Sleeping Beauty

(Previously published in the City Limits 2020 anthology, “Another Place, Another Time”)

“We’re losing her, you need to try again.”

The paramedic laid both paddles of the defibrillator onto the silent woman’s chest.

“Clear!”

One thump, one thrust forward, but she still did not move.

“Again…Clear!”

Another heave and the woman’s heart started pumping anew.

“Great job, she looks like she is going to make it.”

An image flashed by. Lights screamed out. A face with dark eyes. Then darkness.

Dana realized she was lying prostrate on a crisp white bed with linen blankets tucked around her. The steady beeping accelerated as she twisted her head to find her heart was being monitored by machinery, wires tugging under her scrubs confirmed this. A jabbing pain revealed that IV was streaming into her left forearm. As her eyes focused, she had to close them against the bright white light. The sudden appearance of the nurse almost caught her off guard, hurriedly checking that the IV was flowing.

“The doctor will be with you in a minute, ma’am” said the blur of pink and white melting away.

Dana tried to settle back. It was no use. What am I doing here? The last I remember I was sitting in my living room, felt hot, went outside, then the lights overhead, and now I am here. Dana churned everything over. But how did I get here? Why am I here? Her thoughts were interrupted as the curtain pulled back to reveal the doctor.

“Well, Mrs. Liddell, how are you feeling?” The doctor had not quite peaked middle-age, but he was pleasant to look at with his greying hair swept to one side.

“I’m not sure. In fact, I can’t remember how I even got here.”

“You were unconscious when they found you lying in the street. A car almost ran you over but was startled by some light he reported had flown right by him. Thankfully, the driver stopped and called 911, and now you are here.” The doctor looked down to check the information on his clipboard. “Your temperature and vitals seem to be stable the last you were checked, let’s listen to your heart again. Could you please sit up?” Dana struggled but she managed to lift herself up only slightly as the doctor laid his stethoscope on her chest and listened intently.

“That’s strange,” he said pausing, shook his head and tried again. “Could I ask you to sit up more, I’m going to try your back.” Dana consented, straining herself as the cold device touched her skin. Then he stood up and looked right into her eyes. “Your heart is beating at an abnormal rate for someone who has just regained consciousness. I’m going to have to run a few tests.”

“Is that necessary? I mean I’m sure I will be alright…”

“I just have to make sure ma’am. I’m going to get the nurse.” And he left her alone in the room again.

Dana looked up at the ceiling. She saw how the tiles formed strange geometric patterns that seemed to orbit around her. It was almost pretty, reminding her of something she could not remember. She let the thought go knowing she would return to it later.

After the tests were performed, Dana was allowed to rest. The nurse reappeared once to inform her that her husband Robert had been alerted and was out in the waiting room. She let her eyelids close and fell asleep almost instantly.

As she slept, she saw a figure lying down. The figure like a person was one elongated oval, metallic in hue. Its arms were to its sides and its feet protruded out of the white and silver blob it was contained in.

The figure was in a room, its rectangular stone walls extending upwards and out. As she concentrated, Dana began to see other items come into view: a candelabra towering by a bedside table, the doors to an immense closet, a large chest of drawers, chairs, even the elaborate four-poster the figure was sleeping on. Dana was sure the figure was sleeping and that it was a woman. A woman with the same color hair as she had and the same facial features as she possessed. She almost looked peaceful lying there on her bed, with the ceiling spinning and taking on funny patterns. With the vines crawling up the walls and everything so still.

She suddenly realized the woman was being watched. In the dark recesses of the room, several figures huddled close to her, watching or guarding, she did not know which. And those patterns above the bed, how they were like those in the hospital room. Her bed, the hospital room…

Dana sat bolt upright. “Get me out! I don’t belong here!”

The doctor and two nurses rushed in. “What’s the matter ma’am?” “Are you alright dear?”

“No, I’m not alright dammit! I demand to know why I was brought here…”

“Calm down, Mrs. Liddell,” her doctor said, trying to comfort her as the nurses fluttered up, padding her head and shoulders in turn. “You know perfectly well that you experienced some kind of trauma. You need to rest and save up your energy. And please lie still so that those wounds on your back don’t bleed out again.”

“Wounds?” Dana stretched her arm around and felt a soft padding meet her fingertips. “What wounds?”

“When the paramedics found you, they discovered several puncture wounds on your back. We think someone intentionally made them for they are arranged in shapes, circular in nature. Police are checking the area for any sign of the culprit.”

The strange geometry on her ceiling. The face with the dark eyes.

“But you need your rest. We’ll handle it from here.”

