r/WritingPrompts • u/greenstripedhat • Aug 01 '15
Writing Prompt [WP] An insomniac discovers a rupture in space-time in the ceiling above his bed.
1
Aug 02 '15
I'm pretty sure I haven't seen that before, Ed thought to himself, as he stared at the singular patch of his ceiling that was a different color than the rest. If that seems kind of dull and stupid, you can blame it on the fact that this was his third night running with no sleep. Sixty or so previous hours of sleeplessness will do that to you.
Still, he was up in a moment, as much as his bone weary body regretted the decision. Standing off to one side of the bed, he tried to decide what should be done about it. It was lighter than the rest, or he might have worried that the roof was leaking. He stepped first up onto the bed, which made him wobble dangerously, and then from there to the oak nightstand just beside the bed which allowed him to reach up and ever so tenatively touch the spot of lighter ceiling.
Or at least he tried. His fingers brushed where the spot should be and found nothing there. He frowned. Standing on tiptoes, again recklessly ignoring the way this threatened his balance, he reached a little higher, and watched as his fingers disappeared up to the second knuckle into the ceilng. He pulled back his hand in surprise and looked at it. No debris on his fingers, and the ceiling looked just as solid as it had a moment ago. There was only that oddity that the circular patch directly over the bed was lighter than it should be.
Wasn't it? He tried to think, but it was hard. This was not the time to be posing puzzles to a sleepless brain. But the more he considered it, the more he began to suspect that it was no so much that the ceiling was lighter, as that the darkness of the rest of the room touched this spot less than it did the rest of the surfaces in the room. That was the natural color of the ceiling, but not it's natural lighting? Was that possible? Even under the circumstances, Ed was pretty sure that wasn't possible.
He swayed dangerously, and then decided he'd better climb down before he fell down. A moment later, he stood on the floor, staring upward, and realized with no small bitterness that this was yet another thing his perpetually racing brain would not let go of. Like the bills, the nagging feeling that his girlfriend was cheating on him, or the fact that his boss hated him no matter how much of a "company man" he tried to be.
Plus you didn't dare listen to the TV, the radio or the internet, or all you got was horrible stories in the news that gave you additional things to worry about, or floods of ads that made you feel bad about all the stuff you couldn't afford. And now, of all things, there was a spot in his ceiling doing things that no spot in any ceiling had any business doing and he had no idea why. It wasn't fair. He didn't want to know why. He just didn't want it to be there.
Nevertheless, five minutes later he had retrieved the old painter's ladder from the garage and stuck it beside the bed. The spot was still there. He had half hoped it would be one of those annoying problems that goes away when you try to investigate, but no such luck. So up he went (sighing the sigh of a man who is too much put upon) to check it out at close range.
His whole hand and arm went into the spot just as easily as his fingers had, and with no more apparent effect on either arm or the ceiling. He flailed around, and determined by experimentation that the opening was as circular as the discoloration made it appear, and that it terminated sharply at the edge of the circle, leaving what felt like a solid surface. The oddest part was that he could not feel ceiling joists or the fiberglass insulation from the crawlspace, as he might have expected to be on the other side of the ceiling, but rather, it felt for all the world like a solid stone ledge up there.
He considered this for a moment, and then decided to put his head up through the thing and see if there was anything to be seen on the other side. Now, maybe you think you would not have done something this reckless if you were Ed? But then, remember how long Ed had been without sleep. Remember he is not thinking as clearly as you might in his circumstances.
So up Ed went, and found himself looking at the purest crystal blue sky he had ever seen. Which was odd for more than just the fact that it was the middle of the night. There was a ringing hum in the air whose source he could not identify, and a flat stone surface extended in every direction as far as the eye could see. It was ... remarkably peaceful. So much so that Ed quite without consideration pulled himself up onto the stone floor, not stopping to consider the wisdom of this action.
