The Middle of the Night
I looked up at the ominous mountain that was my bed. Felt like I was still falling. The sensation was intensified by the rapid beating of my heart and the cool air being blown on me by the fan spinning around silently on my ceiling. I tried to sit up but I was shaking so severely that I could barely move. The clock on my bedside table shone bright red. 1:26. It seemed to me that it was counting down the seconds until I fell to the bottom and finally reached my death.
I kept glancing up to my bed with blankets piled on top of it making it look like a towering precipice that seemed to grow with every ragged breath I drew in. I tried to steady my body so that I could get up and reassure myself that I was really on solid ground. The falling sensation in my stomach was lessening and I managed to sit up. The room spun around me. I put a hand to my head and looked back up at my bed. It didn’t seem so ominous anymore. I reached up and pulled myself into it, letting my exhausted body collapse into the softness of the blankets and pillows. I realized that I was sharing with cold, so I laid my head on an especially squishy pillow and drew the covers up to my chin. Immediately, I felt my mind slip into a warm sense of security as sleep tugged at the edges of my consciousness.
I was back on the side of the cliff. No rope. No harness. Nothing but the feeble strength of my arms holding on as tight as I could. I desperately wanted to reach sturdy, solid ground. My fingers slipped ever so slightly on the handhold that my left foot rested on, and it was enough to spike my heartbeat up to a dangerous level. The feeling of falling was bubbling in my stomach and made my breathing heavy and restricted. I was thinking that I didn’t know how much longer I could hang on when a rock came loose under right hand and started to fall.
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