Sleepwalking Through Sunless Summers

Short Non-Fiction Story by Keith Hoerner

Keith Hoerner’s “Sleepwalking Through Sunless Summers” traces a boy’s surreal journey through recurring dreams and sleepwalking, capturing the mystery of childhood intuition and the longing for things to be as they should.

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When I was a kid, I remember having a recurring dream. Today, it seems to be such a mature dream, intuitive and analogous, for a boy of about eight years old. I dreamt I would slice an orange. And nature would whisper to me that when one slices an orange it should display 13 sections. Always 13. Only 13. But the orange I sliced always had one section more—or less.

I would begin to sleepwalk, the gauze masking Lazarus’ eyes bound tight around my own: making me maneuver the furniture in our house as if by radar, blindly gliding past hard corners and pointy objects.

My dozen siblings, Mom and Dad, were used to my meanderings. I would find a presence, sense a group of my brothers and sisters as they sat watching Johnny Carson, hee-hawing at his stand-up comedy routine. I stood there, too, mumbling, asking them for help in a language only the desperate could understand. “Why,” I’d ask simply, pleadingly. “Why is my orange different? Why am I different?”

I would feel an arm drag me to the side or a kick in the butt, almost taking me to my knees.

“Go to bed, Keith!”

“Stop blocking the TV.”

“Mom, Keith’s at it again...”