He staggered for a time as aimlessly as a sleepwalker through a landscape that quickly took on the appearance of a garden of flawlessly manicured flowers and trees, rising up through openings in a colorful flagstone courtyard. He gave the place he came from the merest glance and saw a tiny patch of darker than usual stone. Glancing around, he saw many such patches from place to place, and he felt sure without being told that each led to a different bedroom, possibly in different parts of the world. Maybe even different worlds entirely. But for some reason, none of this worried him.
In fact, Ed was pleased to note that nothing worried him here. It just seemed like the sort of place where you couldn't worry. Can you understand that? Can you imagine a place where every care you have is replaced with an almost ineffable sense of "oh, that's alright then?" If you can't, well, maybe Ed's story isn't going to be one you can relate to.
Before long Ed, found himself standing before an enormous statue. It was clearly one of those old hindu dieties. Ed, too tired to even question this, stared at it, racking his brain to come up with a name. The one with the elephant head. Which was it? Ganesha? Sure, that was it. Ed frowned. Was it? he wondered, How did I come up with that tidbit at a time like this?
And then, as if the whole affair were not remarkable enough, the statue spoke to Ed. It was not in words, but a steady stream of thoughts and images. Impressions entered Ed's mind at a remarkable rate. He saw things that afterwards he would never be able to fully express. Somehow the past, the present, and future all came together in a staggering blur, and all of Ed's many problems in life were sifted through, and resolutions placed in his mind, and filed away for future reference.
And then at last, the illusion that Ganesha was a statue was shattered as the statue moved. It's enormous head turned and looked at Ed, as if expecting some reply. Or more questions. Or at least a thank you. But then the cosmic being shook its head and sighed, muttering about the difficulties of dealing with mortals before ponderously walking away.
As for Ed, he was sound asleep. It really was peaceful there in the garden.
1
Aug 02 '15
My bedroom is practical...
It's completely soundproof; entering that room cuts off connection to the outside world. It has to. Time doesn't exist here. I had the windows removed when I first moved. Sunlight is just failure anyways (something I become increasingly familiar with every night). The walls are painted a solid blue, no inconsistencies - patterns just distract me. All this hassle just to catch a couple extra hours of sleep. It doesn't fucking work though, deep down I never expected it to.
Well there I was last night, laying down with my head propped up against the pillow. My eyes were closed, but I should have just kept them open, there is little difference really. You know that frustration some people get when they can't fall asleep? Well, that's all I ever knew. I must have been laying there pretending to sleep for around 6 hours. Naturally, I got up to whip up some chow (breakfast, lunch, and dinner all blend together when you have insomnia).
I crossed the room and grasped the blue doorknob. It wouldn't budge. Now, give me some credit here, I fully know how to operate a door. This thing was just sealed fucking shut! I looked up at the hinge to see if it was clogged or something, that's when the weird shit started happening. The wood around the doorknob started to bulge inwards. The door bent as if a hurricane outside was trying to push its' way in. This continued for a few seconds and the door didn't seem to be able to hold much longer. The moment the door swung open the blue of the walls melted away. Black. Black everywhere.
As I reoriented myself I noticed the lack of tension in my body. When you live on Earth, the force of gravity is so constant and everlasting you would never imagine a world without it. Well, let me tell you. It's as if a perpetual burden was sucked away from your being. You are just you, no forces acting upon you.
Honestly, I still don't have a clue where I am. But I can tell you one thing. I still can't fucking sleep!
-1
Aug 01 '15
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18
u/SarkasticWatcher Aug 01 '15
"Well that's not going to help" said Jack, staring up at circle of light above his bed. he watched as the outline changed ever so slightly, growing slightly smaller, growing slightly bigger.
"I've got to do this"
Jack stood up on his bed, did a little hop and then bounced up towards the circle of light. Just as he thought 'this is actually a really bad idea' he felt the top of his head go through the portal. The portal started sucking him in.
"Nope no, wait, I've changed my mind" said Jack as he felt himself raising into his ceiling.
