APRIL 2008 PROJECT
by
Doris Ray

It's four in the morning and I'm lying prone in my bed and wide awake. Too early to get up and I know from experience that I'm not about to fall back into blessed slumber. I'm an old insomniac from way back, I remind myself. Hey, that line has a bit of a country and western twang to it...? Perhaps I should try composing a song while lying here doing nothing else. Or maybe perform a few exercise routines. But the room is downright chilly. I would have to expose bare feet and possibly even legs to the elements. I snuggle back down under the blankets.

What's that eerie glow over there on the dresser? Must be my cellphone that's been plugged in for three days. A bit longer longer than is environmentally recommended. But I keep forgetting I have the darn thing. Unless I'm going to be driving.

Omigosh-- today is the second-to-last day of the month and I've not written a thing for our Scribblers Online website. Now where did I put that found object? It was sitting on the kitchen table for a day or so, but then I had to move it to make way for junkmail, magazines and sometimes even food. Can it be possible that my found object is now lost?

I know it will eventually turn up. It always does. It's disappeared before and then magically reappears on a window sill or I'll find it lurking under some newspapers on the coffee table. It is a piece de resistance of happenstance sculpture that my husband discovered amongst the debris of a long-ago fire, near the old railroad stationhouse at Savory BC. Oldtime residents cannot recall who once resided in the nearby cabin, but it must have been his garage that burned to the ground. The fire had been so hot it melded glass, metal, sand and pebbles together, along with an esthetically pleasing array of washers and wire. I spraypainted the whole thing with gold paint once but now it needs a second coat. The original drab colours are showing through, along with glints of some kind of metallic substance.

There's that glow again on the dresser...?. Only it's not green so it's not the cellphone. It's more of a golden colour and it's getting brighter. Omigosh...it's my found object and it looks as if it's on fire. I can see flames flickering about and I'm scared. I cannot leave my bed even though I desperately want to. The flames are getting higher and higher and I know I'm going to burn to death!

What's that delicious smell? Oh, it's coffee. Husband must have turned the coffeemaker on while I was snoozing.