Somnolence

Chapter 1
Narcolepsy

Chapter Description: A short introduction

Elena nervously tapped her foot, seemingly unable to go more than five seconds without glancing down at her watch. Each moment she was stuck in this line just forced her to find something new to be antsy about. Who walks into a coffee shop this early in the morning without already knowing their order? The barista was moving so slowly they must either be high or pulled an all-nighter. Not that she herself was in any way well rested, but at least she had the decency to move with a purpose! ‘Come on!’ she thought, among other things, anything to be annoyed at to have something to focus on and blame for her possibly being late for her 8am lecture for the first time all semester. She absolutely could not be late, especially when her professor for that particular class was one of the one’s she’d been buttering up for a good grad-school recommendation.   

            She had been so preoccupied with being aggravated by the creeping time she barely even noticed when she was up next to the counter. “-can help whosever next…” she caught the barist saying, snapping back to and slidding forward. “Can I get two Grande Americanos one with cream onewithnofoamextrasugarandashotofcaramel,” Elena spouted off her order automatically. “Like…cream or no cream?” the barista asked tapping on the screen gingerly. Elena did her best to stifle a groan. “One cream, one no cream,” she responded in her best attempt at politeness one can have when running late. “And those were Columbian roasts, yea?”

            Elena felt her eye twitch. “Americanos,” she answered, fairly certain a blood vessel just having burst somewhere in her. After what felt like an eternity she practically jogged out of the shop and dove into the running car in the parking lot.

            “Go go gogogogo!” She yelled at the driver who had been absentmindedly scrolling through her phone. Elena shoved one of the two cups into her empty hand.

            “You remembered no cream right?” The other girl asked, inspecting her cup.

            “Of course I did, I always remember, they just messed it up last time, now drive Rhea!” Elena said, sipping her drink as quickly as her burning tastebuds would permit while going through her barely organized stack of papers in her bag.

            “Easy girl, we got like 15 minutes…” her friend said while pulling out onto the main road.

            “It’ll take us at least five to get to campus, another five to get to Richards Hall and that’s assuming there’s a good parking spot available…ugh where are my notes??” Elena griped, trying her best to juggle the dozen or so assignments in her mind.

            “First off, we’ve made it there with less time before. Second, so what if we’re late? Not like your whole academic career is going to crumble. Don’t you have like a 3.8 GPA?” Rhea said, doing her best to calm down her hectic passenger.

            “3.9,” Elena corrected.

            “Not the point. You’re almost a senior. The professors all like you and you actually do your homework more often than all at once on the last day of the semester like most of the students they deal with. They would probably barely notice, or at least wouldn’t care, if you just didn’t show up once or twice. Not like they think you’re suddenly not going to understand the material you’ve practically been teaching them. At this point you’ve either gotten into the school of your dreams or you haven’t, so chill babycakes,” said Rhea with her usual disinterested candor.

 Despite both being physics majors for the past several years, Elena never quiet understood her friend’s laissez-faire attitude toward school. She knew Rhea did decently, not that she was ever vocal about her grades, but tests never seemed to both her, and she didn’t ever seem anxious about grad school she did. Frankly, Elena wasn’t even sure if Rhea was interested in continuing into grad school or not. Part of her was worried they would soon be splitting up after having done nearly everything together for the better part of a decade. Just another thing to add on to the pile to be preoccupied about.

`           “Besides,” Rhea continued “Not like a PhD from one school is going to keep you from dying any more than the next school’s is.” Elena rolled her eyes.

            “Whatever, just don’t slow down for the yellows, we have a quiz today.”

            “Yea, yea…” said Rhea.

After rushing into their first class with a few minutes to spare, Elena realized she had gotten the dates mixed up. Today was not in fact a quiz, but a review. One she most certainly did not need, so instead spent most of the period sipping coffee and twiddling her thumbs while bouncing her leg. After a long morning of much of the same in a few other courses around the campus, some with Rhea and some without, Elena found herself with a short period between lectures that she often used to grab a quick bite to eat and get a jump start on any new assignments. After inhaling her usual brunch, she sat in the dining hall reviewing her planner.

