Clifford's Spiral: Chapter 12

Chapters are serialized here for paid subscribers.About This Novel

In Clifford's Spiral, the stroke survivor’s past is blurry, and his memories are in pieces. He asks himself:

Who was Clifford Olmstead Klovis?

Stroke sufferer Clifford Klovis tries to piece together the colorful fragments of his memories. Myra continues to fascinate.

Chapter 12

The night of Jeremy’s visit, Clifford drifted off to sleep at his usual time, about an hour after dinner. Someone, an anonymous night-duty nurse, not Myra, had turned on his TV and tuned it to a news channel. He hadn’t paid it much attention, but as he lost consciousness, he was aware that the documentary playing on the screen was discussing conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks.

In the early morning, hours before dawn, Clifford’s eyes popped open. He’d been in a fevered state of REM sleep, dreaming that he was licking Myra’s erect, left nipple as she was scolding him for keeping his mouth shut.

As had happened before, Clifford hadn’t slept through the night. Before his stroke (a phase of his life he called his sane period), he didn’t fret much about these bouts of insomnia, having heard that older people don’t necessarily need as much sleep. But given his present condition, if his brain function was going to improve at all, it would be through restorative sleep.

There wasn’t much to do but lie on his back and stare at the ceiling. At these times, his way of counting sheep was to notice each in-breath and out-breath, as the Buddhist monks taught their novices to do in their meditations. This practice rarely induced in him anything like a trance. But his mind would either flit off into some fantasy or he’d eventually slip back into unconsciousness.

This time, he flashed on the images from the 9/11 documentary, and a new insight occurred: The Insiders spoke to him in riddles and metaphor. There were coded messages, meaningful coincidences, and occasionally voices. Maybe those menacing images had been presented to him for a reason.

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