Somniloquy of a Somnambulist

When I got back from Frisco, My younger brother, Remon, and I shared a bedroom with our eldest sister; a cabinet was moved in the middle of the room to divide it in half. Every night we’d lug up the sitting and back portions of the sofa and lay them side by side on the floor. We’d string up a mosquito net over the sofa panels and with learned skill pull in the ends of the mosquito net under the panels. With the window blocked by a cabinet, a mosquito net and with the plastic upholstery on our backs, it was as hot as an oven during the summer. On really hot nights I would wake up in the middle of the night with a parched throat and in a crouching position with half a body out of the mosquito net.

Later we got a bigger sofa; the kind that curves around the corner; it breaks up in three pieces. The new sofa was too heavy for us to carry upstairs and it wouldn't fit through the stairway; so we transferred and slept on the sofa in the living room; he got one end and I the other. Screens had been put up on the windows so we need not worry about mosquitoes anymore; the open windows brought in fresh air, too. One moonlit night, I woke up and saw Remon sitting up. I pretended to be asleep and watched him; he was talking to himself. After a while, he'd lie down again and go back to sleep without missing a beat. One time, I woke up with a jolt; I was face to face with him; he was squatting at my end of the sofa and was mumbling something to me; I couldn't understand a thing though. Then one night I saw him rose up and walk to the kitchen sink. He stood before the sink with his head against the cabinet door and had a conversation with the wood paneling. After a while he'd walked back, lie down and go back to sleep again.

In 1987, in another part of the planet, 23-year old Kenneth Parks drove his car 15 miles to his in-laws' house. There, he attacked his father-in-law, leaving him unconscious; stabbed his mother-in-law, killing her. He then went to the police station saying, "I think I have killed some people." He was bloody, and his hand was badly injured. Parks was unable to recount anything about the murder, and he had no motives for committing them. He was unemployed and stressed. He went to sleep that night thinking about how he was going to visit his in-laws the next day with his wife to tell them about his financial and gambling problems. Criminal charges were filed and after trial he was found not guilty of murder or attempted murder. There was an appeal, but his acquittal was upheld. He did not serve time in a mental ward because non-insane automatism is not legally viewed as a mental disorder.

We moved to another house and finally had decent beds of our own. He slept in the big room upstairs with our other younger brothers while I shared a room on the mezzanine with an older brother. Remon, I believed, stopped altogether from ever walking and talking in his sleep again.