SLEEP

A short story written by Samantha Hill

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I never watch the news, so I resort to reading it instead. However, the world recently has been going to shit and here I am stepping in it. I woke up to the world being deathly still. I pulled myself out of bed and headed towards the living room to turn on the morning news. All within the past week, there have been multiple attempted murders and natural disasters have been sweeping across the nation. It’s hard to not watch the news right now.

I situated myself on the sofa and turned on the television and found the news anchor covering the top morning stories. My wife greeted me and plopped on the sofa beside me.

“Good morning hon,” she said. “Sleep well?”

“I didn’t sleep last night.”

I hadn’t slept for the past five nights.

We both quickly focused to the TV. “Twenty-five deaths have been reported on the outskirts of Dallas, Texas since last night. The suspect is said to lure people from local bars and victims have not returned. In other events, an explosion happened late last night on the Las Vegas strip killing three people. The suspect died at the scene, but his identity has not been—”

I turned off the TV and scurried towards the front door. Another obscure catastrophe. What the hell has been happening?

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“For a walk,” I said, throwing on my jacket. “I need to get some fresh air or I’m going to lose my fucking mind.”

My feet moved and I just followed them, becoming lost in my thoughts about the recent tragedies. I managed to end up at the grocery store, scoping out the newspaper stand. I swiped a paper and headed back home. I couldn’t shake the news stories from this morning. How could people wake up in the morning, watch the news about the top ten gruesome deaths that happened in America, while they were peacefully asleep, and carry on with their days?

I arrived home and pulled the rolled newspaper out of my pocket and started to read the headline: NEW REPORTS SHOW THAT CITIZENS ARE LOSING THEIR MINDS. I quickly scanned the article, “New reports have shown that Americans are losing their minds due to the mass intake of entertainment.”

I scoffed and kept reading, “Did you hear the news today? A man killed twenty-five people, another man blew himself up, and they have identified the woman set herself on fire in Chicago.” I slammed the newspaper down on the kitchen table and rubbed my eyes.

“I’m hallucinating from the lack of sleep,” I reassured myself.I returned my attention back to the newspaper except this time, I wasn’t hallucinating.

This was reality.

I frantically opened the paper to find a continuation of the article from the front page. There, on the two pages, were photos of the ongoing catastrophes, including a photo of the mysterious man from the bar. There was no possible way that I was losing my mind. I couldn’t be.

“The suspect isn’t the one to blame here,” I started to read. “It is the poor souls who waste the precious gift of life to be a slave to the media. They believe everything they watch, read, hear or see. They are meat vessels—taken and filled with the hatred, the guilt, the–”

I threw the newspaper across the kitchen. I turned the TV on to see if what I was reading was reality.

“—and here is WWSE 19 news. Have you been feeling a little crazy recently?” the news anchor asked, staring right into the camera. “Have you?”

Panicking, I fumbled around for the remote. “Fucking hell,” I mumbled to myself.

“Recent studies have shown that Americans are losing their minds due to the entertainment industry. That’s right, the entertainment industry, even your local news station. Watching TV is just ‘displacing your true reality’.”

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” I said as I frantically click the power button to shut the news anchor up.

“We’re displaced, to the point of resorting to violence to feel in touch with ourselves, experts say ‘animalistic’.”

I threw the remote at the screen. I sprinted to the entertainment center and pulled it from the wall, searching for the outlet.

“You’re not hallucinating,” the news anchor said. “This is reality.”

“Turn off, you stupid bastard,” I yelled out. I fumbled around for the TV cord and jerked it out of the wall. I stepped back to look at the TV and the screen was black. My breathing was heavy as I tried to calm myself down. I took a few steps backwards toward the couch and plopped myself down.

The world fell silent.

I lifted my head, looked around my living room, and then to the TV.‘

SLEEP,’ was etched into the TV.

My heart continued to race and sweat began to bead on my forehead. The room felt still, cold, dead.

I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen.

Run.

I needed to run but my body was frozen. I needed to escape. I needed to get out of here.

“Sleep,” growled a stranger’s voice. “Sleep.”

Fear pinned me down on the couch as I tried to look for the creature. Footsteps, steadily, came closer and closer as I sat there helpless and limp. Run. Sweat started to drip down my face as the dark figure loomed in front of me.

“Sleep,” the creature repeated.

It stood there, towering over me but remained faceless under the hood. My mind was racing, trying to study this unfamiliar figure. It’s him, the man from the bars. I needed to run.

The hooded figure pointed his pale boney finger at me. My vision started to blur, and I could feel myself succumbing to the darkness. Stay awake. It was taking everything inside of me to fight it. I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer.

“Sleep.”