“Sleep, sweet one, sleep.”
The night called to me, yet again. Called to me to melt myself into her folds, to let her wrap her cold, cold arms around me possessively, taking me for her own.
Sleep called to me, yet again. Closer and closer I came to tipping over into that land where things were not quite real, where softness hardened and the rougher edges of life smoothed, and yet, I fought the approach.
With all I have, I fight sleep, I fight the night. Too quickly, these sweet lovers bring nightmares, demons I can hardly hope to harness. They come to me, and lie against me as malicious portents of disease.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Time passes.
Tick Tock. Tick Tock. Breathe. In, out. In, out.
I can hear the rhythm.
Within my sleep, I thrash and turn, hoping that a light will come blind me once again, and in its vivacity, rouse me from the depth I seem to have sunk down into.
“Sleep, it will all be better in the morning.”
So I was told, so I believed, until I fell into that deep sleep I was called to, and felt myself sliding away.
And so, I stay awake, despite the weight on my eyelids, despite the slowing of my system, begging me to let it sleep.
When I sleep, it is with the exhaustion of the drugged or dead, with my body crying for a release, and thus letting me sleep deeper than ever before, and it is within the dreamless sleep of exhaustion that I find solace.
“Child, the night grows longer, the shadows grow deeper, will you not sleep? Will you not shut your eyes and let me take you away, far away?”
Her voice is so kind, so gentle and soothing...
“Do you not see the solace I can offer, the comfort that I bring? Child, come to me.”
The night spoke to me, and in my mad fit of bravery, or perhaps desperation, I answered her.
“I will not sleep, so long as I dream. I do not need what they need, I do not want what they so desire. Sleep, to me, is just a commodity.”
Tick, tick, tick. It is only the passage of time.
Tick tock. Tick tock. Time passes. Sleep and human desire pass too.
Tick. Tock. Tick tock, tick tock, time passes frenetically, passes slowly. Time can never make up her mind, but nevertheless, she passes.
Who needs sleep? Who needs to lie in a metastasis of death?
“...child, you are only human. Let yourself sleep. Let your body rest, and your mind will follow.”
Ah, vile seductress. I cannot help but fall for her, and so my eyes flutter shut.
They will open again, of that I am sure.