A sharp slide and a thundering slam resounded in his head, and Will Graham was abruptly pulled back into the land of the awake. His heart was, as it seldom wasn't, tapping out a steady, comfortable rhythm, and his sheets didn't cling to his skin and constrict his body.
He looked across from the living room, now a half-hearted renovation process, to half-consciously take in the plastic-wrapped (persiennene) that had interrupted his subconscious mind.
Reaching a hand down to pat the stag, lying beside him, making silent noises to let him know it was awake, Will mourned the unjust bereavement of peaceful phantom images, a treat that came rare enough to be considered an abnormality.
If he fell asleep again, he would willingly slip into another bout of violence and fear.
Will put his heavy feet to the floor, narrowly missing Winston's tail, as his noises turned more into a consoling whine, as if he knew. He burrowed his face into his palms, and dragged them down over tense muscles, stretching skin into waking up, pulling on the soft curls that soon would fall too far down his forehead, noticing, but not acknowledging, the increasingly growing stubble along his lower face.
The clock across the room reached out for numbers, but every time he searched for the current time, they bent and curled, denying him the information of how many hours of sleep he was going to miss.
Accusing arms were encircling his lower body, but let go with a sweet slide of cotton when he stood from the couch, letting his feet dig into swampy ground. He walked over to the sink, in the process both recognizing the feeling of squishing mushrooms under his feet and deciding that was something he could clean up when he woke up, and let the lukewarm blood run until it bit into his finger with a cold tooth.
Water felt heavenly on his face, sobering and grounding. He looks across the room once more, just in time to see the minute hand move another minute past five. It wasn't too big of a loss, time-wise, but knowing what serenity those hours could have held made him bitter. There was nothing to do about that now, however, and he made himself a cup of coffee, sipped it, no thoughts occupying his brain as he stared vacantly at the other cup he'd poured a minute ago.
He left it to cool for a while as he went outside with the other unwanted strays.
There was a heavy fog suffocating his house. A pale grey wall constricting his property by half, denying the existence of anything more than five or six feet away.
Will sat down, and fell asleep to the idea that maybe nothing did.