00:00The first time I found a photograph of myself sleeping, the date stamped on the white border was
00:05tomorrow. I clean houses for an agency called Brightstay, and this is the way it happened.
00:12It was a Tuesday, at a client's house on Marsh Road. I opened the medicine cabinet to wipe the
00:19shelves, and there it was, taped inside the mirror. A Polaroid. Me, asleep in a bed I did not recognize.
00:29And under it, in red ink, the next day's date. I told myself it was a prank. I showed it
00:36around
00:37the agency. Nobody laughed. Nobody claimed it. And the bedroom in that photo was not our break room.
00:44Wednesday morning, second house of the day. I opened a drawer to line it with paper,
00:50and there it was. Another Polaroid. Me, asleep. This time, in Mrs. Harlow's living room.
00:59The house I had cleaned the day before. A room I never slept in. Never even sat down in.
01:07And the date stamped on it? Thursday. I went cold all over. The photographs were always one step
01:15ahead of me. Each one showed me sleeping somewhere I had not been yet. And each one was dated one
01:22day I
01:22had not lived yet. I called in sick on Friday. I stayed in my apartment. Doors locked. Curtains drawn.
01:30And I told myself, the camera could not find me here. But that morning, something slid under my front
01:38door. A Polaroid. Me, asleep. In my own bed. Photographed from the foot of it. As if someone
01:48had been standing there. Watching. The date on it was tonight. I did not sleep. I sat in my kitchen
01:57with every light on until the sun came up, and I told myself I had beaten it. Whatever took those
02:03pictures, could not photograph me sleeping, if I never slept. But at 7 in the morning, I checked the
02:10camera I had left running in my bedroom all night. And in the last frame, before the battery died,
02:16my own bedroom door was open. Standing in the doorway was me. Older, grayer, mouth open,
02:25the way a person screams without making a sound. She was holding a Polaroid camera,
02:30and she was crying. The last photograph ever taken of me was dated tomorrow. So tomorrow is coming,
02:39and the camera is already waiting. Sweet dreams, do not sleep too deeply. It can hear you when you do.
