2 AM

Short story about a guy trying to fall asleep.

                                2 AM

 

 

I'm sick. Not like the flu sick. Mentally.

 

It's almost two in the morning. The television is blaring in the background. The walls are painted by the hollow glow of the tube. I've stopped paying attention to the words long ago.

 

With my last ten dollars, I went to the liqour store and bought a bottle whiskey. Not the good kind. It burns as it goes down my throat. Tastes more like vodka than whiskey. I wonder if I've been ripped off. If its just vodka with brown food coloring. I wouldn't be surprised. I don't know the truth about anything anymore. It's all a lie. I'm trying to drown out the questions stirring in my head. Trying to ignore the feeling that my doom is leering just around the corner.

 

I've tried everything. Bhuddism. Zen.Taoism. Christianity. I can't seem to come to grips with my existence. Just when I think that I might have the answer, that I might be on to something, it all comes tumbling down. Right from under me. Then I'm back to where I started. And I ask myself how I got here.

 

I try to piece everything together. Try to connect the dots. I hope that maybe somewhere within all this chaos I can form a narrative. Some coherent reason for why things unfold the way they do. Then I think I might be thinking too much. Trying too hard. That there is no reason. Eventually I think I've found something brand new and shiny. It's only when I try to share it with the world that I realize its nothing. Just a polished t**d. Nothing more.

 

Sometimes I swear the TV is talking about me. When I'm lost in my own world, lying in my bed, I hear it speak. Only for a moment. It knows my deepest fears. I won't put a face to them. Not here. Not anywhere. There are some things that should never see the light of day.

 

I've commited murder many times. I've engaged in wild orgies. Have sinned with the devils minions on more occasions than I care to remember.

 

I feel like someone standing at a deli counter. I plucked the ticket with my number on it a long time ago. I'm just waiting for it to be called.

 

Some people call it self-loathing. Self-pity. Melo-dramatic. What do you call it when it's the only way of life you've ever known? When you find more comfort in the darkness?

 

The idea of angels is comforting. To think there is a being that is full of nothing but good gives me hope, however futile it is. I know that there are happy people in the world. Somewhere. I've just never met them.

 

Perhaps I should quit my drinking. It isn't good for me. Bad for the skin. Bad for my liver. Bad for my mind. It's the only thing that lets me explore places I'd be too afraid to even whisper about without it.

 

Eventually, my thoughts take me on a ride I'd rather not go on.

I remember my first experience with psychosis. I remember stealing a car, driving eight hundred miles north, guided by the hand of jesus.

 

I remember staring at the lights in the ceiling of the Crisis Intervention Unit, with my arms outstretched, as if nailed on a cross. Six hours. That's how long they said I stood there. I remember the pain of keeping up my arms. How everytime I wanted to release the weight in my shoulders, the Weatherman on the Television in the common room, the one that the rest of the patients in their green smocks are hudeled around, ignoring me, tells me that if I lower my hands, I will burn for eternity.

 

When I think about it, about my time there, it all seems crazy. A lady with hair that looks like it hasn't been washed in months and scars covering her face sits next to me on a couch after I've been sedated. Five people held me down while a doctor wrestled a needle into my a*s cheek.The lady, she tells me she knows that I can talk to Jesus just like her.I wonder how I'd gotten to that point. But while it was all going on it seemed so real. I had something to believe in.

 

I turn towards the clock on my night stand. Only fifteen minutes have passed. They say life is short. I bet those people have never known what it's like to pray. To beg for sleep. I get up and walk to my kitchen. Take a shot. Ripped off. I got f*****g ripped off.

 

I can't help but ridicule myself. I'm almost thirty yet I feel I'm still gripping with some form of teenage angst. Maybe I'm a late bloomer. Maybe I'm a freak. I shake the thoughts off. Down a glass of water so I don't wake up thirsty in the morning.

 

The TV is still doing its rounds in the background. Funny that I need it on to go to sleep. As if I don't have enough noise going on in my head. Maybe that's what I'm trying to do. Lose myself in the noise.

 

I go back to bed. Try focusing on my breath. In. Out. In. Out. It's not working. I'm tired of being tired. I feel like a rock being dragged through the bottom of a lake.

 

My mind turns towards the other times I was insitutionalized. Towards the second time. Then the third. And the fourth. "My past does not define my future, my past does not define my future." I say the mantra over and over again. A golden nugget I've picked up from a self-help book. It gives me a small sense of confidence.

 

Then, I remember going to see the doctor at the drably painted state-run facility. Discount mental health care. As effective as a band-aid on a hatchet wound. I read the sign the receptionist has taped in back of her as I make my appointment for the next time." The best indicator of future behavior is past behavior," it says. Once again, I don't know what to believe anymore.

 

I spin and spin in circles for the rest on the night until. Eventually. I. Fall. Asleep.

 

I'll wake up at seven in the morning.It will start all over again.

Reviews

[roarke]

this would make a great illustrated piece for Heavy Metal magazine. Brutal, torturous, forsaken.... jolting like a double espresso shot.

have you tried counting sheep?