Devil's Hour
Frances woke with a jolt.
Her hand flew to her chest, where her heart beat wildly. Her eyes darted to the foot of her bed, where she was comforted to see the dark mass that was her cat, Poppy. She glanced quickly to the door, which was still shut, and the window, which was still latched. All as it should be.
The nightmares had returned.
She lay very still, trying not to replay the dream. Moments before, she had been in a strange room filled with soft yellow light streaked red, like traffic lights blurred in the rain. She tried not to think about feeling the warmth spread as she looked down to see her own blood, and her stomach split open, knife rising and falling in the hand of someone she could never quite see clearly. She shuttered.
It was the third week in a row that Frances had been awoken by such unpleasantries. She checked her watch, hoping it was 2 am or 4 am or really anything but 3 am, which someone once told her was the Devil’s hour, and which she still vaguely feared.
It was 3:24 am. Frances sighed and turned over. She picked up her phone, which emitted a soft glow. Three unread message notifications, seven emails, and four increasingly depressing headlines stared back at her. Resisting the urge to examine each immediately, she drifted off into an uneasy sleep.
She woke at 6:17, beating her alarm, as she always did. The notifications had doubled. Poppy greeted her, eager for breakfast. Frances exhaled and stepped out of bed.
Each night for the past three weeks had been more or less the same. Frances would sleep early, falling easily and quickly into darkness. In the early hours of the morning, before the sun had considered its task for the day, she would jolt awake, shaken by a vivid and horrible dream, the subject of which was most often a) her own violent death; b) her own immense suffering at the hands of an unidentified figure; or c) an imagined alternative storyline involving people in her life who did not particularly like her— scenarios that played out positively only about 20% of the time. The other 80% inevitably would devolve into either (a) or (b); or, if Frances was having an especially unlucky night, a combination of both.
Frances did not know why the nightmares had started again, but guessed it had something to do with the heavy cloud that she felt had been slowly accumulating above her for the past month or so. She thought, too, that it might have to do with the state of the world. It is difficult to imagine a pleasant unconscious when consciousness is constantly bombarded with evils.
Poppy rubbed against her ankles, meowing insistently. Frances filled the bowl, noting the way the kibble clicked against the porcelain. The sound was sharp against the morning stillness. Poppy licked her lips. Frances sipped her coffee, grimacing at the metallic aftertaste. She looked down at her cup and saw a small black bug floating in the brown foam. She dumped it out and rinsed her mouth.
Outside, the street smelled of rain and exhaust. Frances’ shoes tapped unevenly across the damp sidewalk. She ducked into the cafe on the corner and ordered an iced coffee with cream and sugar, hoping the cold and sweetness would shock her out of whatever she was in. The barista called her name and smiled at her. Frances smiled weakly back. On her way to the train, she passed a man throwing bottles at the concrete, muttering obscenities. Her eyes followed the green glass as it connected with the ground and shattered. She crossed the street, stepping over cardboard signs ruined by the rain, left behind after the latest protest.
Frances joined her morning meeting, hoping someone would acknowledge what she felt to be the world’s obvious decline. No one did. She watched the faces in tiny rectangles smile, nod, laugh. She smiled too, like a mannequin. She responded to emails and corrected documentation. At lunch, she opened the communal fridge to find someone had left a half-eaten sandwich, which now emanated rot. She left her salad inside and closed the door, her appetite gone. The hours continued on.
A light, cold rain had started up again. The sky was gray and pregnant, another storm building. Frances opened her apartment door, shaking off her umbrella. Poppy greeted her as she always did. Frances slid off her bag and coat and fell into the couch, coaxing Poppy to join. They sat together, staring at the black screen of the television, which Frances could not bear to turn on.
Outside, traffic lights flickered in a rhythm that reminded her of her dream, red stretching into yellow, then back again. She closed her eyes briefly, and when she opened them, the apartment was unchanged, yet somehow unfamiliar. She exhaled slowly, knowing she would lie down soon and enter the same dark world she had fled this morning.
________
The lingering melancholy hangs in the morning air of January, cruel and brittle. Above, the moon sets silently watching the day break. The trees, bare-limbed and shivering, stand mourning, with shadows cast long and thin against icy ground. Not even the birds dare to break the heavy silence with their song; they stare at the broken world below where we, lame ducks sitting, wait for the thaw that never comes, and for a kindness that can no longer be named.
New York has been hit these past months with two snowstorms, piling feet of snow on top of the ever-growing Problems Of The World, which has made for a rather dim January and February, and which, among other things, has greatly diminished my perceived ability to write. When I do not feel up to reading hopeful interpretations of work from Milosz and others, I sometimes find that writing a bleak piece gets rid of some of the…bleakness.
So, Voilà! Today the sun is out and it is Friday and March is Coming.
Hopefully,
Clare
And don’t forget to check out the great work of the Iowa Writers Collaborative Roundup— from reporting, to short stories, to politics, to humor, the authors are sharp and insightful and make the task of staying informed much less painful than it usually is.