Katie Pearson was having trouble sleeping, again. The fifth night this week saw her struggling against the clock to close her conscious mind to the world and embrace the sanctity of dreams. SHe peered out from beneath her blanket and spied the electric blue of her alarm clock. She kept it across the room on her dresser. That way, if she actually had to get up to turn it off, she would wake up enough to prevent any oversleeping. That was the theory of course. This week, it was becoming increasingly less necessary. Monday she managed three hours. Tuesday and Wednesday netted her about two hours each. Thursday was technically an all-nighter. She fell asleep at her psychology lecture before being embarrassed almost to death for snoring during a rather poignant repaste of the effects of the subconscious mind on the habits of effective people.
The clock taunted her with a 3:34 a.m. report and seemed to further illustrate the point by immediately jumping to 3:35. She groaned and pulled the covers back up.
Then, there was that lengthy pause while a complex decision was being mulled. She decided to get up and work on some of her midterm. She peeled back the covers and noticed two strange things that didn't immediately register.
Clock and door. The clock was different. The numbers were reading 4:99 which of course, was odd but they were sliding to the right. Sliding was the only way she could describe their appearance. The clock was sitting still right at the corner of her dresser next to the picture of her mother and grandmother. Right where it was supposed to be. The numbers were being stretched off of its face toward...what? SHe thought to close her eyes and adjust her mind but feared that she might miss something important. She caught a glimpse in her periphery of her closet door. It was wavering.
The door seemed to be rippling like fluid. The electric blue numbers were slowly making their way towards its surface. She could feel the motion in the pit of her stomach. The experience was the inertia of sudden movement and the pull of gravity towards the ground when you're leaning and losing your balance. The panic started to rise and she closed her eyes to wipe this away.
Katie squeezed her mind tight in an effort to restore normalcy to this obvious dream when the sound started. It sounded like birth. She opened her eyes and watched the surface of the closet door become pulsing blue-black and return in a 'pop' to its former occupation. The clock winked back on and flickered 3:35 a.m.
Calming herself, she sat up fully in bed and placed her feet on the cold floor. The bare wood on her bare feet was steadying. Heaving a deep sigh, she stood up and screamed. There was a person lying on the floor in front of her.
Brian, you have an intriguing story started. I think you have detracted from the suspense and urgency by using a passive voice (was having trouble sleeping, decision was being mulled, number were being stretched off, numbers were reading etc) and by giving us too much unimportant information between the real action lines (the part about falling asleep in class before the clock clicked over). I would suggest you work changing to an active voice and cutting unnecessary words, because I think you have a talent for suspense writing buried in these words.
Ireland 1945. Florence Kite finds a letter and her whole world crumbles. Marcus Fanning was her real father. But twenty-five years ago, Marcus Fanning vanished off the face of the earth.
