Sleep constantly eluded her. While the rest of her family fell asleep almost as soon as they crawled into bed, Emily never could. Instead, she would lay awake, staring at the ceiling, waiting for morning to come. Only when the sky started to lighten to the soft gray of the dawn, would Emily then be able to sleep for those few precious moments before her family awoke.
No one in her family knew about her inability to fall asleep. When she was a younger, not as wise as the venerable twelve year old that she was now, she told her parents of her insomnia, much to her chagrin.
"You just don't exercise enough Em!" her father cheerfully boomed, "every morning get up early and we'll go jogging together! Once you start exercising regularly, you'll be tired enough that you fall right to sleep!"
Father was very enthusiastic about his program and woke Emily up ever morning to jog with him. He was a little disappointed when after two months, Emily confessed that sleep did not come to her any easier, but instead was even more tired, since she was often awakened by her father minutes after she was able to fall asleep.
"Oh Em," her mother said briskly as she bustled around the house, "you just need more chores to do, come on you can help me." Emily dutifully helped her mother around the house, her smallish, still baby hands trying to keep up with her mother's fast and efficient pace, but at the end of the day, Emily still couldn't sleep, laying in bed, more tired then ever, but never drifting off like everyone else.
"She's too young to have insomnia," her doctor said when her mother finally brought her to see him. "She should go out and play more!" to the envy of her brother and sisters who were older and didn't have as much playtime as she did.
But they soon realized that their little sister's insomnia could be used for their benefit.
"Hey Em, can you tape Letterman for me tonight?" her sister would often ask.
"No way Julia! Em is taping the Godzilla marathon for me!"
"That's just dumb! Jason Danube is going to be on Letterman tonight!"
"Now that's dumb! Jason Danube is such a dork!"
"Is not!"
"Is too!"
And Emily would just stand there; her fatigue-darkened eyes luminous, as she hoped that tonight she wouldn't be able to tape anything, because she would be asleep.
But now that she was older, she pretended that she could sleep, and everyone had stopped commenting on her insomnia. However, alone in her room, to occupy her bored and restless mind, she started to imagine things.
At first it was the light fanciful dreams of little girls. The coat rack in the corner, in the black shadows of the night, looked oddly like a prince. A prince that was changed into a coat rack by a horrible evil witch who was jealous of his love for her, Emily. The softly billowing curtains were the golden gossamer wings of the fairy princess that was trying to tell Emily her beloved prince had not abandoned her, but stood stoically in the corner of her room, guarding her from evil. And the mirror on her dresser! Lo! That was how the evil witch spied on her and was plotting more mischief!
Often, Emily would also see her family and friends in her adventures. Julia's new boyfriend in Emily's imagination became the evil ogre that the witch ensorcelled to charm and trap Julia. Emily fought a brave fight to help save Julia that night. Sometimes, she would become so frightened of her own stories, that she would squeal and throw a sheet over the mirror, to ward off the evil witch.
"Man, did you have some weird dreams last night, sis," her brother Eric would comment the next morning, "you were squealing and tossing and turning all night! Must have been wild." And Emily would just smile. Sometimes, she would tell her family of her adventures, and they all smiled indulgently, as everyone assumed that they were just dreams and nightmares from the night before.
But the lines between her fantasy night world and the real day world were blurring. Emily was constantly surprised to see Julia's boyfriend the next day, especially after she vanquished him the night before. However, when it was revealed that he was dating another girl, as well as Julia, Emily felt justified in her abiding dislike of him, which she could never really explain to Julia.
Some days, Emily would go to school, her mind still thinking of a particularly complex spell or trap the witch had sprung the night before, and so her responses for the day would be very strange. This only amused her friends even more, as they already knew that Emily was a little weird, but suddenly sitting up in class because she found the link between algebra and the spell was funny. Besides, she could tell the most fascinating stories.
Emily couldn't see the lines of her night world and her day world were blurring. Although she still dreaded her inability to sleep, and she was always so tired, she was used to it now and barely noticed. As time went on, Emily saw less and less of the prince and the fairy princess, and more of her family and friends. Frighteningly, she started to see them not as people that she loved, but as abstract characters that the witch was manipulating.
Before Eric came home dejected for not making the baseball team, Emily saw the witch casting her spell over his computer, mesmerizing Eric, so that he didn't practice. When Emily's friend Amy didn't come to school for a week, Emily saw the witch making Mr. Jim come home drunk and hitting Amy. And when her own mommy and daddy fighting more and more, Emily knew that the witch was getting closer and closer to destroying her.
Times like these, Emily would once again fervently wish that she could fall asleep, squeezing her eyes shut, and she thought of sheep jumping through a field. But even here, the witch's touch crept in, and Emily could see the death that lurked in the sheep. She wanted to tell her parents, to tell someone. But she never did.
But Emily felt that the witch was now playing with her, revealing her own parents' inadequacies. She saw how her mother clung so tightly to schedules and routine. Her inability to cope once her perfectly timed and executed plans were deviated from. Her mother's movements timed by the tick-tick-tick of the schedule that was in her head.
