There is Pain.

It’s Insurmountable, branding the backs of my eyelids with faint, milky white dots. There

is a sound, filling me. It blares, erupting in waves, coursing through me; an ocean of endless,

inescapable noise. I cannot see where I am. In fact, I cannot see anything. Even the dots

eventually disappear.

My eyes clatter, wet and popping, as if being squeezed by some great, invisible hand. I

try to open them, but I’m not sure if they exist. Not anymore. My bones feel reduced to soil, a

fine powder lining the innermost part of my flesh. I am leather floating in a breeze, I am

newspaper caught on the edge of a taxi’s headlight.

I am nothing, I do not exist.

The sound does not stop, it persists. It crawls inside me; an insect, burrowing deeper until

it is me. It rages, it cries. Everything is noise. My body is noise, my body is pain.

It’s like a siren. No, the noise is a siren, swelling and erupting.

And, it will not stop.

In the same second, I awake with sweat on my lip. I can taste it, salty as freshly cried

tears. My chest is heaving, ready to purge itself of the food we ate for dinner. I stare at the

ceiling, and I feel myself slipping into madness. That is, until my wife rests her hand on my

forearm.

She makes me remember where I am. Our apartment, our bedroom, our bed perfectly

fitted with cotton sheets and old, yellowed pillows. Her hair is just barely beneath my shoulder, I

can hear her breath falling out of her lips. She is real, her warmth is real.

It was only a dream, I think.

“Are you okay?” She asks, bearing the look of one just having witnessed the breaking of

a bone. She was calm, but her eyes held the same terror they always did when this happened.

“I’m . . .” I let out a breath, “it was . . .”

“The sirens again?” She squeezes me harder when she asks this, as if trying to meld her

skin into my own. I nod solemnly, and she wastes no time pulling me into her.

My nose rests against her chest as she weaves her fingers into my hair. I listen to the

gentle thumping of her heart, counting each beat, silently praying it will continue forever.

“It’s okay,” she whispers into my ear, “It’s not real, you’re here, with me.” Her voice

cracks on the last word, becoming all wobbly, the way it does when she’s about to cry.

“I’m not going anywhere.” Her voice soothes me. At some point, I fall back asleep. Even

when she joins me in unconsciousness, her hands do not stop holding me.

___

The sirens have plagued dreams since our honeymoon. The windows were open, letting warm air

trail along the peaks of our naked bodies. We slept in a too-fancy Madrid hotel, heads leaving

imprints on the silk pillows. I had a hand along her waist, feeling her breath fill her chest, then

pour out of her.

When my eyes finally closed, when I finally dreamed, it began. I felt that I no longer had

a body, nor eyes, or lips. Only ears, being prodded by constant waves of sound.

I remember waking up suddenly, thinking it was real, that something terrible had

happened. But, I saw my wife still sleeping, her face squished against the mattress and her

chocolaty hair fanned around her. My relief was enough to lull me back to sleep. I slept

peacefully for the rest of our stay after that, and I chalked it up to a simple nightmare.

However, it came again three months later. I’d fallen asleep quickly, work giving me a

tension headache that could only be soothed by laying down. This time I woke up in a sweat, my

mouth already open to cry out. My wife thought I was having a heart attack.

When I forced the words out, when I explained what happened, she breathed with me,

offering open arms and the gentle, calming beat of her heart.

Ever since then it was occasional, appearing every three to five months, sometimes six, if

I was lucky. I tried to get used to it, I told myself lots of people have recurring dreams, and it was

nothing to worry about. But every time I had it I felt disgustingly unnerved. It was as if there was

a hand inside my chest, its fingertips brushing each pulsing organ in my body. It was a violation,

those dreams, a strange and horrific break in my subconsciousness’s normal activities.

In the five years since our honeymoon I tried therapy, hypnosis, even going back to that

same hotel in Madrid to see if maybe I stumbled upon some demon with a vendetta. I received

no answers, no closure, and the dreams persisted. The only saving grace was my wife by my

side.

Her wide, doe-eyes were enough to calm me when the dreams ended, to make me forget

and fall back into a restful sleep. Her arms, cradling me, were a sanctuary I never knew I could

rely so heavily upon. So, I just figured if I had no answers, at least I had her. And, that would

always be enough.

