Apocalypse is Certain

This was not the first time when he had woken up to take more than a minute to make himself believe that he was still lying in his bed and was not facing a situation he won't come out of alive. The nightmares were now not as frequent as they used to be when he was a kid. When, at the age of seven, he first began sleeping alone, he had felt for many months that he should not have convinced his parents to arrange a separate room for himself. Almost every night would he wake up experiencing a fall from a high building, a bite by an enormous beast or a hit on his body by a bully. However, he always avoided telling it to his parents despite that he could hardly sleep again for the night after waking up like that. Even at that age, he had a tendency to own up the responsibility towards his own decisions. If he had argued so much with his parents to convince them to arrange a separate room, the problems he had to face in that room had to be entirely his. He could not pester his parents any further regarding the problems he had to face while sleeping alone in that room. He no more lived in the same house. Nor were his parents with him any further. His parents, actually, were no more in this world and he had now grown up to be thirty. The nightmares now were neither that frequent nor would scare him that desperately now. Now he could easily sleep again after having woken up by a nightmare. In fact, it used to be, more or less, enjoyable now to feel that it had merely been a nightmare and he was safe in his bed and could relax. He did not mind experiencing nightmares since they ended up in the soothing realization that running for life was no more required. Today was not the same, however. He had woken up in the similar fashion. Something uncontrollable had happened, he had taken a free fall and he got up. He found himself in his bed. He could not even think for a while. His mind was blank. He hung his legs on the side to feel the floor. He slowly lowered his feet and he could not understand why but it was kind of unbelievable when his feet touched the floor. It took him moments to believe that he was based on the ground. He was perspiring; more than he had ever after waking up from a nightmare. His mind was not ready to believe that he had just woken up from a usual sleep. However, he could not even remember what had happened just before he woke up. Over the years, it had become sort of enjoyable to remember that disaster he had been facing in the nightmare. It sort of gave him a pleasure to think that he was not actually facing such a torturing situation for real. This day was different. His mind was clean. He had no idea what had made him wake up. More importantly, he felt scared to try to remember what had happened. He so much wanted to escape that urge to remember what had he seen in the nightmare. It seemed to him that he was actually asleep now and this relaxation of waking up from a nightmare was actually a dream. Despite having no idea what his mind had experienced, he found it difficult to believe that he was awake.  He lay down on the bed and tried to sleep again. He could not even close his eyes. Closing the eyes seemed to give a sensation of fear. And this discomfort in closing the eyes was accompanied by a strange feeling that seemed to arise from the subconscious. It seemed that his mind urged him to show urgency. It seemed that there was something exceptionally important that was yet to be done and he was missing it. His mind was still blank except for these feelings of urgency, discomfort and fear. He even did not want to exert his mind to try to remember what actually had been happening. An urge to think about it made him shudder in fear. He just kept on lying there. Finally he did fall asleep, after what seemed to be a tortuously long time to him. however, the sleep was not the result of his efforts to fall asleep. It came because of the exhaustion his mind and body had been feeling. He had doubted that he was probably not going to get relaxing sleep very soon again.