Minutes from the Nocturnal Rest Committee

The meeting was called to order by Glaucoma, whose primary mass appeared to be a stack of yellowed, tax-exempt forms balanced precariously on a femur that was perpetually rotating counter-clockwise. The agenda focused solely on the declining quality of human bedding. “Gentlemen,” stated the representative for the Western Sector, a being composed entirely of wet, static-charged velvet draped over a lattice of discarded alarm clocks. “The current market offerings—the so-called ‘memory foam’—are unacceptable. It lacks the necessary resistance. We require a degree of structural integrity that allows for the proper manifestation of localized pressure points. It is too yielding; it absorbs the necessary friction.” The chair, a figure that resembled a suit jacket tailored from compressed regret and filled with the audible ticking of a hundred tiny, unwound clocks, cleared its throat with the sound of dry chalk on slate. “The problem, as always, is the synthetic nature. These modern substrates are too uniform. They do not provide the requisite textural variation to facilitate the proper entrapment of the sleeper. We are discussing a loss of specialized resistance, not merely comfort.” A third delegate, whose form was a shifting, iridescent pool contained within a glass terrarium filled with slow-moving, bioluminescent slime, pulsed slowly. “Furthermore, the temperature regulation is criminally inadequate. The old, heavy wool and untreated horsehair provided a gradient of localized overheating and chilling that was essential to our methodology. This ‘cooling gel’ nonsense merely provides a tepid, generalized numbness. It is a betrayal of the craft.” Glaucoma tapped a quill made from a petrified eyelash against the table. “Therefore, the committee formally recommends a return to untreated animal hides, properly cured, and a mandatory re-evaluation of all mattresses manufactured after the year 1985. We must petition the relevant authorities for the re-establishment of the weighted, uncomfortable, and perfectly inadequate.”