The Sanctuary Of Slumber

by Ashley Redden

again asleep, they sucked out all the good stuff at their leisure and left nothing but the skin and bone as the calling card of their handiwork.

  The only problem with that notion was that there were not just a lucky few. In the beginning, the chosen had been many. Scads of people worldwide were sucked dry while they slept, one slumbering victim at a time. The species Homo sapiens had been unceremoniously placed on their own endangered list.

  People learned to sleep less and when they did, they catnapped, which helped, but eventually, everyone needs a good REM sleep and that’s when the bugs got you. Mankind stood on the brink of eradication, being eaten by a predator they could not see, hear or touch that struck when they were most vulnerable, when at rest.

  Sleep was supposed to be a sanctuary for the mind body and soul to reenergize, to renew. But that sanctuary, that haven of rest, had been defiled, desecrated in the worst way. Mankind no longer falls asleep to rest. Now, mankind falls asleep to die, not quickly, but in pieces, losing a little bit more with each slumber.

  Why call them bugs? They had to be called something. The human animal has always needed a face for their enemy even when there is not one to be seen. As far as I know, no one has seen the bugs yet, maybe never will. But the bugs do have one accomplishment that a sundry of religions have been working at for centuries, longer still. The bugs have made believers out of mankind. Not some people, but all people. The ones that are left anyway. The bugs have the whole world believing in something they cannot see, hear or touch. For a tactile creatures such as mankind this simple little fact is quite the accomplishment.

  I blink at the sun, wondering where it has come from all of a sudden. One minute I had been staggering in the dark, the next minute it is broad daylight. The realization hits me as I lay sprawled upon the ground. I moan, not wanting to look. But look I must. Curiosity, no matter how perverse, will always be there. Humanities secret weapon and achilles heel all rolled up in a nice neat meddlesome little package.

  I raise first my right arm then my left. My right arm seems fine, my left won’t budge. I peek over, a bit squeamishly, and wonder at the sight. The skin is stretched over the bones of my left arm from the shoulder down. A master taxidermist would have been proud of the work, seamless and pristine in detail as it was. A long snug little divot is even visible between the radius and the ulna. I would gag, but there is nothing left on my stomach.

  I manage somehow to get up onto my feet. The left leg is fine, more of the right, however, is gone, everything below the knee. I stagger hop until I am able to find a crutch, an actual crutch. I think to myself, ‘what good fortune.’ I hear a familiar hysterical cackle. I think that it’s probably just me again but am too tired to check.

  I argue with myself about cutting the leg off below the knee. Once the bugs have done their deed, the appendage is useless, attached but just there, no pain no sensation no nothing. In the end, I decide to leave it be. I have nothing with which to cut the leg and ultimately, don’t have the willpower to do it, dead and useless or not. I will have to drag it some, but that is just how it is.

  Later in the day, I stagger into an opening in a building that is in surprisingly good shape. Why I went in there, I can’t rightly say. Perhaps subconsciously I was looking for companionship. I found none.

  The room is indeed full of people, maybe half a dozen or so, which in this sleepless kill or be killed non society in which we live is a serious crowd. They look up; all of them, when I stumble into the room. The conversation immediately goes from a gentle buzz to complete quiet, like flicking a switch. For several beats the quiet reigns, then cacophony explodes as every last one of them began yelling for me to get out.

  I stand a bit overwhelmed, it no longer seems to take much, swaying as the crowd screams and screams for me to get out, leave, be gone, just get out and get out now. Someone throws a brick and I try to raise my left hand to shield my face, but of coarse it doesn’t respond.

  The brick sails by my ear close enough to smell the tang of creosote lingering from the dirty chimney where once upon a time the flung brick resided in a fireplace, the heart and soul of some long lost family's home.

  Someone yells at the thrower not to hit me, do they want me to die right here and bring the bugs in here to finish me off. They scream and scream, but none come close.

  Eventually I get back some semblance of order within my sleep ravaged brain and shamble back out the way I came. The noise is just too much for me. I stagger on the rest of the day and into the night, meaninglessly lost, with nowhere to go, no hope no future no promise.

  Finally, I trip and fall on some bulky detritus; I’m too tired to look at what.

  No matter the origin, the scraps of civilization are all the same now, just junk to trip over and nothing else.

  I turn my head to the right, or was it the left, who knows. There not two feet away, sits a skeleton; complete with a generous supply of desiccated skin stretched tight right over its entire bony carcass. Looking at my long dead neighbor, I wonder how strange it is that the skin doesn’t rot. Neither do the bones for that matter. I never thought about it before, had never cared. I wonder, ‘how bad can it be?’

  To sleep, to finally sleep might even be worth it. I watch the skeleton as my eyelids slide down once blocking the moon bright alley. I watch as the darkness swallows everything.

  I open my eyes again, one long heady blink to find my grinning companion still resting comfortably upon the wall, quite content and happy to stay where he is.

  I blink again, then again, each slower and more luxurious than the last. Finally I let my eyelids fall a final time. I think, but cannot be certain that I hear that maniacal laugh again, but for once it seems far away, distant beyond caring.

  I fall effortlessly into the bosom of unconsciousness; it has been so long since I closed my eyes on purpose that the feeling is overwhelming, but for once, overwhelming in a good way. Like falling into the arms of darkness, sweet succulent darkness and knowing that in that moment rest awaits, blissful welcome rest.

  I am so very tired, not just physically, that has been going on for weeks now, but mentally. It is as if most of my will has been sucked out along with the tissue of my arm and lower leg.

  I know that I am just fooling myself, telling myself that it is okay; everything’s honky dory, that kind of stuff. But deep down I know better. I find that I don’t really care that much, haven’t cared for a while now but just kept on going through the motions. Let them have me. Let this pitiful excuse for an existence that is my world turn, what will be will be.

  I offer myself up to darkness, pining for its cold touch and fall into the welcoming arms of slumber and finally, after so long a struggle, finally find respite. I close my eyes for the last time and willingly enter the now violated sanctuary of slumber.

  I don’t even wonder if I will perhaps wake up again, which is a new thing. I have always wondered that right before dozing off, but not this time. I already know the answer.

  I go to sleep, not to reenergize or renew, but to die. Finally and forever. At least I will finally be at rest.

  They say that to die in ones sleep is a blessing. So maybe I’m blessed after all.

  Just before drifting off I hear a sigh. I’m not sure where the sound comes from. Who knows, it may have even been from me.