51 Sleepless Nights

by Tobias Wade

  Real ordinary envelope with red lettering mixed in with a bag of other ordinary letters. I wouldn’t have noticed it if I hadn’t watched the guy drop it into the box a minute before I collected. He was wearing these old-fashioned monk robes like you’d expect to see in a medieval Monastery .

  I forgot about him until I was unpacking the bag at the office and I saw the red lettering. The address was starting to smear, and there was no mistaking – it was written in fresh blood.

  If that doesn’t count as grounds for suspicion, I don’t know what does. I opened it to find a list of 12 names, also written in blood. The first four were crossed out. At the bottom of the list it said:

  Give me 6 months for the rest. Destroy the letter, and do not tell anyone.

  I tried Googling the names, and over the last three months, all four had committed suicide. I forward the information to the police and they said they would investigate, looking for any connection with the remaining eight people.

  There was another letter from him, collected from the same box last week. It was the same list, but this time there were five names crossed off. I Googled the fifth name and you guessed it – suicide two days ago.

  Almost the same list anyway. My name was added to the bottom. At the end of the list was written:

  I told you not to tell anyone. Do not try to find me.

  Well I didn’t have to find him, because I knew where he was dropping the letters off. If I could just explain to him I wasn’t a threat – If I promised to not tell anything more – then maybe he’d take my name off. The police weren’t finding anything, and I couldn’t think of any other way to protect myself.

  Yesterday I waited at the same mail box he dropped off at. Right on schedule – same time he dropped the other letters – the cloaked figure was there. He was walking strangely though, like he could barely move his legs. He was struggling to even lift the letter up to the mailbox. I confronted him and begged him to take my name off the list. I swore I would stay out of his business. I didn’t even care if the others died – I just didn’t want to be one of them.

  He didn’t answer me though. The figure seemed to be struggling under his cloak, and then he was the one to drop to his knees in front of me. Why would he be begging from me? Was he afraid I’d turn him in?

  When he still didn’t answer, I pulled the cloak back to reveal his face. His mouth was gagged. I helped him out of the cloak and found his legs and arms were tied too – no wonder he was having trouble getting the letter in the box.

  “Who did this to you? What’s going on?” I asked him.

  He opened the letter and crossed out a name. Was that it? Was I off the list? I took a step closer to see, but then he pulled out a handgun – right in front of me. Holy shit – I backed up so fast I fell right on my ass. But he wasn’t pointing it at me. He was pointing it at himself.

  One shot. Straight to the temple. He was dead before he hit the ground.

  You might think I’m an asshole for this, but even before calling the police, I went for the letter. All I cared about was that my name was taken off. But he hadn’t crossed out my name – he’d crossed out the sixth name on the list. I checked it against his driver license and yeah – same name.

  Not only that, but my name had been moved. I’m now number 7, the next one up. Written below the list, it said:

  I told you not to try and find me.

  Who Wrote the Suicide Note?

  Don’t stick your dick in crazy.

  Words to live by. It’s amazing how our mind can rationalize anything when we want something (or someone) badly enough though.

  When we first started dating, I didn’t think Emma was crazy. Well that’s not entirely true, but somehow I thought crazy was a good thing. Riding shopping carts down hills, holding a conversation with a dozen different voices, singing in public without a care in the world.

  She was innocent and free and wild, and I loved her for it. Every fun spontaneous thing that came into her mind, we did together. She forced me to open up as an individual and tore down walls and inhibitions I didn’t even know I had.

  There were warning signs for the “other kind” of crazy too, but I just thought it was all an act. I didn’t think she was really hearing voices, and even if she was, what was the harm in it? She never acted out bizarre commands or anything. It was just part of what made her unique.

  When she gave birth to our daughter Anastasia, I began to take her mental health a little more seriously. Emma was having visual as well as auditory hallucinations now, and she would get angry at me if I ever dismissed them as “not being real”.

  We talked through it and did some research, and it sounded to me like she had schizophrenia. She always thought her voices were from a guardian angel, and I knew she wasn’t going to be happy hearing otherwise.

  I had to get her to recognize they weren’t real though, otherwise she would just encourage our daughter to believe in that stuff. Anastasia would already be genetically predisposed to her own hallucinations, and I didn’t want that mentality to be reinforced.

  That was the worst fight Emma and I ever had. I didn’t realize exactly how real it all was to her until I pushed her to get help. She wouldn’t talk to me afterward for days, and even when she started to again, she would reference her guardian angel constantly.

  “Ezekiel [her angel] reminded me to pick up milk at the store.”

  or

  “Let’s go see the new Star Wars movie. Ezekiel said it was good.”

  It only got worse as the years went on. By the time Anastasia was nine years old, her mother and I couldn’t even be in the same room together. Then one night my daughter was having nightmares, and instead of comforting her, I caught Emma telling Anastasia that she should be afraid. That she should run from it, for God’s sake.

  That was too much for me. We had a big fight right there in our daughter’s room – screaming, cursing, throwing pillows – the whole bit.

