Morgan

Morgan is the type of person who is me. I am me, and Morgan is Morgan, and Morgan is me. It should logically follow that I am Morgan. But I’m not.

I first realized I wasn’t Morgan the night we met. She sat in that corner with bloodshot eyes and a crooked smile, and I knew immediately that she was other. She wasn’t totally foreign, though, and I watched her laugh spastically, alone, until one or both of us lost consciousness.

I saw her everyday that week, on the streets, my unbearable office, in the fractured crevices of my sleepy brain. Any yellow-haired woman of average height teemed with potential, luring me away from the cages each day set for me, until a face unlike Morgan’s emerged and my mood plunged into visceral contempt. I somehow went about my days accomplishing no less than usual, but each let down was greater than the last and took far too long to pass.

I’m sure she didn’t think of me until the night we met again at a bar, I don’t know, a late night something or other. She had the same straw hair but she’d lost the glare of heavy-handed insanity that drew me in when we’d met. She was with a friend of mine, Chris, a person I’d known my whole life. She looked more subdued than before, like Chris had put her in some sort of trance. I saw directly through it, though, into her destructive, chaotic universe, and I couldn’t tell if I wanted in or out. I normally would have sat down with him for a drink, but the prospect of re-introducing myself to this Valkyrie seemed impossible. I swallowed my next few drinks too quickly and stumbled home to find a reality that wasn’t so faint.

That night I dreamed that I was awake. Typically, I don’t address my own consciousness in dreams, but I felt that I had woken up surrounded by sheets and pillows I didn’t recognize. My spotless apartment became a shabby house with no heat and a sunken, dripping ceiling. I wanted to look around the room to gather my bearings, but I had no control over my movements. My eyesight had grown worse. Once my eyes adjusted to the dark, I found myself groping for pair of glasses on a nightstand. I put them on and floated to the bathroom, past a digital clock blinking blue, 12:00. When I turned on the light, I looked in the mirror and saw nothing but the wall behind me. I blinked, and I found myself back in my own bedroom, splayed on the floor, covered in piss and vomit. I showered and slept naked in my bed, waiting until morning to figure out what the hell just happened.

I wasn’t too concerned the next morning, I knew what it was like to drink too much or take whatever pills and roasting papers that came my way. Someone must have passed me an anonymous pill, one that specializes in fucked up dreams. That was all. I had been paralyzed in dreams before, though it usually happens the moment between discovering I’m dreaming and actually opening my eyes. No cause for alarm, the world is a strange place.

Things never returned to normal, though. I woke up without any concern for the day. I couldn’t even remember how to go about checking the calendar, either. I looked at the clock on my wall, but the face made no sense to me anymore. The hands didn’t seem to be pointing to anything significant, all I could see was my entire day overlapping at every “moment” the clock claimed to correspond to. I sat on the edge of my bed with my head in my hands, hoping someone would tell me what was happening. I had no one to hope for but myself, so I moved to the couch and stared mindlessly at the flickering lights until I noticed that the sun had set. I climbed back into bed and slipped back into swirling sleep.

I still had no idea what day it was the next morning. I knew where I was, who I was, but not when I was. I figured I should get dressed for work, since it didn’t seem likely that I wouldn’t have to go today. It was comforting to remember what “today” meant. I clumsily clutched at some sort of routine, starting with my clothes and breakfast, then taking a shower, getting into bed, leaving my apartment, going back in to get my keys. Not quite right, but the best I could do. I walked down the street, checking to make sure other people were doing the same. Everyone looked so familiar that morning, like we had fought in the same platoon in some foreign army. The world was loud, the trains and planes overhead, the shrieking of brakes and babies, private cell phone conversations, all screeched through my head. I watched a clock tower tick furiously with no regularity, furious with me for some unknown transgression. I waited at the corner of the street for some direction, and saw nothing but a crumpled newspaper oblivious to traffic laws. I grew worried that the front-page headline might collide with the gum wrappers I saw barreling down the road. I was too nervous about this to continue walking to work, my terrifying compartment in this world, so I let the same wind that swept the trash down the street carry me back into my bed.

