Insomniac
I can’t sleep.
As I type this very message, there is a constant, consistent gnawing in the back of my mind. It’s as if an unending hunger rests in the deepest canals of my slipping mind, begging and endlessly searching for nourishment that won’t be found. I hear a metronome echoing in the back of my head. At night, during the morning, the day… I lay awake in my bed, and I hear it. Every two seconds it floats from the right side of my head to the left. It rocks carefully back and forth. I’ve timed it, over and over again in my mind. It never changes.
My eyes dart back and forth uncontrollably. It makes it difficult to keep them locked on this very screen. When they move to the left, or to the right, I see things…
Sometimes it’s a fellow in a clean cut suit, reclining on the chair and studying me. Other times, it’s a creature crawling across the floor, dripping fluid out of its body as it crawls up onto my bed.
My brain feels as if it cooking on a slow burn.
I’ve read, in an old paperback encyclopedia in the basement I never leave, that hallucination is common in people with sleep deprivation, given a certain amount of time. That time has come and gone. I think I’m approaching insanity.
My thoughts and visions are constructed of breaks in reality. At least, that’s what my doctor calls them. Time and time again, I ask myself if the things I see are truly my imagination, or reality slowly creeping past the imaginative monotony of my every day life.
But it’s okay, because I’m not alone anymore.
He started out at a whisper. Late at night, when I laid awake in my bed counting the seconds of the softly ticking metronome, I’d hear him.
He was barely audible, at first. just a constantly repeating phrase, echoed again and again in a voice I couldn’t understand.
And then, one night alone in my basement, his voice became a scream in a harsh, rushed voice.
“MY NAME IS BENJAMIN DYSON. I LIVE AT 1153 HUMMINGBIRD LANE. MY NAME IS BENJAMIN DYSON. I LIVE AT 1153 HUMMINGBIRD LANE”
He listens to me. I tell him of my problems, my daily worries of work and always waiting. I tell him my dreams, my wishes, my fantasies… He has become a part of me.
At first his response was always the same,
“My name is Benjamin Dyson, I live at 1153 Hummingbird Lane.”
But then he changed. As the days crawled bye, Benjamin’s voice became a scream of anger and cynicism.
“End it!” He would scream, as he forced my hands to shake uncontrollably in public, spilling coffee all over the public counter.
Even now, as I type out this message to you, his screams echo against my cerebrum. At times, it’s so loud he forces me to double over in pain. It’s so loud, that at times I press my hand to my ears only to find them covered in blood.
It’s been seven days since I have slept at all. I view myself as a ticking time bomb. If I don’t hit the switch, I will explode. I can’t force myself to sleep, but I can turn out the light.
Goodnight.