Every Time I Sleep I See People Getting Slaughtered

I hardly want to sleep anymore. I'm so tired that I want to die. I remember the good days. My head on a pillow after a hot shower. Sleep hitting almost instantly.

It's been a talent I've always had. I even bragged about it, at a time.

Well now, it's my hell. Especially now, trying to stay up. Trying to postpone it. If I just lay down, I'll be out.

Why did it start? Damned if I know. I just want it to end. I don't use electronics before bed. No screens. I don't eat less than an hour before bed. I shower every night. I read a book. Something boring like philosophy or whatever. Something to make the lights go out. Boy, they do.

Within an hour my eyes are drooping and now I lay me down to sleep.

I used to love to sleep. I did it all the time. Even during the day I had designated napping periods and a set bedtime at night. I take my sleep schedule seriously, sue me. Actually, right now just kill me.

They aren't nightmares. I know what you're thinking, no they aren't. Every time it happens I'm there. The second my head hits that blissful embrace of the pillow, the demons start heating the pitchforks to poke me all night.

And suddenly, it's like I'm up again. I'm sitting on someone's couch, someone real. At someone's dinner table, someone real. In their bed with them, really. Too close for comfort, really. Watching them.

And it's different each time. Someone new. Like I'm watching a movie that I'm inside of, but I'm that fly on the wall no one notices even though it's right in front of them.

And they're all getting slaughtered.

There I am, sitting in the La-Z-Boy of some poor old biddy and geezer's home. The carpet is so soft. The recliner smells like old person sweat and cheese. The lightbulbs are all aged and yellow. Just bright enough to see but not very clearly. In front of me is a TV. Beside me is a couch with an old woman eating peanuts out of a bowl, not looking at the TV. I hear every crunch and crackle like a grinding gear as she chews. I hear and see everything in 4D. Her husband sits beside her, staring at the tube, his foot tapping the floor before he gets up.

He grunts out, raspy, "I need a smoke."

"Those'll kill you, you know," the old woman says.

There's a door to the left of the TV that I keep looking at. One of those sliding doors that go into the wall. It's all the way open. The open blackness yawns like the maw of a blasphemer.

Because what comes through is unholy.

The old man is slammed into the side of the wall on the opposite side. I don't see him yet but know what is happening from the noise. He falls to the ground, seizing violently, slamming into everything breakable in the room. His wife at his side, screaming. Peanuts and cigarettes flying everywhere. Me unable to move and he finally stops. He looks up once at his wife.

"Please, Edith. Just kiss me one more time..."

Confused and afraid, she does. Then they embrace and their lips envelop together. The smacks and slurps of wet flesh slapping together, drool dripping down both of their faces, tongues doing secret hand shakes. His hand still clutching the pack of cigarettes. The wife wipes her mouth and looks at him.

"What...honey, what was that for?"

That's when his face opened up.

I used to work at a pigeon hatchery. We sold the birds to farms and hunting camps for dog training. I don't know if you've seen a stillborn squab inside of its egg after you pull back the fleshy layer and see it curled up in there, all red and lumped together like a deformed worm drenched in grenadine and sprinkled with flecks of wood shavings. That's kind of what it looked like.

It happened in maybe five seconds at most. All of the skin and bones of his face spread open. Like an eye dilating all the way. Except inside was something like red mud mixed with meat which landed directly on her face and into her still open mouth.

A final kiss goodbye.

The woman spasming and writhing in disgust. Spitting and coughing and retching. Me wishing I could do the same. She scrambles, her pink face whipping across the room for an attacker. Her making this low mule's moan over and over and over. Backing up, up, up. She didn't see the coffee table and lands on her side. I hear an audible pop and a shallow gasp.

And then I'm out.

Like the fade out of a movie scene, the curtains close and I'm pulled into the murky blackness and back into something like sleep. The rest of the night uninterrupted.

Now I lay me down to sleep.

But it's not a restful sleep. It's a long, tormented, sweaty, hot sleep that wakes me up feeling like I've slept for days on end and with a migraine that would make a priest put a couple bucks in the swear jar.

Racking through my brain. Telling myself it was a dream. Still smelling the hot, squirming squab of meat.

I shower every morning too. Not only because of the sweat, migraine and piss, but also the blood. My nostrils feel like someone stuck a Ticonderoga pencil in each one up to the R.

No, I didn't hit my face. No, I'm not sick. No, I'm not going to the fucking doctor. I don't have health insurance and I quite literally cannot afford it.

Every morning is like this. The smell of freshly opened organs never goes away. A hot, stinging smell. It gets worse the more this happens. Like the smell is decaying in my airways and each morning, a fresh layer is smoothly applied. It hurts to breathe, to eat, to swallow, cough, sneeze. The outsides of my nose are scabby from wiping the droplets so much, tearing raw each time.

Each night again is the same but different.

This time it's a wife and kids cowering in the corner while the father is beat and maimed in front of them by a home intruder that none of us can see. Him screaming at them over, and over:

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I can't help it--"

Meanwhile, I hang by one hand from the ceiling fan. Just checkin' out the scenery.

Another, I'm at the foot of someone's bed in the leapfrog position. Their feet stuck out of the comforter and suddenly beginning to silently convulse, running in place for a moment like a shot hog, while a voice travels under the door.

"Tom?"

In response, the bump on the far end of the bed begins to stain, and spread, and leak. A river of blood flows from both sides and some of it gets on me.

Should've kept his feet under the blanket.

And again, now I'm on a dresser, looking down as a man goes to open the drawers. He takes out a box. An envelope. A lot of cash. Reaches in his pocket and puts another wad of it in the envelope as well. A woman joins him and looks inside, impressed. They both laugh and tell each other what they're going to do with it before both of them stop and look down, each at their own torso, and begin to strip. Something is moving. Something inside them. They scream, they cry, their ribs burst out of them as they fall face down stone dead and the ribs flap on either side of them like little wings.

They don't fly far at all. Their little wings elevate them slightly but the limp limbs and faces just drag on the floor. They fly in circles in opposite directions of each other around their envelope and spilled pile of cash, leaving a twin snail trail of blood as they do.

And every time its me who has to see.

It's been three days now that I haven't slept. I'm trying to make sense of it. I don't want it to happen again. I don't wanna see it again. I don't watch the news. I don't go out anymore.

I don't wanna sleep. But it's so late and I'm so tired. I have to. I don't understand it. I need a drink. I need a lot of drink.

Maybe that'll be the cure. I'll get wasted. Too wasted for it to happen. Just black out until tomorrow. Like old times.

My hand on the bottle. Lifting to take a long, glorious swig. But suddenly my head hurts again, so very bad. A migraine tearing through my head like a hot needle of poison and my nose starts bleeding.

Not again.

I lose my footing and collapse to the floor crying, naked and screaming like the day I was born.

And I feel the slight tickle as a fly lands on my foot.