            “Okay tonight read chapters 9 through 13, quiz tomorrow, hit the gym in the afternoon, write the thesis abstract, Saturday volunteer-…”some kind of throbbing seemed to slowly be building up in her head. She figured it must be some kind of combination of the caffeine from this morning wearing off and trying to digest the recent meal making her exhausted. But it wasn’t like she could relax yet, she still had two more classes before the end of the day, not to mention homework. Turning her attention back to the future, she kept trying to see what exactly she needed to do. Only after a bounding feeling in her chest and failing to properly read through a simple assignment topic, Elena decided she needed some air. She’d felt the onset of a food coma before, but this was something wholly unprecedented.

            Just getting from one end of the dining hall the other was proving to be a challenge in of itself. It was taking every bit of her attention to not show the dizziness and vertigo she was feeling, not to mention the tunnel vision she was experiencing was making it difficult to process where exactly she was in the space. Could this be a panic attack or something? She worried endlessly, but now even more so. Eventually though she did manage to stumble her way to the quad and situate herself underneath a large shady tree. The fresh air would recalibrate, her she presumed, sliding down the trunk and staring up at the sun through the leaves. Gripping her backpack tightly in front of her, she couldn’t really do anything besides listen to her breathing.

            ‘Guess I could try to study that…’ the second she tried to form a productive thought it seemed to get slapped right out of her head. The only feeling greater in that moment than her intense worry for her worsening state was the encroaching sense of exhaustion shutting everything down for her whether she liked it or not. Chronically used to focusing on something, anything, she starred intensely up at the leaves. She had no idea how long she’d been sitting there, but the leaves and branches started to look…wrong. She knew they were how they were supposed to be but they…weren’t? What was happening to her? Elena thought. And she thought. And thought. Everything seemed dark but she couldn’t seem to remember ever closing her eyes.

            Everything felt so intense, yet at the same time calm as a mirror-still lake. The only sensation she could hold onto anymore was the iron-claw grip she had on her overly-full backpack. Even that didn’t feel the same anymore. The rough, worn canvas now felt soft and warm, much more comforting than it should. Nothing seemed to make sense. She heard something akin to a high-pitched whimper. Did she make that sound? She couldn’t tell anymore. Groggy was the understatement of the century for what she was feeling.

“Eaa, fefc mw wpiitc mwr’x wli. Hijmrmxipc wxecih yt xss pexi amxl qeqe. Wll, mx’w soec. Epqswx viehc jsv fihhc fci xmqi. M orsa M orsa. Ksx csy lezi e rmgi gpier hmetii erh rsa ai’pp kix csy epp rmgi erh xygoih mrxs csyv gvmf erh csy ger ks fego xs wpiit.”

            What the hell was that noise? It was kind of like talking but…without any kind of semblance of words. Just noises. It definitely wasn’t any sort of language Elena understood. She was hard-pressed to even call it a language. Even if you didn’t understand the language someone was speaking you could pick up on some sort of intention or emotion through their inflections, whatever this sound was more so resembled the chopped-up video game grunts of consoles past. It wasn’t meant to convey anything, just that someone was supposed to be talking. The only thing she could identify was that who, or whatever this was, spoke in a soft, whispery tone.

            She felt her warm, soft backpack torn out of her arms at breakneck speed, and at the same time, the solid tree trunk behind her seemed to fall away, leaving her plummeting into a void. She wanted to scream bloody murder, but only heard more of those high-pitched whimpers, still uncertain as to what exactly was making them. Soon though, she was enveloped by warmth once again, feeling as though she was floating on a cloud. An intense relaxation rushed over her like she never imagined, let alone ever remembered feeling. The soft chattering noise picked up again momentarily.

“Qeqe psziw csy fefc kmvp. Waiix hvieqw …”

            With herculean effort she opened her eyes, everything was blurry, and dimly lit. The only thing she could make out was the piercing eyes of some sort of giant leaning over her far above. The terror she knows she should naturally feel in that situation never comes, instead her eyelids crash down once again, everything fading back into nothingness.

            “Yo.” Elena felt a sharp tap to her side. With an audible gasp she sat up against the tree. She was clutching her backpack once again. Everything was back to the way it was in an instant. She felt normal, except for a splitting headache and some dry mouth.

            “Not like you to miss a class, especially differential kaleuquelus…you okay?” Rhea asked, giving her a hand to hoist her up. Elena blinked, still discombobulated, rubbing her face with her hands.

            “Yea I’m fine…just dozed off.  Sorry. Had a weird dream…Wait, what did you say?”