🌙 The Wake-Up That Wouldn’t Let Go

When reality blinks first, the dream keeps watching

I wake up to the sound of a train horn that doesn’t belong to my street. It echoes through the bedroom like a long, wounded animal, low and aching, vibrating the picture frames. My heart slams. I don’t live near tracks. I never have. I sit upright, sheets tangled around my legs, and wait for the noise to fade.

It doesn’t.

The room looks right at first glance. Pale morning light leaking through the blinds. The faint smell of yesterday’s coffee. My phone buzzing on the nightstand like a trapped insect. Still, something is off. The air feels heavier, thick as wet wool. I swing my legs over the side of the bed and my feet sink an inch into the carpet, as if the floor is tired of holding me up.

“Get it together,” I mutter. Talking to myself has become a habit lately. Or maybe it always was.

The phone stops buzzing. When I pick it up, the screen lights without a notification. Just one word, centered and blinking.

Running.

I laugh. A brittle sound. Probably half asleep. Probably stress. Probably nothing.

The train horn howls again.

Outside, the sky looks wrong. Not stormy. Not clear. Just wrong. Clouds hang in layers like stacked plates, unmoving. The street below is empty. No cars. No joggers. No Mrs. Heller watering her roses with military precision. I check the time. 7:12 a.m. The same as yesterday. And the day before that.

I try the front door. It opens, but the porch stretches longer than it should, boards repeating like a bad copy-paste job. Each step forward feels like I’m stepping into the same square of space again and again. I stop. The world stops with me.

“Okay,” I say, louder now. “Fine.”

Back inside, the TV flicks on by itself. A news anchor stares straight into the camera, eyes too bright, smile glued on crooked.

“We’re still waiting,” she says, clearly, calmly. “You’ll remember soon.”

The screen goes black.

My chest tightens. I think of the last normal thing I remember. A grocery list scribbled on the back of an envelope. Milk. Bread. Light bulbs. I remember standing in the aisle, overwhelmed by cereal choices, when the lights flickered. I remember thinking I should call someone. I can’t remember who.

I wander the house. Every room holds something slightly wrong. Family photos where faces blur at the edges. A calendar stuck on the same date, circled in red with no note. The bathroom mirror fogs even though the shower hasn’t run. When I wipe it with my sleeve, words appear beneath the steam.

Almost there.

My pulse thunders in my ears. I press my palms to the sink and stare at my reflection. My face looks like mine, mostly. But my eyes seem deeper, older, like they’ve been awake for days.

“What is this?” I whisper. “What do you want?”

The reflection smiles a second too late.

“To wake up,” it says.

I stumble back, knocking into the towel rack. It clatters to the floor. When I look again, the mirror shows only me, breathing hard, alone. I laugh again, louder this time, a little hysterical. People crack under pressure. I’ve read about it. The brain is a strange machine. It protects itself by making stories.

I grab my keys and head for the car. The street is still empty, silent as a held breath. The car starts on the first try. The radio crackles, then settles on a familiar song from years ago, one I haven’t heard since college. The lyrics land heavy, every line about time slipping, about missing signs.

As I drive, the neighborhood repeats. Same blue house. Same crooked mailbox. Same chalk drawing on the sidewalk, a hopscotch grid that never ends. I turn left. Then right. Then left again. The train horn sounds closer now, vibrating through the steering wheel.

“Stop,” I shout. “Just stop.”

The car stalls.

The world goes quiet.

I rest my forehead on the wheel and squeeze my eyes shut. Darkness rushes in, thick and warm. For a moment, I think maybe this is it. Maybe I’ve finally broken through whatever this is.

Then I hear footsteps.

Slow. Careful. Someone approaches the car. I lift my head. A figure stands in front of the hood, blurred by heat shimmer that shouldn’t exist. As they come closer, the blur sharpens.

It’s me. Or someone wearing my face like a mask.

“You’re looping,” they say gently, tapping the hood. “You always do that part.”

“What part?” My voice shakes. “Who are you?”

They smile, and this time it matches their eyes. “I’m the part that remembers.”

They open the driver’s door. The smell of antiseptic rushes in, sharp and clean. The street wavers, colors bleeding at the edges.

“You fell asleep,” they continue. “Not like bedtime. Deeper. Your brain filled the gap. It does that.”

I try to move, but my body feels distant, like it’s wrapped in cotton. “Asleep where?”

The train horn blares, deafening now. The world fractures. Houses peel away like stage props. The sky folds inward.

“In a room,” they say. “With machines. With people saying your name.”

“No,” I say, though the word feels weak. “This feels real.”

They nod. “Dreams always do.”

The ground drops out.

I wake up to beeping. Steady. Relentless. White light stabs my eyes. My throat burns. My body feels heavy, pinned. A ceiling swims into focus, tiles cracked like tiny maps. Someone leans over me, face swimming, then sharp.

“You’re awake,” a voice says, trembling with relief. “You’re really awake.”

I try to speak. My mouth barely works. “Train,” I croak. “There was a train.”

The person laughs softly, tears spilling over. “You always say that.”

Days pass. Or hours. Time is slippery here too, but in a different way. I learn I was found unconscious after a long drive, car pulled over, engine cold. Severe exhaustion. Dehydration. A dream state that wouldn’t let go. The doctor explains it carefully, kindly, like handling glass.

“Your mind needed rest,” she says. “It built a place to stay.”

I nod. I drink water. I sleep without dreams for the first time in what feels like years.

Eventually, they let me go home.

My house looks normal again. The air feels light. The calendar flips forward. The street is loud with life. I settle back in, grateful, shaky, determined to pay attention.

That night, as I drift off, I hear it.

A distant train horn.

Soft. Familiar.

I open my eyes.

The ceiling above me is tiled. Cracked like tiny maps.

Someone leans over me, smiling.

“You’re almost there,” they whisper.

And somewhere, far away, an alarm clock begins to ring.