Brooklyn lay beneath him, a glittering field of lights against the night sky. Bobby watched from his bedroom window, his large frame draped lazily against the wall. Cars scuttled down his street like so many ants, never sleeping. Just like this city. Just like him.
The first step to curing a problem is admitting that you indeed, have a problem. When your insomnia reaches a predictable pattern, it may be time to admit that there is a problem. Sleep always eluded him. That, he had become accustomed to. But, after days like these, it was a sure bet that he would see the light of day before he would see the inside of his eyelids. Another girl had been found, last week. She had been left in an alley, her blue eyes wide, and staring into nothingness. Like every other victim, she had been redressed and her hair smoothed over, a façade of perfection. They had finally collared the guy this morning, a "freelance" maintenance worker who had done odd jobs at each of the victim's buildings. Off the books of course, this made him harder to find. Two girls had been killed in that time, each of their soft faces burned into his memory. After days like these, the scotch couldn't flow fast enough, and the screams of victims echoed too loudly in his aching head.
The dreams always began in darkness. Faces forming at the back of his mind, twisting into roars of pain, mouths wide, and eyes squeezed shut. Their skin always glowed an unnatural white, as if lit from beneath. Bobby could hear them, screaming, crying, whimpering. He found it impossible to move in these dreams, and difficult to breathe.
He moved away from the window, away from the suffocating blackness that lay just outside his walls. He considered calling in tomorrow…well, today anyway. The smell of scotch flowing over ice cubes sickened him, he had far too much tonight. He continued to pour, rationalizing that it was for the sake of slumber. He fiddled with the TV remote, flipped through some well worn and mostly memorized books, before settling back at his bedroom window to watch the city below. Sleep would, again, elude him.
No matter.
Turns out, he and Sleep didn't get along so well.