  I wasn’t going to let my daughter turn out to be like her, so there was no choice but to file for a divorce. I had recordings of her being crazy, and I would get custody of the kid. It wasn’t going to be pretty, but that’s how it had to be.

  I tried to talk to Anastasia about it, but she was so upset from watching our fight she couldn’t deal with it. That night, I found a note in my daughter’s room while putting her to sleep.

  I saw pictures of Mommy and Daddy when they first met. They went on adventures. They smiled a lot. Then there are pictures of them after I was born. They aren’t smiling anymore. I’m sorry I did that to you. I hope you’ll feel better when I’m gone. I love you Mommy. I love you Daddy. Goodbye.

  That was it. I asked Anastasia what it was and she shrugged. I got angry – I shouldn’t have, but I was scared – and I yelled at her. She promised she didn’t write the letter, and I calmed down. Yelling will only make things worse. I promised nothing that was happening was her fault, and that she should never do anything bad to herself.

  She still insisted she hadn’t written it though. That’s when it clicked. The manipulative bitch. Emma wrote a fake suicide note just so I would feel bad and we would stay together. This was the last straw. That Demon was not spending another night in my house.

  I ran to our bedroom and pounded on the door. Emma was in there, reading a book with a mask of innocence on her face. How I hated that innocence – she wore it like an excuse for nothing being her fault. I screamed at her and shoved the letter in her face.

  She screamed back. It was about five minutes before either of us could understand what the other was saying. Finally a string of clear words punctured through the violent words.

  I didn’t write it. I swear on Ezekiel, l I didn’t.

  We both stared at each other in silence as the awful realization dawned on us. If she hadn’t written it then…

  We both raced to our daughter’s room, shoving each other out of the way as we went. The door was locked.


  “Anastasia! Are you in there?”

  Silence. I rammed my shoulder against the door.

  “It’s alright sweetie,” Emma cooed. “Everything is alright. We love you, and we love each other.”

  I glared at Emma, but she shrugged. She was right though. This wasn’t about us. This was about our daughter.

  “Your mother and I love each other,” I added. “I’m sorry we were fighting. Please open the door. Please baby.”

  “You will both be happy again when she’s gone.”

  That wasn’t my daughter’s voice. It was deep and old – like a soldier who stared death in the face so many times it stopped phasing him. There was a man in my daughter’s bedroom!

  Emma and I stared at each other. Her eyes were two quivering saucers. She turned back to the door.

  “Don’t do it Ezekiel. You’re my angel. You’re supposed to protect us.”

  “No,” the deep voice said. “I’m supposed to protect you. And that’s what I’m doing.”

  Anastasia screamed. It couldn’t have been anyone else. I hit the door so hard I could feel my shoulder dislocate. I didn’t care. I hit again, and the door blew open.

  Anastasia was lying on her bed, a kitchen knife in her hands. The red circle of blood soaking into the bed was expanding with every second. There was no-one else in the room.

  I still don’t know what happened that night. Maybe it was Emma playing a trick on me – maybe it was real. After our daughter died, Emma and I couldn’t even look at each other anymore. She left that night, and I haven’t seen or spoken to her since.

  I never heard the voice again either, but sometimes in the deep of night I’ll ask it a single question:

  Is Emma happy now?

  The Psychedelic Tattoo

  Two days ago I had the most exciting day of my life. I’ve heard that’s pretty common when you try LSD for the first time, but this trip opened doors for me that will change me forever.

  I’m a 23 year old girl and I call myself a freelance artist, but it’s really just because that sounds better than “unemployed”. I’m sure a lot of you know how hard it is for independent illustrators out there. No matter how good you are, you’re always going to see someone who is better and still can’t make a career out of it. The other side of that coin is that no matter how bad you are, there’s always going to be someone who has already made a fortune from being worse.

  It really just comes down to being in the right place and meeting the right people. Well I live in New York – as good a place as you can find for the arts – but I’ve always been extremely introverted. Like if someone is knocking on my door, I’ll lie really quietly on the ground and wait for them to go away. It’s hard for me to go hang out with the people I do know. Attending the parties and social gatherings that are essential for making career-advancing connections is impossible.

  It’s not like I don’t have friends or anything – well, okay, so I only have on friend, but that feels like more than enough. Anyway my one friend Jordan decided the best way to help me was for us to take LSD together and talk through my social aversion.

  I was hesitant at first. I’m pretty sure he has feelings for me, and I don’t want something to happen and ruin my only friendship. Who knows though – maybe it would teach me to get close with another human being for once and something could work between us.

  Either way, I was desperate to change my life. I’ve heard some amazing stories about how psychedelics can open your mind and alter your perspective, and I ended up agreeing.

  “Opening your mind” is one way to describe it. Blowing a hole through one side and out the other to splatter on the far wall would be better. In the glorious moment of the peak of my high, I was completely invincible. My art was divinely inspired, my personality infectious and debonair, and my future success inevitable. Between my magnetic confidence and Jordan tripping out of his mind, we decided it would be a good idea for me to give him a tattoo.

