Introduction
Sweet Nightmares began its life as a poem. Written in community college, the poem features the same basic structure as the short story, but in a fewer words with no characterization or details. Years later, I expanded the poem into a short story for a speculative fiction class, and later submitted that story to Toyon Literary Magazine. I was fortune enough to have the story published in 2020, where it won the Richard Cortez Day Award for Fiction.
The Text
The Audio
The Original Poem
"True, but at least insomnia means no more bad dreams," she smiles,
as if no nightmare had ever woken her from soundless sleep,
as if she did not dwell, like me, in half remembered dreams.
She flipped the switch and stole the light, leaving nothing
but the whisper of the day and a hollow promise of the next.
I lay awake and asleep, unsure of the difference
in a room where I had been many times before-
the third floor of a two story house.
Every book and toy lay precisely where I left it.
My mother was there, who I had not seen in years.
She tried to devour my soul.
I rise in sweat, cold and burning-
panting, screaming, laughing.
Life awaits inside my head,
some half remembered thought buried deep
within my seething skull at sleep;
an answer that will edify and clarify
the fractured fabric of the waking world.
I sleep again to find it. But I can’t.
There is a woman that I do not know.
She tucks me into bed, though not my bed
and tells me not to sleep again or else I’ll go beyond.
I plead with her, “I must sleep to dream and dream to live.”
"True, but at least insomnia means no more bad dreams," she smiles.
as if no nightmare had ever woken her from soundless sleep,
as if she did not dwell, like me, in half remembered dreams.
She flipped the switch and stole the light, leaving nothing
but the whisper of the day and a hollow promise of the next.
I lay awake and asleep, unsure of the difference
in a room where I had been many times before-
the third floor of a two story house.
Every book and toy lay precisely where I left it.
My mother was there, who I had not seen in years.
She tried to devour my soul.
I rise in sweat, cold and burning-
panting, screaming, laughing.
Life awaits inside my head,
some half remembered thought buried deep
within my seething skull at sleep;
an answer that will edify and clarify
the fractured fabric of the waking world.
I sleep again to find it. But I can’t.
There is a woman that I do not know.
She tucks me into bed, though not my bed
and tells me not to sleep again or else I’ll go beyond.
I plead with her, “I must sleep to dream and dream to live.”
"True, but at least insomnia means no more bad dreams," she smiles.