Incarcerated Insomniac

The darkness stirs. I gasp, rising from my bed as if from a deep slumber only I’m not waking. Sleep remains in hiding. My eyes watch the ceiling until particles, like glitter, fall around me causing me to spin and turn and fall. No, I’m not falling, just sinking; sinking into this bed, sinking into every surface I try to rest on, stand on, and lean on. Realizing for the five hundredth time that sleep will never be revealed, I swing my legs over the edge of the bed.

Sickness takes over me, a sudden weight pulling me back to the sleep I couldn’t find. I uncover a forged strength to ignore this torment and stand with my weak feet. Dim light shines through my window allowing me to pretend I’m not alone. Nostalgia creeps into my stomach but I don’t know what I’m missing; only that it hurts. Memories flood into my mind and I collapse onto the floor thinking of my mother. At times like this I miss her holding me and I long for the touch that never let me feel alone. I tell myself I need this dreadful loneliness because if I let someone in, I’d be lonelier than before. My stories of truth would only chase them away.

As I sit up, I wrap my arms tightly around my knees and stare as time, the wrong time, goes by on the clock next to my bed. The blinking red lights tempt me; they say my time is running out. I almost start to cry, then I catch myself and the numbers blur before they spill across a fading surface. The colors melt and blend until nothing but the darkness shows, until nothing but the nothing shows.

Blood pours down my empty walls only it’s not there but I wish it was. It pours onto my hands and a smile holds back a scream. I’m scared because I’m not scared but at the same time I am scared and I welcome these feelings, it’s nothing new.

Familiar voices sound in my head mumbling; speaking words of an indistinctive tongue yet, I understand every word. They whisper, chuckle and talk until it’s all I hear, until it’s all I remember, like the radio that always plays, like the radio that takes my anger, my dreams, my pain, my sleep, my life. I can’t take it but I want to take it. I want them to give it all to me. On the floor I back up against a wall; the blood already vanished. The voices’ bodies appear in the dark room now. They didn’t walk in, they just appeared. They just appeared like he did one day, one day when he grew bored or maybe finally woke up.

I watch the figures stand around a shadow chained to a table. I cannot see their faces or hands, only the long, dark cloaks. One man raises a sword and places it into the body. He takes it out slowly, the blade turning red. The sword is raised again, this time with another sword in the air. The two blades pierce the skin at the same time. For awhile I can only watch the body. He doesn’t make a sound. He grits his teeth like I used to, he grits his teeth to bare the pain. No sounds leave his dry mouth.

That body belonged to me once. I remember vividly what he is still learning. Maybe it’s all just a game now, a sick game; a twisted, screwed up and disturbing game of disgust and insanity.

A fun game.

I hope I lose. I’ll pray to God, her god - the one subject she forces into all aspects of my life - that I can wake up too. I want to wake like he did and return to my family. Maybe I could replace him. He could disappear and I would have my family again. My family- only mine. I was happy with them, without him.

I glance down at my hand, finally realizing the sting teasingly tip-toeing across my skin causing just enough pain to create a sensation on the border of annoyance and unbearable.

Blood.

It drips from my knuckles. This color used to bloom from my skin like delicate red daisies. The kitchen knife planted the seeds within these self inflicted fields of destruction. From destruction something grew--Devastation. The remains of these broken seedless rows are slowly replaced by the wounds from other’s, at least that’s what I tell myself.

The knife sleeps in its drawer now, no longer a friend to my hand or an enemy to the skin but an enemy to the old friend and as well as a friend to the old enemy. I used to get sad, now I just get angry. I’m angry that I was sad, angry that I’m still sad, so angry that all my strength in motivation has been drained from my timid heart so that not a breath leaves my lips without the subtle tale of apathy.

He thinks that’s how I talk to him, as if something as special as his very existence could ever mean nothing. My words grow entangled in his waves of mind and the meaning’s caught in the under toe once more. Everything flows but backwards. My voiced heart is always choking, strangled by minds with closed doors and thoughts riding one track—always following that single track.

Yet, I still try. I want him to know. In the air hang my words, never carried on the wind, never reaching him. He always listens but he never just hears me. He’s always listening, trying to understand.

…I just want him to know.

I just want you to know that last Saturday I broke free. The light’s contradiction to the dark room burned my eyes but I dared not look away for fear that death grew closer and closer to me.

I will defeat you, the tools are right here in my hands. My left thumb moving forward and back as my right thumb moves up and down. Eventually my energy falls and I am dead once more. You always beat me at that game. You win at everything-you’re always smiling.