Insomnia part XII

A Chapter by M.Kilani

Another scene of a man who suffers insomnia

"The big brother is watching you" he says to himself, while reading his favorite book, George Orwell's 1984, at exactly 3:33AM the phone rang, a familiar sound of of a lighter's led being opened on the other end of the line, wheel being crocked, the sound of the paper burning along with tobacco, deep breath... "hello"... exhale and no answer, "hello"... led shuts closed, no cigarette in his hand, but the sound was as if it was him on the other end... "Amen" followed by a dial tone.

He reads more, flipping pages randomly, "What happens to you here is for ever. Understand that in advance. We shall crush you down to the point from which there is no coming back. Things will happen to you from which you could not recover, if you lived a thousand years. Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves." Closes the book and faces himself in the mirror; "What have become of me!" he shouts, "when did god forsake me, when did demons forsake me, who am I... who am I..."

"Tick tock... tick tock... you are the slave they made in that book." A whisper from behind "A sound long forgotten has returned, not the sound of sanity, but it's sane enough."

“Sanity is statistical.”

"What makes you suffer, mortal one? what makes you summon your demons of madness... your demons of sadness."

"I'm ready to die, I now want to die, the mortal death, I'm already dead inside, now I'm ready for my soul to depart my body... I've been trying so hard to be pure, to be great and complete, I've elevated over human needs, over greed, over lust... and what for? I'm not longer half the man I used to be... I'm now lost"

"Death is the completion of life, one dies, one's life becomes complete, merely perfect, therefor when someone dies people remember this near-perfection and lament the fact that no one lives it."

'Pure' isn't perfect, 'perfect' isn't complete and 'complete' isn't Immaculate, which isn't pure, still we describe things with the mentioned vocabulary, where none is true, not even the word 'true.'

"Lust hid behind cigarettes, flames, overwhelming joy and despair, could it be unfair; too cherish the blessing of being there... comforting silence, and a drawing of her." they all have mumbled.

"The perfection of imperfection..."

"At 1:43am they have slept, 1:43am it is now."

No faces, no echo for the sounds, no reflection of his face in the mirror, he stares into the void, until a familiar face shown in the mirror, he didn't recognize it, he looked in the eye... "who are you?"

The figure in the mirror lights a cigarette; "Look me in the eye, I am what you gave up, I'm all what you could've been, I am you, your lost passion, your hunger, your greed and lust, I am you lost mistrust... look into my dead eyes and tell me... is it too late to live again, or is it time to die?"

"Time... what time is it?" he remembered to call her before he sleeps, the only one he feels he had with him, the only one he wishes to be with, yet he is denied of that, he looks into his overpriced watch, smells what's stuck on it of her scent, suffocates, and starts to lose conscious, falls to the ground as his cigarette burns his fingertips; 3:13am... "it's not that time yet" he says.

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