The light sleeper nosleep

I've always been a light sleeper. As far back as I remember, yes, but before that, too. My parents tell me I never slept through the night, not once as a baby and not once as a toddler. And I believe it. Not just because they're my parents or because they have no reason to lie, but also because until last night I can't remember ever getting more than two or three hours at one time.

I used to think it was because of the nightmares. Maybe I still do. I say "nightmares" but really it was just one, the same one, again and again. I'd find myself in my house, only it wasn't my house, in my kitchen, only it wasn't my kitchen. I say it both was and wasn't because it was only barely recognizable in the dim light and its inexplicable dilapidation.

Wallpaper peeled from the wall in strips around windows either cracked or broken and too dirty with years of grime to see through. Over my young head cabinet doors hung ajar or off their hinges, revealing nothing but dust in place of the neatly-ordered rows of canned goods and breakfast cereals my mother normally kept there. Our dining room table was still there, flipped on its side, and all of the chairs save one were missing.

There was no power, I discovered after flicking the light switch up and down to no effect. Pale yellow moonlight crudely filtered through the dirty windows cast unearthly shadows upon the linoleum floor and allowed me to see what little I could.

In the imperfect darkness I could hear a buzzing sound, an electrical hum I recognized as belonging to the family refrigerator, and with my head running on dream logic I didn't even question how it could be running with the power off. Instead I stepped forward, all but blindly, until I reached the fridge, and then threw open the door.

Barely brighter than the moon, the fridge's light flickered three times and then remained on. I wish it hadn't. Unlike the cabinets the fridge was only mostly empty, save for three mason jars covered in cheesecloth instead of lids, held on with a twist of twine. Each was filled up with sickly green brine, like a pickle jar, but it wasn't pickles they held.

What was it?

I couldn't tell, so I reached out and took one, holding it up to my face and squinting at the contents. I gathered a handful of my shirt sleeve to wipe the thick opaque filth and have a look inside… but instead I froze in place.

That's when I realized I wasn't alone in the kitchen anymore.

I dared not turn around, but I could hear him – it? – breathing behind me, great heaving breaths like the labored wheezing of a heavy smoker. Worse than that, I could smell it, too; a sickly rancid scent like rotting meat, and worse than that, I could FEEL it, heavy and hot on the back of my neck. Paralyzed with terror, I couldn't turn around even if I wanted to for fear of what I might see. I just tightened my grip on that jar as the breathing grew heavier and heavier until a voice that hardly seemed human at all growled a single word into my ear.

What that word was, I could never remember upon awakening. For that was when I would always wake up and thank god I did. I never wanted to learn the truth of what those jars contained… nor did I ever want to turn around and see what the Rancid Man looked like.

I've always been a light sleeper, but as I grew older, I found ways to avoid the dream by sleeping less and less. At eleven years old I discovered coffee; reluctantly at first and then with relish once I acquired a taste for the bitter brew my father left in the pot after his first cup in the morning. At a friend's fifteenth birthday party I had my first taste of alcohol in the form of vodka nicked from his father's unlocked liquor cabinet, and I discovered that passing out drunk lead to a dreamless if uneasy sleep.

Now that I'm almost thirty and a lifetime of bad habits have caught up me, I've cut my caffeine intake way down – as much as I can, anyway, and never after five o'clock. I don't drink anymore, either – at least, not during the week. I've always been a light sleeper, but I also always got on just fine on three or four hours. Now, I'm lucky to get one or two, and the older I get, the more I need. I'm not a kid anymore, when I could go out drinking all night and still stumble out of bed and get to work on time the next morning.

I can't go on like this.

My work is suffering; last week I was late every single day and I could barely keep my eyes open, sitting there at my monitor. My boss found me dozing off not once but twice, the second time pulling me into her office and giving me a tongue lashing I'll never forget and a warning that I have to heed if I have any hope of keeping my job.

Three days ago I happened to mention my problem to a co-worker of mine, Bennie, who used to have my problem as well, until he started taking melatonin pills before bed every night. At first I demurred, not wanting to rely on a new drug regiment to solve the problem that alcohol and caffeine had caused in the first place, but he assured me that it wasn't a drug at all but a naturally occurring compound in the brain that I would only be supplementing.

So I swallowed my doubts and my hesitation and I swung by my local CVS and picked up a bottle on my way home that evening. A few hours later I popped it open and yanked out the fat wad of cotton that cushioned the tiny white pills. I took the smallest recommended dose I could – 3 mg, one pill – and I chased it with a dixie cup of bathroom tap water, and then got into bed.

Sure enough, after staring at the ceiling for about forty-five minutes or do, I felt a warm, comfortable sensation of drowsiness creep over me from behind my eyelids and spread from there, inward and downward to my chest, my arms, my legs, my fingers and toes.