Emily then saw her father's bored tiredness. How often he would tell stories of the band that he was once in, when he was in college. He would sigh wistfully whenever Eric went to the garage to play with his band, and she knew that the witch was brewing discontent. But there was nothing she could do. Her father started to argue with her mother more, each fight starting with "if I only had…" and ending with him going into the study, listening again to the one, scratched up and warped demo LP he had cut.
Powerless to stop this, Emily dreaded the night when the witch would give weight to all of the inconsequential events in the day; showing the festering illness beneath everyone's facetious smiles.
"Why? Why are you showing me this?" Emily would cry, but the only answer would be to show the way Amy flinched on the playground, and Emily knew that her father hit her again.
"Why me? Please stop!" but the witch just showed the new silence between her parents was not a truce in fighting, but the death throes of their marriage.
"Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!" Emily cried, twisting in her bed, trying to block the images from her mind. But the images still came. Unable to see anymore, she threw her sheets over the mirror, although the witch had long since stopped appearing to her in just the mirror. However with it covered, the images faded and the voices dulled enough that Emily was able to get some sleep before the dawn of the new day.
"Mom," Emily asked the next morning, "you really love dad, right?"
"Of course silly! What prompted you to ask such a question?" her mother replied, as she was making waffles and carefully avoiding Emily's eyes.
"No reason. Just wondering why you and dad never seem to talk or do anything anymore."
"Oh Emmy, stop being silly. Your dad and I are too busy keeping this family running to be able to...well, hurry up Emily or else you're going to be late for school."
But she heard the unspoken words. The words that the witch had shown her, again and again. Tick-tick-tick of her mother's schedule, and her father's yearning for his unfulfilled dreams. Everything was wasting away. Not for the first time, she wished that she was the heroine of some novel, where she would know what to do. But her brother and sisters were so busy with their own lives; they didn't have time to see how their parents' were falling apart. The fresh bruises on Amy's arm, she explained away. Emily knew better, but what proof could she offer? That a witch that she dreamed up told her so? That while the rest of the world sleeps, she lies awake to see the tragedy of everyone's lives? She was young but she had enough common sense to know that it wouldn’t work.
Besides, even if someone did believe her, what could they do? How do you mend a marriage that was splitting at the seams? How do you get your brother to study when the computer spellbinds him? How do you stop your sisters from dating terrible guys? How, how, how?
Unable to concentrate at school she spent the day staring out the window into the bright sunny sky. The light wind rustled the leaves on the trees as the short green grass baked in the sun. The dichotomy between the beauty of the world outside, and the shadowy sorrow of the world that Emily knew existed seemed funny to her.
"Emily! Emily!" the teacher said, cutting into Emily's revelries, "what's going on Emily? Stop laughing and pay attention!" Emily looked at her teacher. A soft voiced and kind woman in her early thirties. But to Emily, she seemed older then that. She saw the sacrifices that her teacher have had to make to be able to go to college and giving up her dream to be a writer, to teach instead. Emily saw how she tried to write after a day of teaching, but by the time she was done grading papers and making up teaching plans for the next day, she was too tired to even turn on her computer. Emily stopped laughing.
"I'm so sorry," she said softly. Her teacher, seeing the dark rims around Emily's eyes, immediately relented and turned back to the rest of the class.
"Who can tell me what MacBeth saw at the banquet?"
"He saw the ghost of Banquo," Amy replied.
"No."
"No, Emily?"
"No," Emily stated again, as things became clear, "no. He didn't see Banquo."
"But it says so right here that Banquo's ghost was haunting him," Amy retorted.
"No, he only thought that it was the ghost of Banquo. But it wasn't really Banquo, don't you see? The witches, the predictions, the ghost…none of it was real!"
"Well of course it wasn't real," Amy replied, wondering what was the matter with Emily, "it's just a story."
"You don't understand. None of it was real. All of it, the predictions, the magic…all of it came from MacBeth. It was all him don't you see? They were all mani…mani…"
"Manifestations?" her teacher interjected, looking into Emily's too bright eyes.
"Yes…manifestations. They were all manifestations of his guilt and his desires. He wanted to be king, so he saw the witches that told him that he was going to be king. He felt guilty about killing his best friend, so he saw the ghost to punish himself. He ignored what he didn't want to hear from the witches, because he was tired of being king. He didn't want to have all the power and lose Lady MacBeth, and he was sad that he didn't have any friends left. So he ignored what he knew was going to happen. He ignored it all, so it would all end."
That night, when it was time for bed, Emily turned out all the lights in her room. She went to the dresser mirror, where the sheet was still covering it. Timidly, she tugged on the sheet, and let it pool at her feet.
"Stop it," she said, staring into the dark mirror. "Stop it. I don't want it to happen. I don't want any of it to happen! Stop it! Stop it!
"This isn't what I want! I want to be able to sleep and to be normal! I don't want to see these things! Stop twisting everything around, making it ugly! Just stop it!" she sobbed, "I don't want to see any of this. I never asked for this. I don't want to see everyone's hurt! I was just bored. I was making up stories. I didn't mean for them to be true. I just wanted to sleep. I don't want to be MacBeth. I don't want to see Banquo's ghost!"
Emily sobbed; looking into the mirror, searching for the witch that was there.
But only the silence of her reflection answered her.