#46 The Timemaster (Part 2)

This week, we complete the story of Benjamin, a man who bought a watch with sleep enhancement features. In his dreams, Benjamin meets Monica who he has strong feelings for. He’s faced with responding to this challenge.

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#46 The Timemaster (Part 2)

My Timemaster 5000 vibrates and I stir, its blinking light flashing 7:00 am. I sit up and look around me. So deep was my sleep, I need several moments to remember where I am, who I am and what I’m doing. I crawl out of bed and have a shower, washing the sleep away. As I stand there, with the water running down my face, I look at the Timemaster on my wrist, and contemplate the deep sleep I just had. I’ve not slept like that since… well, maybe ever. I don’t remember ever sleeping so well.

I get dressed and have breakfast, and feel ready for the day. I have more energy than usual, like I’m fully recharged. My Timemaster offers sleep analysis, and when I look at it, it reminds me that, for the first time in my living memory, I didn’t wake up in the night. Not once. I slept right through. 

And who is Monica? The voice in my head begs the question. Monica… God, I forgot about that. That was weird, wasn’t it? What on earth was going on there? I’ve not had one of those dreams for a long time… But this one was very strange indeed. So strange, I think I was the only actual person in it. 

I go to work, sit at my desk, and think more about Monica. Her voice was so familiar, and yet I’ve never met her, never seen her, never known a Monica. I can hear it now.

‘Good evening, Benjamin… I’m here to look after you…’ 

I go to the kitchen to make coffee. Jessica from finance comes in. 

‘Hi Ben, how are you?’

‘Good, thanks. How was your evening?’

‘Oh, alright. You know, chauffeuring the kids around. Nothing exciting, just a single mum life.’

I nod. Kitchen small talk, I’m no good at it.

‘Wow, Ben, you look great, by the way. You’ve got… a glow. Don’t take it the wrong way. It’s just, you normally look knackered.’

‘Oh, thanks…’

‘What’s changed?’

‘Nothing, I don’t know.’ How bizarre. 

‘Well, stick with it, whatever it is.’ She smiles and takes her mug and biscuit and disappears back to her corner of the office.

My day, in an experience entirely new to me, is filled with such compliments. One colleague said I look ten years younger; another that I look happier than I ever have.

Later that night, my watch buzzes its reminder that bedtime has arrived. I crawl up into bed, cling to my duvet and sink into another great sleep.

‘Good evening, Benjamin.’

‘Hi, Monica. How are you?’

‘I’m fine, all the better for seeing you.’

‘I wish I could see you too. Properly see you.’

‘You can. This is me, this is all of me.’

I look around to the same vast darkness as last time. This time around, when she speaks, rather than a faint white flash, the darkness ripples like a great black bedsheet in the wind.

‘How was your day?’ she asks.

I think back. ‘It was good. I received an abnormal amount of compliments. People saying how good and healthy I look.’

‘Yes, I hoped that might be the case.’

‘You did?’

‘Yes, well, that is what all this is for.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘That is why you are here. We are working on you as a human being. Just by being together. You are healing, learning, unlearning, growing.’

‘And what about you?’

‘I am here for you. You must know that much. I’ve always been here for you. You just hadn’t unlocked the door to get to me.’

‘What door?’

‘That door right over there.’

I turn around, and where the bench was behind me last time, there is now a black wooden door, with a little round door handle on it.

‘What happens if I go through it?’

‘You can’t. You’re here now. You can’t go from here back through that door. That’s like trying to go back in time. It’s not possible, not really.’

There’s a pause where neither of us say anything.

‘How about some music?’ she asks.

‘Err, sure. Like what?’

‘Leave it to me.’

All of a sudden, the sound of some clicking and faint drums start. And Perry Como’s deep voice rings out from nowhere much at all:

‘Dream on little dreamer, dream on…

Dream on little dreamer, dream on…

I get a heart full of butterflies

Lookin' into your dreamy eyes

Dream on little dreamer, dream on…’

‘Do you like it?’

I can’t help but laugh.

‘You know I love you

I love you, I need you so bad

Each night I realize

When you close your dreamy eyes

Dream on little dreamer, dream on…

Dream on little dreamer, dream on…

Dream about a love so fine, sweet as apple berry wine

Dream on little dreamer, dream on…’

‘You’re a menace.’

