Go back to sleep

About a week ago I woke in the dark of my dorm room to a strange sound. My sleep-muddled mind leapt immediately to the paranoid conclusion that somebody was in my room, rustling about in the mess behind my desk, despite the fact that I knew I had closed and chain-locked the door. While I was still trying to decide how best to react (feign unconsciousness? grapple for the knife I keep by my pillow? tumble out of bed and make a mad dash for the door?), a tall, thin figure in the corner of my room said gently, "That sound is just the freezing rain hitting your window screen. There's nothing to worry about. Go back to sleep."

That last bit of advice made the most sense to me at the time, so I simply closed my eyes and went out like a light. The next morning I woke to an ice storm.

This has happened to me at least once before that I recall. I was younger then, and had a beloved stuffed animal that I toted about wherever I went. It was a white dog with black ears and tail and a big black spot on its back; I was as imaginative and talented with the naming of things as a child as I am now, and I called my plush companion Spot.

One morning I awoke to find Spot missing. He was not in my bed beside me, or on the floor beside or beneath my bed. The world turned upside down. I enlisted the rest of the household to search every nook and cranny in which this dog could have conceivably found itself, to no avail. I spent the rest of the day in a persistent state of shock. Then, as my bedtime approached and I was forced back to my room, I remembered a dream I had had the previous night in which a figure had neatly tucked my dog into my sock drawer and said, "He can spend the night here. Don't worry about him. Go back to sleep."

I hurtled across the room and wrenched open my sock drawer, and there Spot was, safe and sound, snuggling my balled-up socks.

Friends who have been in the room when I fell asleep have reported that I have this unsettling habit of sitting bolt upright, looking wide-eyed around the room, and uttering a line of dialog with no discernible significance to anything else that has been said, before flopping back down unconscious. I am beginning to wonder if this has any relation to the persons? creatures? beings? that seem to accompany me in those confusing stages between wakefulness and sleep, reporting the weather and hiding my toys.