The Cause of Insomnia

"There's a shadow feeding them. " A short piece I wrote while struggling with my own bout of insomnia and pondering the thought of ancients thinking spirits were the cause. What would invite them in?

    There have always been evil spirits that are said to steal sleep from you. A personification of insomnia. Beings that slither into your mind and keep you from the dreams one so desperately desires after an exhausting day of reality. Sitting awake as hours pass, and suddenly it's four in the morning and you have work in a few hours. The bruises beneath your eye are growing more pronounced as they deepen their color, like a mark from one of those spirits rising to just under your skin. Peeking out from within. Letting the world know it has you in its clutches.
    An army of these evil spirits must be clogging my mind- they had to have invaded when I was very small. A restful night's sleep has evaded me for over a decade now, and the beginning of this cycle is lost on me. The only reason I could see is something in my dreams scared me so thoroughly that it threw the doors of my mind wide open, and in poured that army of insomnia inducing spirits. Nights such as this one- my mind rewinds and I find myself trying to pinpoint the exact dream that urged me to be what I am today.
    Few dreams stuck. Even fewer gave any valid reason to all the sleep I never gave myself. Idle dreams. Small. Barely a wink in the grand scheme of every dream I had.


    Sitting on my brother's room floor, watching him play a Zelda game he didn't even play until weeks later when he rented it. So clearly, I remember insisting he already played it and that I knew the ending. It was baffling when he called me a liar. I didn't understand. I still don't. I felt the carpet rub on my bare legs and make my skin itch, I remember the ache in the back of my neck from craning up to watch so vividly. It was real. It's been years since that dream, and the afterward of it. Real. I still believe it had happened, my mind can't grasp how it might not have. Why should it? I felt the carpet, I felt pain, I knew the ending of the game. There was more reason to think my brother had just forgotten it all, and not the other possibility.
     That dream was disturbingly realistic, but it was so harmless. Why would that give way to evil spirits? Why would that keep me waking every hour until I just up and give up on the concept of sleeping that night? A dream of coincidences. That's all that one could be. A single, passing thing. Evil needs something darker to invite it in, doesn't it? So what part of myself is in hiding? Keeping away from me. Making sure I'm clueless to its existence so the spirits stealing my sleep from me can thrive. If the evil needs to feed, then it would need that darkness to appear, wouldn't it?
    A dream that wasn't a dream, then. A nightmare. A reoccurring one that woke me before I can even remember. One with sharp teeth and hungry hearts. A nightmare where a whisper would linger against my ear as I woke. Changing as I grew up. If I moved- the location moved. If my hair changed- it changed in the dream. As I grew in waking, so did the dream me. The progression had me thinking the nightmare was stalking me- hunting.
    How fitting.


    It starts with the hunt after all. I'm in near by woods. A howl echoes in empty air, and my eyes always raise to take in the moon. It never is where its suppose to be. It hangs so much lower, and there are never any stars despite how pitch black the sky is. A single, glowing plate in the middle of an abyss. One that has craters that look like a terrified, dying man. Seeing that face makes the chill from the howling sink in deeper. I can always feel a coldness nipping at my fingertips. The crunch of leaves and dead branches sound like a scream in such an empty place.
    I always recognize the forest, because like my growing- the forest changes. From the one by my family's cabin, to the one that is five steps from my best friend's house. The incoming predators are never heard, but something pricks the back of my neck. Something hovers, hangs around my shoulders, as if to tell me that the wicked thing draws nearer. Not even a dream-minute passes before five wolves in varying shades break through to the clearing I stand in. The one I always enter this dream world at. Instinct. It has me breaking off in a sprint despite knowing that marks me as prey. As food. I've sign my own death, but it doesn't stop me from turning tail and hauling a*s. Tree limbs claw at my face and arms and it's during my frantic attempt to escape that I always realize that it has to be fall, but I'm always dressed for summer. Even when I hate wearing summer clothing. The scratches cover me, and I feel every one distinctly. The pain is so real that it only makes me panic more.
    You're always told you can't feel pain in dreams. Does that not apply to nightmares then? Because this dreamscape has such vivid feeling. The panic constricts my heart in my chest, my lungs are burning with their work. I'm running to somewhere, there's a direction I purposely choose without realizing. Its set in my mind that safety lies ahead. Sometimes there is. This is the only varying factor- sometimes there's my best friend's old family van. It's tall and has a silver ladder up the back that let's you climb to the roof. Sometimes I'm lucky enough to grasp it- sometimes, so rarely, I get a few steps up before the wolves catch me.
    It's always a grey one that catches me by the ankle and drags me out. It's always the grey one that drags me out before baring its teeth in my face. Like it's telling me to stay put. Or else. I listen.
    Its brethren catch up, and each one sinks their teeth into a limb. Two at each ankle, two at each wrist. The grey one stays near my head, but it never goes for the kill. That is saved for their alpha, one that only appears once I'm caught. A giant, snow white wolf. This is a nightmare, and it's here I realize this because the chase was too realistic, the pain kept making it seem even more, but when a wolf breaks through the trees that's the size of a school bus- dream me realizes it's the same thing. That the nightmare since I was a child wasn't coming true finally, but it was just another of the hundreds. I know what part comes next, I know I'll wake up right after.
    But the pain that always strikes me prior makes me struggle against tooth and claw. The white alpha steps over me and its pack, its entire body shadows everyone of us. The moon is gone from my sight, and so is the endless sky. So is any chance at freedom, dream-me is so certain. It bends its head down to my torso, the serenity in its grey eyes always gets me to pause in my struggle. Something like hope, maybe? Like maybe this time it won't.
    The wolf always does. It opens its jaws and tears my entire middle out, I feel every fiber rip all at once- and that is when I jolt awake. A whisper hangs on my ear, it always sounds like my name, but my hammering heart takes precedent.


    Would a nightmare of my reoccurring death- being eaten alive- be dark enough to invite the army in, I wonder? The only question is, why would I have that dream a hundred times and the army never came? I could still sleep. I could still breathe deep and tell myself it might not come that night. I always gave rest a chance. Despite nights like these, where my mind is hell bent on finding the reason, none ever come to mind. No dream seems right enough to explain the army within me. I only know one thing for sure.
    Somewhere, at one time, something ripped me from sleep. Something ushered the sleep stealing spirits inside. There's a shadow feeding them. One that lends a hand in growing this army, a shadow that grows along with those spirits. On certain nights with chilly winds, nights like this one-

    I fear that shadow is my heart.

Author's Note

I haven't written a first person POV in ages, please let me know if I grew too repetitive.
Personal experiences with fictional flare.

Does that make it a journal, or a story?