Malfunction

Tuesday night, 10pm. Richard & Kirsty practise a meticulous routine they’ve perfected after six years of their relationship status.

Check the front door is locked, put the pup to bed, scatter pillows on the floor, floss, brush, scrape tongue, moisturise, glass of water on each bedside table. Long kiss goodnight, head on pillow, switch dream machine on.

Richard takes longer to settle. It doesn’t matter, he adores Kirsty and cherishes the final moments of their routine.

Kirsty settles down first on her back, wiggling until she is comfortable. She turns onto her right side, rests for two minutes, followed by rolling over to her left side for approximately a minute. After tucking the duvet deep between her legs and letting out a contented sigh, Kirsty starts to drift off. The twitching is next, first throughout her entire body, before finally localising in her arms. Richard knows Kirsty is no longer in this world when the snores start and the shuddering stops.

Needless to say, Kirsty vehemently denies she snores.

Kirsty's nighttime routine usually concludes just as Richard's dream machine starts to lull him to sleep, yet tonight something is amiss. The well-rehearsed routine they’d grown accustomed to doesn’t have the same finale. Richard is not drifting off, no heightened levels of melatonin, no sinking into the mattress.

Richard sits up to check his machine. Immediately as he reaches up an intense white flash floods his mind, so intense it instantly feels like a migraine. He slumps back onto the his pillow, gasping, too taken aback to move. BANG, it happens again. The light is so bright, so intense, he can hardly breathe. He can feel the surge of energy reverberating through his head. This feels very wrong. BANG, it happens again, another lightning strike to the brain.

He attempts to remove the dream machine from his head, but he can’t move. He’s utterly paralysed!

BANG. A full-blown panic attack hits him like a lead weight. His mind is racing at turbo speed. “What the fuck is happening?”

BANG, that white light delivers a piercing pain. He tries to catch just one breath, but he can’t.

BANG, he's hit again. "Make it STOP!!!," Richard cries out with stiff lips as he pours with sweat. He feels the unbearable nausea overcoming him. The flashing is now repetitive and truly aggressive. His mind is trying to shut down, disappear into a black void, but something is refusing to let him pass out. The sound in his ears is deafening. It’s screaming at him. Blood begins to drip from his nose and bile rises up his throat. Everywhere around him is a violent hum of energy and he can feel himself being pulled somewhere with the G force of a fighter jet.

BANG, BANG, BANG. He can’t take anymore, he can’t scream, he can’t move, he can’t think, he can’t..

Silence.

The room is eerily still. Richard is motionless, no movement, no twitching. His dream machine is silent, no lights, no faint hum from the cooling motor. The cicada chirp from the open window is the only presence of life. The house creaks as it cools from the daytime heat.

Suddenly, Richard jumps up, with a stare of death. He’s white, his lips have no colour. He rips off his dream machine and screams “NO!!!”.

He’s shell-shocked. He prays it isn’t true, for he can’t have seen what he saw.

How was he in Kirsty’s dream machine?!? He knows her too well. She would never plan to kill him.

Copyright © 2023. All rights reserved