At the very tail end of the fifth, I got lucky. For a year, the dreams did not come. I was

ecstatic, I thought I had worked through some grand, unrealized trauma that had infiltrated my

life and refused to let go. For that year, I did not feel dread before sleeping, I could be the one to

hold my wife. I could be her sanctuary.

For those days, my mood was brighter. I hardly needed coffee, I went for more walks,

and strangely enough, I found joy in baking. There was no terror in my wife’s gaze, and that fact

alone was enough to lift me as high as the clouds.

It finally came back on a cold night at the very end of January. We’d just finished our

taxes, and ate our body weight in the Chinese food that followed. It was a Saturday, I was tired

and bloated, and I actually looked forward to sleeping. When we laid down, I tucked my arm

under my wife’s neck, and my other on her waist. I whispered “goodnight” into her vanilla

scented hair, and fell asleep quicker than I had in months.

When I awoke, panting and sweaty, my wife was shocked. Still, she comforted me in the

way she always had, moving her fingers through my hair, whispering things against my cheek.

Only, this time I wept.

I could not help it. I was tired. Tired of making my wife my own personal therapist, tired

of feeling this ice in my stomach whenever I laid my head on our pillows, tired of money spent

on answers that provided nothing. I felt like a burden, one giant wailing baby, screaming for its

mother. I was tired, and more than anything, I wanted to rest.

“Again?” she whispered. I didn’t have to answer for her to know. So we stayed together,

her slowly rocking me. Unfair, I thought, so unfair to you.

From then on, the dreams became weekly. After two weeks, nightly. I lost sleep, my

undereyes deepening and becoming colored by a shade of deep plum. My hands shook in a way

they never have before, and my muscles carried the constant ache of exhaustion. Sometimes I

saw things out of the corner of my eyes, strange black shapes, which I learned was a product of

insomnia.

My wife wore the same look; lacking sleep, crabby, secretly horrified. She drank more

coffee, got angrier at people driving too slow. Though, she never stopped holding me. She would

not let go, even when we both had work at 7 am, even when we’d run through the coffee grounds

and hadn’t had time to get to the store. Neither of us had restful sleep in days. Neither of us even

had the energy to do dishes, or grab the mail.

Somehow, in some profoundly magical and intimate way, she didn’t hold it against me.

She took it on the chin; waking up and going to work the same as she always did. She’d kiss me

on my forehead, whisper a quick “I love you” into my ear, and leave with a coffee, blacker than

usual. For those few weeks she became to me like a goddess, nurse, and lover wrapped into one,

glowing body.

I didn’t deserve her. But, not because I was bad. Because she shone in a way the stars

couldn’t, and her laughter, her dumb grin at her even dumber jokes, it was enough to pull me

from all of this. Even amidst the sirens, the blaring, the ear-splitting pain, I thought maybe I

could hear it somewhere, her laughter in the dark. As if it were my subconscious, reminding me

of the most pleasant thing on earth.

On the fifth day of the ceaseless dreams, I called out of work. My wife still went, though

I told her she didn’t have to. She’s always been a workaholic, and I think it gave her something

to do, something else to think about.

My thinking was this: I went a year without the dreams, so this was my subconscious

making up for all of the time lost. It was incredibly abnormal, but my dreams of crying sirens

and blackness had never been normal. The dreams would go back to their bi-yearly appearances.

Of this concept I felt sure. It would go away soon, it would end.

Still, I was getting no sleep, and it was slowly eating away at my ability to do my job. I

told myself I would stay home and catch up on sleep. And when my wife kissed me, when she

whispered her familiar words, a tumbler of steaming coffee in her hand, I looked up and said,

“There will be a surprise here when you get back,” Lillies. Her favorite. I would get them

from the shop around the corner, along with dinner, desert, and way too expensive wine. Maybe I

would write a card, too. She deserved it, she deserved everything.

“Oh, really?” She asked playfully, her mouth curving into a devious grin. She gave me a

second kiss, and mumbled something before leaving. I watched the car pull off the side of the

street through a rain-speckled window. It was coming down especially hard, making the world

look water color and murky. Greys blended seamlessly into the blues and blacks and reds of car

wrapping. The streetlights became the windowed apartment complexies, and the complexies

became the sky.

