Sprangles

I had a strange experience tonight, something that’s only happened to me once before.

I went to bed a bit past 10pm, read for a bit, and then tried to sleep. Lying there looking at the ceiling, I blinked. When my eyes opened after the blink the room had changed subtly, so I looked over at the clock: 12:20am.

Somehow, I’d slept for about 2 hours without actually feeling like I slept. It literally feels like I lost time — I don’t feel any more or less tired than I did at 10pm, but somehow I managed to sleep for 2 hours without remembering the event at all. It feels pretty weird.

The only other time this happened to me was when I was about 10 years old, staying at my grandparents’ house. The bed I was sleeping in was positioned such that I could lie on my side and see out the bedroom door straight into the kitchen. I went to bed and lay there looking at my grandparents’ old wood stove; I could make out the basic shapes of the dark kitchen by the dim glow of the embers in the stove.

As I lay there, I blinked. When my eyes opened after the blink it was morning, and my grandmother was sitting on a stool next to the stove, stirring porridge. The thing that freaked me out completely about the event then was that my grandmother was calmly staring straight at me, looking right into my eyes — like she knew I’d just blinked away the night. I lay there for a while, unable to break away from her stare, wondering what she’d done to make the night disappear.

I never asked her about that night, I wish I had.