But I can’t sleep.
I’m too worried about
Andrea, too preoccupied with her. This bed is so lonely without her, so cold,
so empty. What if she has a medical emergency and I’m not there to help her?
What would I do? What could I do?
There has to be something I can do, right? Or at least, something I could have done…
Oh God. What if it’s my
fault? What if I could have brought her in sooner, or called her doctor as soon
as she’d gotten sick, or listened to her more, or…?
God damn it, this whole
mess is already making it hard to be awake! Does it have to make it so hard to get to sleep and stay asleep, too? And why does the room have to be so cold? I thought I’d turned the heater up
enough to circumvent that. It’s like lying in a freezer; did something break?
Maybe I can fix it, maybe I just didn’t turn it up enough, maybe…
Oh God.
Oh God, I can’t move. My
arms won’t move. My legs feel cold. I
can’t move. I can’t-!
… There’s someone outside
the bedroom, watching through the crack under the door. I know they are. I can
feel their eyes! I can…
Oh my God, I can hear them. I can hear their rattling
breaths; they sound pained and sickly. I can hear them muttering to themselves,
whispering. I can hear something tapping on the door, clacking on the wood,
scraping, like nails, or…
I hear the door open.
My eyes feel grainy as
they flick nervously towards the now ajar door, and my heart drops into my
stomach. They’re in the room, and they’re coming closer to the bed. Closer. Closer…
“Michael…”
The icy air of the room
penetrates my sheets like needles through tissue paper. The intruder’s voice is
like a harsh whisper, rattling and dry as death. And it knows my name. My eyes
frantically search the blackness surrounding me, the isolating dark, finding
nothing, seeing no one. Where are you? God damn it, just show yourself! Show yourself!
My eyes catch the barest
glimmer of something pale, something vaguely human-looking, something… Oh… Oh
Jesus Christ, no.
What… what is that?
It’s crouched by the foot
of my bed, the pallid, emaciated-looking thing, whispering in some guttural
pseudo-tongue as its talons rip the carpeted floor. A skeletal, long-fingered
hand grips the bed’s wooden end rail so hard that its razor claws are carving
gouges into the wood. Its eyes… its eyes are enormous black pits set into its
skull, dull obsidian orbs that seemed to pull all light towards them. Its mouth
is a slavering chasm of needle-like teeth, strings of saliva glinting between
them as it opens its maw to speak my name…
“Michael… what have you done?”
My breath comes in
ragged, heavy gasps, and I watch in horror as it pulls itself onto the bed with
alarming agility.
“She needed you… but you did not listen. Did you, Michael? She was
sick. She said she was sick. Why did you not help her?”
“I-I… did…” I croak,
voice barely audible over the thing’s incessant rattling breaths. I had to
move, I needed to run, I can’t run, I’m stuck… It’s crawling towards me and
over me, sharp claws slicing through the bed sheets and into my arms. They hurt,
they hurt and they feel so cold… so cold…
“I… I d-didn’t know, I… I
did everything I co-”
“LIAR!” the thing screeched, voice echoing around the room and
inside of my head. “You could have done
more for her! You could have prevented all of this, Michael, and you did
NOTHING!”
“P-please, it’s not my
fault! It’s no-”
“It IS your fault! You should have brought her in first thing, you
should have convinced her to go in sooner; you should have trusted your own
suspicions first! But did you? Did you, Michael?! DID YOU?!”
The thing suddenly
launched itself at me, shrieking, and I felt its clawed hands wrap themselves
around my neck, talons slicing into my neck, the coldness injecting itself into
my body. Oh God, Oh God I can’t breathe, I
can’t breathe, I’m going to die!
“You monster! You MURDERER! She will DIE because of you! Because you
did nothing! NOTHING!”
But it’s not my fault! I
swear it’s not my fault, I didn’t know, I couldn’t have, it’s not my fault!
“It’s not my fault!”
I jolt awake, looking
around my dark bedroom. I hear the wind howl as it blows past my bedroom
window. There is nobody else in the room with me. I’m all alone, in the middle
of the blackness, in the middle of my apartment, in the middle of the cold,
winter city.
“I-It’s… not my fault,” I
murmur to the shadows. Nobody responds. Nobody except my own thoughts.
But what if it is my fault? What if she’d known sooner?
The guilt cut through me
like a cold knife. Maybe… Maybe it really was my fault. I should have brought
her in to the doctor as soon as she’d gotten sick. I should have asked her more
than a few times to get a check-up. I should have taken better care of her.
Maybe if I had… maybe if I had, she’d be here, with her soft, gentle arms and
warm scent enveloping me in comfort. And I would never let her go, never again,
as if my arms had brought her into myself.
For the love of God, Michael… what have you done?
I blink the tears from my
eyes and glance at the alarm clock. The numbers glow an angry red. It’s
three-thirty. I should be asleep. I need sleep…
But I can’t sleep.
The bottle of Xanax rests
on the nightstand, its orange plastic reflecting the glow of the alarm clock. My
therapist’s number sits next to it, written on a yellow sticky note with the
word “Call tomorrow.”
I turn over onto my side
in the bed, staring at the adjacent wall again. Call tomorrow.
Good idea.
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