She sunk back into the pillow as the doctor and the two nurses departed. She fell asleep for a second time.

The image of the figure that was herself was before her. The bedroom appeared around her and it was if she was peering through a window. Everything seemed normal and in place. But the scene rippled splitting in two. The figure multiplied. Dana soon found herself inhabiting a dozen new scenes that took shape, each occupying their own sphere.

Each new Dana looked and acted differently. In most of these pantomimes, she lay still, silently resting with only the bedroom furniture mismatched or changed in subtle ways. In one room, she spotted a ham and cheese sandwich or a bright red apple at her bedside table, her favorite late-night snacks. Dana then observed herself in another scenario among people, her friends, as her youthful frame danced away into the midnight hours without caring for how late it was getting. That was not like her now, but she remembered how she used to be before she was married. Next, she saw her husband Robert making love to her as he always did when he worked a regular job years ago. Dana then turned around and beheld the likeness of herself tending to a child with Robert at her side. She knew that she and her husband had tried many times to conceive a child, but it was not meant to be. How could she be confronted with this cruel untruth? But it was the last scene that almost stopped her heart again completely.

There, Dana stared into the face with the dark eyes, and it was not alone. She saw in horror how she was attached to so many wires and devices protruding from her back, creating an artificial web that tangled across her flesh. These descended from a large contraption set into the ceiling with two concentric circles, three, maybe four, eclipsing each other, whirling and spinning, forever in motion. It seemed to control her movements, her thoughts, perhaps her very fate itself was intwined within. Her body was hovering effortlessly over a flat silver bed with the beings all around her, examining her like she was some kind of insect to be prodded and poked at under intense scrutiny.

The oddest part of this nightmare was how real it played out. The other scenes had been somewhat obscured under a thin veil. Only the first scene of the lookalike Dana lying on her bed, sleeping, was the most startling apart from this fresh vision before her.

And then she realized that this scene with the dark beings was not a scene at all. It was a memory. It had been those beings that had taken her, did whatever the hell they had wanted to do to her, with her, and then what? Discarded her like some used broken-down old toy, thrown her back carelessly onto her own street to be left outside, cold and abandoned, until she was found by some passing driver and taken to safety. This hell.  

Dana felt her heart beat faster as she tried to wake herself up. The scenes blurred as she reached out for the one true reality: that of the sleeping woman. The languid form stashed in her cozy tower of briars and darkness, resting peacefully in her bed as if waiting to be brought back to life.

Wake up. The vision pulled away from her. WAKE UP! She stretched out, trying to grasp it but it was too late. Dana felt her body convulsing uncontrollably.

She was not meant to end up like this. Dana heard the voices sounding in her head. This was not the right path for her. Stop it, I am in control! We should have left her back in her own time. We need to reverse the process, Try again. Start her over. She could not bear to hear the rest, but the voices continued notwithstanding. This new life cannot support her. We tried but the experiment has failed. It is time to let her go.

Dana felt a creeping sensation flow over her entire body. Her flesh undulated, peaking and sinking in a hypnotic rhythm of its own design. Just as suddenly, the waves stopped, and her body subsided. She started to rise. She was lifted into the air, floating over the hospital bed until she was sucked into the blinding light that stole her away from the brightly lit room. And she vanished. The beings with the dark eyes looked on, and they too were no more.       

Robert was staring into his phone when the doctor came out to the lobby.

“Mr. Liddell, please come with me,” and motioned him to follow. In a small room down the hall, the doctor made Robert sit while he stood quietly in front of him.

“What is it? What’s happened? Is Dana going to be okay?” he said rising, but the doctor made him sit down again. Robert stiffened but consented.

The doctor took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Mr. Liddell, I regret to inform you that your wife has just suffered a stroke and died in her sleep.”

As the news sank in, both were unaware that the woman they had called Dana, the one whose destiny had been altered by the dark ones, was still sleeping in her faraway bed in a long-ago land. The candelabra, the closet and the chest of drawers sat undisturbed in the funeral silence of the all too quiet room. In one corner was a forgotten wooden wheel of fortune rotting away that was meant to be her death. Everything was covered in a thick web of vines and twisting thorns that blocked out the sunlight from the tower window overlooking her once prosperous kingdom.

A faint smile was painted on her lovely doll-like face, peaceful in repose. Her hands clasped over her silent body, so still under the silken sheets befitting of royalty. Her mind held but a single thought, a dream she kept close to her heart for all time: that someday, maybe one hundred years from now, her one true love would find her and come home. He would break the spell, cast out the darkness and awaken her to a new life.