That night, when I had the dream again, it was different, but only superficially. Instead of standing in the ruins of my childhood home I found myself in the kitchen of my own apartment, though it was no less dilapidated than the former had been. Black mold I initially took for shadows grew in ugly patches on the walls; my analogue clock hung lopsided, both hands missing. The countertop where I keep my cereal, oatmeal, and coffee was bare save for dust and a few little piles of mouse droppings. My little table where I take breakfast was broken in half, one of the barstools that was usually beside it missing. Spider webs stretched outwards from the corners where they were thickest and decorated the entire edge where wall met ceiling.

Unlike my childhood home, my apartment's kitchen has no windows. After flicking the lightswich a few times to no avail I wondered how it was I could see anything at all. Then I saw it, that thin slice of pale yellow light from the other side of the room. My refrigerator door was slightly ajar, just enough to let just enough light escape so that I could see. As I had before, as a slumbering child, I made my way to the fridge, grabbed the handle, and pulled it open and quickly as I dared.

That was when I woke up.

I'm not a kid anymore. Nightmares don't scare me like they used to. They can be unsettling, disturbing, but all they really are is a collection of moving images spat out at random by an unconscious imagination. When I awoke from my new/old nightmare two day ago at three in the morning I did feel unsettled and disturbed, yes, but also refreshed. At least, more than I can ever remember being. The last time I'd looked at my clock the night before it had read 11:23, and three and a half hours was more than I'd gotten at a stretch my entire adult life. I resolved that night to double my melatonin dose in the hopes of achieving an even better rest, something closer to the seven or eight that normal people sleep.

Was I worried about the dream's return? No, not worried. It was just a dream.

The second night, the one before last, I fell asleep faster and deeper than ever before thanks to the double dose of melatonin I’d given myself just before climbing into bed. Again, the darkness behind my eyelids faded into the same images of the night before, the kitchen that both was and was not the one in my apartment. The same black mold, the same banner of spider webs decorating the corners, the same pale line of light coming from the refrigerator.

This time I slept not just longer but more deeply, and I did not awaken upon opening the door all the way.

There they were. The same three jars that had haunted me, night after night in my childhood, three grungy mason jars with cheesecloth lids, their contents obscured by the grime outside and the brine inside.

I leaned forward and took one of the jars into my hands and held it up to my face, wiping the glass a little with the sleeve of my shirt. I wish I hadn't done that. When the glass was clean enough for me to see through I almost screamed out loud, almost dropped it the jar to the floor. Floating in the brine was fingers, human fingers severed crudely at the bottom knuckle, too numerous to all have come from one person.

And then he was back, too.

In the darkness behind me, the Rancid Man, the man or thing I had never seen but had heard and smelt, his odor more pungent and foul and his breathing more labored and ragged than I remembered, as though not just I but he as well had grown older in all the since last we met. Now, only now did I remember the true horror my childhood self had felt in his presence. I remembered because I felt it now too, just as strongly as I felt those hot, irregular bursts of air on the back of my neck. This time, it was 4:00 a.m. when I awoke, but I did not feel refreshed at all, despite the additional hour of shuteye.

Driving home from work last night, I had the worst idea of my life. The only way, I thought, the only way to conquer the nightmare once and for all would be to see it through to the end, the drop the jar of fingers and turn to face the rancid-breath man. And to do that, I would need to do something I've never done before and sleep through the night. I've always been a light sleeper, but when I got home last night and the hour grew late I took a whole fist full of melatonin tablets and a big swing of water. I didn't just double the dosage, or triple it; in fact, I don’t even know how many of those little white pills I chocked down.

The dream did come, just the same way it had both nights before. I held the fingerjar and waited, terrified, for the rancid-breath man to return. And when he did I dropped the jar, just as I planned. I heard it shatter on the floor below me, felt the splash of brine as it soaked the floorboards and dampened my socks. I shuddered at the series of wet smacks as the amputated fingers flopped like dead fish and came to rest all across the floor.

And I turned, as slowly and as quickly as I dared, to look the rancid-breath man in the face. But before I could finish, the refrigerator door shut behind me, plunging both of us into darkness.

I could feel his breath on my face, now.

And I screamed.

I've always been a light sleeper, but not last night. Neither the terror I felt in that pitch black kitchen nor the pain that immediately followed could wake me from the slumber those little white pills had brought. For the first time in my life, I slept all the way through the night. In fact, this morning, I even slept in.

I awoke with something wet and sticky on my pillow, against my face, and a pinched pain – the pain from my dream – still lingering at the edge of my left hand. When I sat up and looked down I saw to my horror that both were covered in blood. And when I held the left up to the midmorning light streaming in through my bedroom curtains I saw the worst thing of all. My heart sank down into the pit of my stomach, and I would have screamed had I not been numb with shock. Four fingers instead of five, the ring finger missing, gone without a trace save for the jagged open wound between my middle finger and pinkie.

I've flushed the rest of my melatonin down the toilets, and I've doubled my caffeine intake. I don't even care if I get fired anymore. There's worse things to lose than your job. I've only got nine fingers left, and I won't let the rancid-breath man have any more.

Submitted July 08, 2016 at 02:42AM by FoundWords http://ift.tt/29lfxnj nosleep