I slept for most of the day, the rain pacifying me into a sort of haze. My dreams were

normal at first, peaceful even. Then, they were overridden by the sirens. Somehow, this time felt

worse. I felt pain working its way up my neck, a sort of icy stabbing, like getting a tattoo or

being shocked by Christmas lights. It blossomed at the base of my skull, overtaking my head in

an agonized pulsing.

When I woke, I still felt it – the pain embedding itself inside me. I took Advil, but it

hardly worked. It left my mind in a fog. And, I wasn’t sure why, but I felt this dread in my

stomach. It was different from what I typically get before sleeping. That dread had purpose, a

reason. This had no source, no meaning, just plainly existed, coiling around my lungs.

My breathing felt short, my body seeming to prepare itself to be chased. Panic, anxiety,

that’s what it had to be. The laundry list of panic attacks caused by the sirens extends greater

than the street just outside our building. Everytime my wife saw through them, leading me back

to reality with her breathing.

I tried to let the excitement for my wife’s surprise be the only overruling emotion,

pushing everything else to the side. She would be home by 4:30, so around 3:15 I grabbed an

umbrella and walked out the front door. I didn’t care that it was raining, I yearned for something

other than the bedroom, other than rest. Plus, my wife had the car.

I bought the lilies, tipping the old woman at the counter extra, and held the flowers close

to my chest. Their ivory petals stuck out just barely from the umbrella coverage, beading them

with droplets of whatever. My shoes squelched on puddles forming beneath me, and though my

tennis shoes were getting soaked through, I did not care.

As I walked to pick up our take out – an Italian place my wife could rant about for hours

– the storm picked up. The rain went from heavy to torrential, the sharp winds threatening to rip

my umbrella away.

When I stopped to grab strawberry cake from the bakery nestled into the streetside, it

persisted. I checked my phone, 4:35. I felt my heart dance a bit, the dread sharpening, piercing

me. It’s only five minutes, I told myself. But, my wife timed everything perfectly. She hated

being late, and she was more aware of traffic patterns than anyone I’d ever met. My chest

tightened.

The rain was bad, worse than I’d seen in years.

I was nearly to our apartment, the bags of hot food creating a crease in my palms. The

Flowers were in my other hand, the container of cake nestled into my shoulder. I flicked the keys

out of my jean pocket, but dropped them when I heard a sound from behind me.

The sirens.

I heard them from the distance, lachrymose, swelling and breathing even through the

sheet of rain. Their familiar wailing, the patterns and high points the exact same. It was the sound

I heard when I closed my eyes, the sound that kept me from resting, the sound my wife yearned

to snuff out.

It took everything in me not to drop the food against the slickened pavement. I held it

tight, my hands beginning to tremble. The edges of my eyes watered, but no tears came. I felt

frozen.

At first, I thought I was going crazy. I had forgone too much sleep, my subconscious was

finally working its way to reality. I turned in the direction of it. I could see nothing. Around me

were the tall faces of buildings, dirty trashcans and lamposts covered by thick dots of gum. I

tried to breathe, tried to hear my wife, her laugh.

Then I saw the lights, red and flashing in circles, pulsing and smudged. It was an

ambulance, barreling as fast as it could down the street. And, the sound it made was the very

same one that had been plaguing me for the past six years.

I could not see beyond the black windows, but the mere sight of it, wheels working down

the slickened road, terrified me. I checked my phone again, 4:40.

I pressed the call button on my wife’s smiling contact photo. As it ran, I watched the

ambulance spray water against the sewer grates, listening to the very same sound from my

dreams. It rang, and rang, and rang, until I heard her voice.

“Hi! This is Liza, I’m probably doing something incredibly important right now, so

please call me back . . .” I stood like that in the rain, calling over and over again like some

lovesick fool. The rain poured above my head, the sound of a million tiny heartbeats splattering

against umbrella fabric. I could hardly see my phone, my hands would not stop shaking.

That was, until my phone started to ring.

I looked down, my heart fluttering, hoping to see my wife’s beautiful name. Only, it

wasn’t. It was a no-caller id number, taking the place of where my wife should have been. Still I

clicked it, and muttered an anxious hello.

“Is this the husband of Eliza Murray?” It was a gruff man, and his voice was grave. I

could hardly hear myself say yes. As he spoke, the cake slipped out of my hand, crashing against

the wet pavement. Still, I heard the sirens in the distance, calling me, screaming at me.

“I’m so sorry to say this, but your wife’s been in an accident.”