Story: End of Shift

This fill was inspired by a prompt from alexseanchai at the January 2021 Crowdfunding Creative Jam of "the work day ends at sunset (alternately: at sunrise)" and fills the "False Dawn" square of my January Fresh Starts Bingo card. At 365 words it is set in the same world as my Otherworldly story snippets "Provisions" and "Finder's Keepers."

End of Shift

His feet drummed soundlessly on the edge of the bed as the woman lay sleeping restlessly beside him. His face wore a small, satisfied smirk as the dream unfolded around her in frustrating detail.

Outside the bedroom window there was a soft grey hue nipping at the edges of the night. Sunrise was still at least an hour off, but the world was brightening in stages. Dawn would arrive and Costa’s work would be finished, but there was still time for this last job.

In her dream the woman (she hadn’t dreamt her own name yet, so Costa had no idea who she was) was seated at a dining room table surrounded by a boisterous family. It looked like some sort of human Feasting holiday, but Costa wasn’t sure which one. He watched awhile as they passed plates, drank wine, & told themselves how grateful they were to have one another. Costa sighed, this was beautiful but hardly productive in his mind.

He manipulated the dream subtly, prompting the woman to identify the family member she was most concerned about. He watched as the dream switched scenes and she was now in a small kitchen facing her older sister. He knew who they were to one another the way everyone just knows certain things in dreams – even as a Somnia he couldn’t explain the inexplicability of dream knowledge.

“Diane, I can’t keep watching your husband flirt with cousin Kim. Can’t you keep the horny bastard on a leash!?” She demanded shrilly. Her sister blanched and looked ready to cry.

Oh no, thought Costa. This one was going to be rough. He’d rarely seen dreams where accusations of interfamily infidelity were resolved peacefully. But perhaps acknowledging the truth of such suspicions would help the woman find a better solution in waking reality. He lived in hope that the hard things humans dreamt of when he visited them could lead to greater family harmony in the light of day.

He wistfully watched the sky pale outside the window, wondering what it would be like to fight familiarly with anyone, with his brothers or his father. The woman’s dream turned darker, even as the world turned towards Sunrise.

~~~Notes~~~

Costa – He’s a Somnia, one of Somnus’ thousand sons, an Otherworldly being who brings dreams to humans as they sleep. Costa may not be famous like his brothers Morpheus, Phobetor, or Phantasos but he enjoys his work. He’s the guy who brings you dreams where you argue with your family. Sometimes these are helpful to the humans he visits, other times less so, but he delights in seeing all the many ways humans struggle to relate to one another. He’s deeply envious since family means little to the Otherworldly God of Sleep & he hasn’t seen his father or any of his brothers in person since his creation.