A/N. So my aforementioned posting deluge has turned into, well, a posting...trickle. However, this story takes place over a week (hence the title) and I'll post Monday's tomorrow, Tuesday's on Tuesday, etc., barring some unfortunate event. Oh, and not all of them are this short (and things will eventually happen; it's not just his nightly ruminations on sleep). I don't own them; T for language to be on the safe side. Thanks for reading!
SUNDAY
Four am is when everything becomes desperate. If you're awake, that is. If you're one of the unlucky coffee-drenched souls walking around permanently holding back yawns. If you're asleep, four am is fine. It passes by unnoticed, like a casual look between two partners.
If you're lucky, that is.
He's not often a lucky man.
He closes his eyes against the blare and glare of the tv and he props himself up with pillows on the couch and he waits.
Maybe his luck will change.
Ha.
Hahahahahahahahahahhhhahhaa.
He hates the night. Loves sleep, but hates the night. Sleep is an escape. Sleep is earth-shatteringly normal. He strives for sleep. He longs for it (sometimes more than he longs for his partner). He reaches and reaches and reaches and yet he can't do it, because the time spent waiting for sleep, alone and quiet with his thoughts, terrifies him perhaps more than clowns and not knowing who the killer is and lockjaw and repressed memories and death itself, waiting to claim him.
Ooh, wait. He's drifting now, his breathing slowing and his heart settling and his body relaxing. Shhh. He's sleep—oh, no, no wait. Almost there and then the intrusion of a childhood memory—lock the door lock the door Bobby oh honey wake up lock the door they're coming this night they're coming oh Bobby I'm still sore from the last time (it's all in your head, Ma) I can't do this anymore (neither can I) and I don't know why it's me they're after—and he never once asked who they were because he was afraid of her answer.
He opens his eyes, sits back up. Turns back to the distraction of weather forecasts and infomercials and twenty year old sitcoms.
Luck is cruel.
So is sleep.
So are the memories he's clinging to, the memories he can't let go of even now, forty years later.
This is one of the reasons why people turn to alcohol and drugs. They hate this Pilgrim's Progress passageway from consciousness into sleep—and hell, some blow or a few shots should do just fine at blurring out the purgatory.
He reaches for his pomegranate juice. Drinks, shuddering at the bitterness of it against four-in-the-morning mouth.
What a horrible day.
At least tomorrow he has work to look forward to.