightening tree. "Where do you start?"