  If you’re cringing right now – I get it. To a sober person, it sounds like a terrible idea. But I was swimming through an ocean of color and the Muse was singing softly in my ear. The needle of the tattoo gun danced an intricate ballet across his back which wasn’t so much seen as experienced in its own dimension. I was the ink in his skin, pulling veins of light straight from the air to imbue into my creation.

  Not to brag, but I’ve been drawing my whole life and I’m pretty damn good, but this was the first piece of art which has ever come alive for me. Once the LSD had worn out of our systems, we admired it again and holy shit. Jordan was wearing a picture of the infinite cosmos being condensed into the soul of a solitary human – interwoven with such sublime color and beauty that I felt the two were inseparable and the same.

  Even sober, neither of us could look upon the masterpiece on his skin without tears in our eyes.

  The trip did something strange to me though. I was so hyper-focused on my career that I couldn’t think of anything else. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, and most of all couldn’t go out and meet people like I was supposed to. I was just obsessively trying to draw the tattoo over and over again, but every time it would look like a cheap, broken doll trying to in vain to imitate that living masterpiece.

  I ran out of paper, but I didn’t want to leave to get more so I just kept drawing on every surface around me. The walls – the counters – even an entire roll of toilet paper was unraveled across the floor to make space for my doodles. It was so frustrating I wanted to die. I needed that feeling of progress to keep me sane while approaching this impossible dream. Failing to replicate what I had already done just felt like a huge step back.

  I was crying when Jordan came back to visit that night. The best thing I could ever do was already done, and I would never become a real artist. I was going to end up some crack-whore in a back alley somewhere, desperately trying to get any fix which would bring me closer to that perfect creation which I could never approach while sober.

  Don’t worry though, this story has a happy ending. Even if I couldn’t force myself to go out, Jordan was a social butterfly. He had been showing off my tattoo all day long, and he had some big news for me.

  Andrew Kreps. The manager at Andrew. Fucking. Kreps, one of New Yorks, no THE WORLD’S most renown art galleries, had seen my tattoo. Even crazier, one of his exhibits (Roe Ethridge) was just canceled due to some licensing issue and he desperately needed a new piece by tomorrow morning.

  TOMORROW MORNING! But how in the world was I going to have something ready by then? He’d seen the best I can do, and nothing else in my portfolio even came close. If I tried to bring my old stacks of watercolors and crumpled canvas to Andrew Kreps, I’d get laughed out the door.

  But I was this close, and I wasn’t going to give up now. Jordan was so amazing for having gotten me in the door. He had always been so good to me. The least I could do – no, the only thing I could do – to thank him was sex.

  But it wasn’t about our friendship, or his feelings. It was about my art – it had always been about my art. I waited until he fell asleep, nuzzled against my bare body, when I gave him the only thing I had to give. I slipped out of bed without waking him. That’s good. After all he’s done, I wouldn’t want him to be awake for this part.

  It’s amazing how easily box-cutters can part the skin. It almost felt like painting as his blood drained from the hole I cut in his neck. It was fitting for him to go this way since he was my masterpiece. Cutting the tattoo off his back was a little messier than I expected, but that was just because I cut deeper than I really needed to. I couldn’t take the risk of damaging the tattoo.

  Tomorrow morning I’m going down to the gallery with my pride. Thank you Jordan. You’re the best friend a girl could ask for.

  She Was Asking For It

  She was asking for it.

  I’ve already got some of you pissed. You don’t even know what she was asking for. Maybe she just wanted a cold drink of water,
but that’s not where your mind went. You’re sick – just as bad as the rest of this perverted society which will try to destroy her mind, body, and spirit.

  Nothing that happened was her fault. Not the length of her skirt (just above the knee), not the cut of her blouse (there was still room to imagine her curves), not in the way she walked, or talked, or anything else. The only thing she was guilty of was having a pretty face.

  More than a pretty face, really. Flawless porcelain skin, haunting dark eyes, and a smile which would entice an Angel into sin.

  The moment I entered the restaurant and saw her bussing tables, I knew what was in store for her. Maybe not today (although I wouldn’t be surprised, considering how she looked bending over the table to wipe it down), maybe not tomorrow walking home from class, but sooner or later, someone was going to see this Goddess and force her into submission.

  The monsters who do it – you don’t think beyond the gratification of the moment. How good it would feel to hold her down while you strip her bare. How soft the skin of her thighs will feel when you crush them in your hands. How she quivers when you enter her, her face contorting in the agony of pleasure.

  You don’t think about what it will do to her tomorrow when she’s crying herself to sleep. You don’t stop and wonder if she will still flinch when her lover touches her a year from now, or whether she can look herself in the mirror without hating what she sees.

  She’s lucky I took sympathy on her while I watched her bustle around the restaurant. She smiled at me when she caught me watching – she must have known I was there to protect her. When I slipped into the kitchen after her, it was just a game that made her act surprised. I was her guardian Angel – the only thing standing between her, and all the horrors of this world.

  I asked her name, but all she said was “customers weren’t allowed back here”. It’s good that she was shy, but it wouldn’t be enough. Not with a pretty face like that. Even draining the old cooking grease to take outside, she looked like a model. Maybe she was even trying to become one, unwittingly inviting the entire world to fantasize about what they would do to her.