2:17 AM - a fictional account

*This blog is made from completely recycled words. It was originally published 12/2/2006*

Up from the depths of a complete exhausted sleep, my consciousness surfaces when, for the first time in months - there is an absence of pain throbbing in my left leg.

The absence brought a pleased smile to my face, as my consciousness crested the sleep world and brought me to a drugged-like state of being awake. The neon red digital clock reads 2:17 AM in the otherwise blank darkness. My smile turns swiftly into panic when I realize the absence of pain... is caused by the complete lack of any feeling whatsoever in my legs. I struggle to sit upright in bed, the thoughts of drifting off and returning to sleep vanishing with unbelievable swiftness. I curse living alone at such a time as this.

The lateness, or rather the earliness of the hour, 2:17 AM, burning, searing into my head, as I stand stiffly, uncertainly on legs pretending to be wood. I carefully take the two steps to the dresser that holds the telephone and frantically search the darkness with my hands for it. My hand finds the phone just as I stumble and fall, like a novice on tall circus clown stilts... heavily to the floor. I quickly turn to a seating position when OUCH! I see those stars they talk about as the phone falls onto my head after teetering on the edge of the dresser after I had blindly pushed it there.

I fleetingly think, "Well, at least I won't have to try to stand to get to the phone, its down here on the floor with me," as I find it after a couple sweeps in the dark with my right hand. I find the handset and listen to ... the lack of dial tone. The fall from the dresser had pulled the cord from the wall. I look at the clock while I ponder what to do, 2:18 AM.

My efforts to stand, pulling myself upright along the dresser fail as my legs refuse to cooperate. I resolve to crawl the length of the house to the living room where another phone sits on a low table, the only one low enough for me to reach. I turn to the clock and the taunting red neon burns in the dark, 2:19 AM. There is no moonlight tonight, the heavy curtains pulled closed in any event to ward off the years first frosty windy night. I grope along the floor crawling slowly toward the clock and the door next to it when I hear a poof like thud. The clock disappears and blackness falls. The power has failed.

I crawl slowly toward where I remember the doorway to be, reaching out to ward off an unexpected collision with the wall, doorframe, or table leg under the clock. I get to hallway were a slight draft chills my skin, in my haste, I had left my night robe draped on the end of the bed. I ponder returning for it only a moment and press on for the telephone as the chill seems to be causing the total numbness in my legs to drift upwards to my waist.

I know the hall runs the length of my house, it could not be more than 50-60 feet long but it takes what seems like hours to work my way down to the far end. Panting from exertion, and from fear, my left hand finds the doorframe denoting the entryway to the kitchen; the phone is toward my right a bit. I crawl forward, knowing the phone is ten, nine, eight feet away when I hear another thudding noise as the power comes back on. A dull light shines in the living room, this one a pale green, as the VCR clock blinks 12:00 AM, 12:00 AM, 12:00 AM repeatedly ever so mindlessly.

My eyes can see faint shapes in the gloom, but without my glasses on, nothing takes on solidness, and the vague forms do not help me with finding the phone. I know it is about 12 feet.... over in that direction from the eternally blinking 12:00 AM, 12:00 AM, 12:00 AM... I finally get to the phone and ...realize the only phone number I remember is Nine-Eleven. I sit in nearly complete darkness in despair as the cold and the numbness overtake my arms and fingers, the eternally blinking 12:00 AM, 12:00 AM, 12:00 AM stabs at me, I cannot phone for help... as my phone does not have an "11" on the dial.