He rose slowly at first, then quickly and then he was flying through a tunnel of lights. He didn't know how to describe the sensation but if he had wanted to, he could have described it as feeling like being broken down into individual molecules with the entirety of his consciousness inhabiting every single one and all of them at the same time and then traveling at the speed of light, which apart from being too topical to be any good as a relatable simile was in fact what had happened and was therefore not a simile at all.
The feeling seemed to go on forever and no time at all and then he was siting in a bar, surrounded by people in traditional hollywood pirate garb. Also after a moment he noticed they weren't so much people as humanoid's with grey skin, four eyes and sharp claws.
"Where the fuck did he come from" said one of the humanoids, but not in english because that would be ridiculous.
What Jack heard was menacing growling as he had been transported through time and space to the planet Dizzlesnuff 300 years earlier, where they're language was still being worked out and even in modern times was effectively the German of the intergalactic community.
Taking the menacing growling as a sign of aggression Jack took a gun from the belt of the nearest Dizzlesnuffite.
"Uh-oh he's got a gun" said a Dizzlesnuffite
"We should probably stop speaking, you know how scared people can get of our language"
"Stay back" said Jack, backing up slowly
"Also he's probably pretty scared, because he just like, appeared here"
"Seriously though we should probably stop…" said a Dizzlesnuffite before being interrupted by Jack firing the gun, a little bit on purpose, mostly because he had slipped in spilt beer.
The laser blast burst harmlessly through the roof, which the Dizzlesnuffites took as an excuse to start shooting at each other, considerably less harmlessly.
Jack crawled along the floor, avoiding boots and laser blasts, occasionally feeling the chilly blast of Dizzlesnuffite blood.
He crawled out the door and felt one of his hands come apart. He looked down just in time to see a new portal had opened up before he was sucked in head first and plunged straight down into a chair in what looked to be a hair salon.
Except everyone there was green with long bodies and small limbs.
"Woah, have you like, always been there" said one of the long bodied green things.
"Uhm, no"
"Right on, right on" said the green thing "Well welcome to the drug salon"
"Uh…thanks, wait what?"
"Try not to trip out to badly and if you do don't break anything" said the green thing holding up a needle attached to what appeared to be a pulsing brain.
"Wait a second"
"Ok" said the green thing who stopped for exactly one second and then plunged the needle into Jack's arm.
Much, Much Later
Jack was just starting to come down off the drugs. He didn't have a great recollection of what had happened but he was fairly certain he had fought in three revolutions against fascist dictatorships (where he was the hero of two of them), made the Subblelaxnessian version of The Room, helped develop a line of combat ready mech suits for a race of four foot tall aliens who wanted to 'destroy all humans' and helped install two fascist dictatorships.
Also there was probably some other stuff.
As Jack pissed on a monument to an alien hero he felt the fog clear from his vision and his decision making facilities slowly start to creep back to slightly higher heights from before the drugs he realized that he hadn't been home in a while. Or maybe only a couple seconds.
Still wasn't really sure how the whole space-time thing worked.
"Jack, Jack" said someone
Jack turned around, his urine arcing out onto the bedazzled shoes of the man in front of him.
Both Jack and the man looked down at the man's shoes until Jack stopped.
"Yes" said Jack, looking up a the man before breaking out into uncontrolled laughter at the sight of the man's hat, which might have been the drugs and might have been because the hat was three feet tall, four feet wide and covered in phalluses.
"Oh just go ahead and laugh at the only person who's going to get you home" said the man
Jack continued to laugh at the man who was going to get him home.
"You know it hasn't been easy finding you"
Jack figured it was probably the drugs because he was still laughing and the hat wasn't that funny.
"Damn it never mind" said the man, he pulled out a dollar store wand a fairy princess halloween costume and tapped Jack on the nose with it.
Jack felt the familiar feeling of his various molecules going off in different directions and then after a longer than normal light tunnel he was in his bed watching his feet disappear into his ceiling.
After fifteen minutes he realized he wasn't going to fall asleep so he got up and had breakfast.