Either I fell asleep and missed the night, or no time passed at all. The music playing in or outside my room distracted me from whatever task I was ignoring. The closer I got to my speakers, the softer the music, though. From what I gathered, it was a mixture of my three beautiful songs, combined in a hideous, brown chatter that distanced itself from me with every new measure. I needed to call my mother. Would she remember me? Where had she been for so long? I couldn’t remember her phone number, so I flipped through my photo albums. I found a picture of me in a cap and gown, standing next to a proud middle-aged woman and decided this must be her. I stared at the photograph until seven digits came to me, took out my phone, and dialed it. It rang five or ten times, and a woman answered.

“Hello?”
Hello.
“Hello? Morgan?
Morgan? “This isn’t Morgan.”
“Hello? Who is this? How did you get this number?”
“I’m really not sure, madam.” She was starting to make me nervous.
“I’d say you have the wrong number, but you are calling from my daughter’s phone. Did she lose it?”

My mother had died three years before this phone call. Startled by this realization, I hung up the phone and promised never to try calling her again. It would be selfish of me to interrupt her rest. Everything must have been so wrong, but I couldn’t tell why. I stayed in my bed to try and figure out what it was I was supposed to be figuring out. The ticking of the meaningless clocks disrupted my muddled inertia. Taking them all down and locking them in my bathroom seemed like a good place to start. I reconsidered, since I might need the bathroom later, so I put them in cabinets, my washing machine, and buried the biggest one in the backyard. Maybe then we could forget each other.

My friend Chris must have seen me burying my clock because some time after I finished he came to my door. I was glad to have a visitor, I had forgotten that feeling. He made a face at me that I couldn’t interpret, and asked me if I was okay. What a boring question. Too boring to answer.
“Do you hear that creaking?”

“What creaking?” he answered. I couldn’t place his expression. How could he ignore the sound?

“The door, why has it been creaking since you opened it.”

“Are you feeling okay?” Maybe I misinterpreted what he said earlier. This felt like the first time he asked.

I decided he should hear the creaking, that would probably explain everything. I wanted to put it on my speakers, it was a very interesting noise, but I couldn’t find them.

“I must have buried them with the clocks.”

“Buried what? You’re seriously freaking me out.” His presence dwindled into a wretched annoyance so I went back to my bedroom. He walked in after me and stood by the door. I invited him to sit on the bed but he didn’t listen. “What’s with this shovel?” he said, looking down at the muddy tool breathing steadily at his feet.

“Ignore that. I want to talk about the time we found that dead raccoon in the backyard, when we were kids.” I knew he wouldn’t remember.

“What are you talking about? You weren’t there, that was me and Morgan. How do you know about that?”

I must have just heard the story and forgotten whose it was.

“Listen, I’m just here to get Morgan’s phone. She said she doesn’t care how you got it anymore, she just wants it back.” He spoke calmly but his eyes burst with incendiary hatred. I wanted him to leave. I gave him the phone in my pocket and asked him not to come back. Wherever I got that phone, it was a small price to pay for some peace. “We may not really know each other, but I’m a bit concerned. Maybe you should get some help, or at least some sleep.” I looked at the floor until he left. At some point, the creaking must have stopped. Maybe he took it with him.

His advice seemed reasonable, so I sunk into my closet to sleep. I wanted to be near my clothes in case of an emergency. I made a bed out of all of the denim I could find and drifted somewhere else.

**************************************************

“Hey, you feeling better?”

I snapped out of my sleep and my eyes opened. Chris flipped a switch illuminating the foreign bed with the same sheets and surroundings as I saw in my dreams. I still couldn’t control my body, though, and I started hearing another voice in my head before my mouth made the words I spoke.

“A little bit, I have a headache though.” I knew this couldn’t be me, my head felt fine. As far as I could tell, I didn’t have a head at all. My body stretched and curled in the bed. I could feel myself drifting back to sleep.

“Alright, well I got your phone back. Please don’t ask me to go back there, Morgan.”

“Thanks Chris, could you plug it in for me? It’s probably running low.”

He leaned in and kissed me on my damp forehead. I gave up trying to tell him that I wasn’t Morgan. I tried everything I could think of to indicate that I was trapped, but nothing worked. I decided all I could do was to sit in the darkest corner I could find and try to wake up. Nothing happened. Now all I can hope for is to wait until the right time to show Morgan the nothing that her life could become.