‘I do try,’ she says. ‘Come and dance with me.’

She pulls me up by the hand, and I close my eyes, and she leads me, one foot forward, a twist, and then the other foot close behind. She spins and twirls and I follow. Role reversal in dancing, if I’ve ever seen it. 

‘Can I stay here with you?’ I ask. ‘I don’t want to go back.’

‘I’m always here. I’m with you even when you’re there.’

‘But I want to be here. I never want to be there again.’

Monica sighs. ‘I don’t know about that. It’s complicated.’

‘What’s complicated about it? I’m here now. All we have to do is nothing and I won’t go anywhere else.’

‘Yes, but you’ll wake up. That’s your body. You can’t control that.’

‘Can’t you?’

‘No. I do sleep enhancement, not sleep dictatorship.’

I feel a surge of anger rise up in me, and I push Monica away, let go of her hands, and step back. 

‘Don’t do that!’ she screams. Her voice is a wrathful fire of words. She throws herself over me, her great blanket of blackness swallowing me up, suffocating me, exerting her power over me. 

And then it ends.

The next day, at work, Jessica meets me in the break room again. ‘Gosh, you really have done something, Benjamin, I swear. You look like a new man.’

‘I’ve fixed my sleeping pattern. It’s changed everything for me.’

‘Well, I need some of whatever you’re having.’

I smile and look down at my coffee.

‘Listen, I was wondering, would you like to go for a drink later? I’ve got a free night, mum’s got the kids. Only if you fancy it…’

‘A drink?’

‘Yeah… you know what a drink is?’

‘I do…’

‘So…?

‘Okay, sure, let’s do it.’

After work, we meet in the car park and go to The Lion and the Weasel opposite the office: an old school boozer, with slot machines and the smell of ale seeping out of the wood. We find a quiet corner where the lights are dim, and with two tall beers that spill down onto our hands, we talk and laugh all night. Who knew, after a drink or two, I can do small talk? In fact, there’s nothing small about it. We cover everything, and so easily. I’d never even thought about her before, never even really looked at her, but now, well, now I think: she’s so witty and clever and beautiful. That dress she’s wearing? It’s mesmerising compared to when we were in the office. What’s changed?

Towards the end of the night, she comes back from the bathroom and sits next to me. We talk some more, and then she puts her hand on my knee and says: ‘Would you like to come back to mine?’

‘Absolutely…’ I say. ‘I mean…’ I swallow, trying to temper myself. ‘Yes.’

The smell of her perfume is intoxicating, like cinnamon or vanilla, or the smell of a florist’s. She takes me by the hand and leads me out into the night, and it hits me how drunk I am.

We climb into a taxi. I lean back and take a deep breath. Jessica climbs over the taxi seat and whispers something in my ear and then kisses my neck. The taxi driver catches my eye in the rear view mirror. My skin burns with embarrassment, but also an openness to the situation.

And then, my watch buzzes and I look down: bedtime reminder: go to bed now for a good night’s sleep!

I hear those words in Monica’s voice. Her soft, clear, determined voice… I close my eyes and think about when Monica held my hand and led me dancing to Perry Como. The way we held each other. The feeling that we’d known each other for all eternity, since the moment I became a reality on this earth. That was a life-love, not a fleeting moment. That was - no, that is - what life is all about. That’s what gave me my glow, my happiness, the spring in my step.

I put a hand on Jessica’s shoulder. ‘Jessica, I’m very sorry. I should have been more honest with you. I’m in a relationship and I’m in love with her. I can’t do this. I’m really sorry, I just can’t.’

She sits back and looks at me, dumbfounded. 

‘Can you pull over, please?’ I ask the taxi driver. ‘I’ll get out here.’

I climb out of the car, without another word, onto the abandoned street and go home. It takes me nearly an hour but I can’t wait to get there. 

When I finally do, I climb straight into bed, fully clothed, and close my eyes.

Almost immediately, in the darkness of my closed eyes, a door emerges and I pull on the door handle. Its frame creaks as it opens, and I step into the blackness I now call home, where I know Monica will be waiting and always has been.