Andy's Shorties - 4. Prompt #234

I’ve always suffered from periodic bouts of insomnia, but nothing like this.

Four days and four nights now without sleep. I don’t mean that I’ve had an interrupted couple of hours a night or something; I quite literally haven’t slept in one hundred and twelve hours and thirty minutes, and still counting. I woke up at nine o’clock on Monday morning, and it’s now half past eleven Friday night.

I’ve tried everything. Three different brands of sleeping tablets, hot cocoa, and I’ve now gotten desperate enough that I’ve even resorted to trying my grandmother’s guaranteed warm milk with nutmeg. Yep, you guessed it! Another guaranteed folk remedy that didn’t work!

I wonder just how long a human can go without sleep, and without dreaming; I hope to God that I get some sleep before I find an answer to that question. I’ve heard stories about sleep deprivation causing lapses in memory, irritability, hallucinations, headaches, and all sorts. I’ve even heard about people becoming so paranoid that they have become homicidal.

I’ve done some research and I’ve discovered that if someone goes for long enough without sleep, the brain starts shutting itself off and you have what are termed microsleeps. These periods of sleep last anything from a fraction of a second to about half a minute. They certainly aren’t long enough to recharge the batteries, but they are more than long enough to be dangerous; from what I’ve read it seems that these microsleeps are probably the biggest cause of traffic accidents. I guess travelling at fifty or sixty miles an hour, all it would take is for someone to be asleep at the wheel of a car for two or three seconds to cause a serious accident.

I’ve taken to “street watching” to try to pass the time. It’s amazing what happens in the wee hours of the morning when the rest of the world is asleep.

I’ve seen Mr Jacobs walking around the street in his nightwear. I guess his senile dementia is getting worse, but it’s worrying that he is able to get out of the house without his family noticing. I’ll have to discreetly mention this to his daughter the next time I see her.

The couple at number 20 appears to be working their way through the Kama Sutra. They obviously don’t expect anyone to be awake at this time of the night, as they haven’t even been bothering to close their curtains. Now I don’t object to what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their own home, but when we are talking about two consenting adults who are more than old enough to have witnessed the coronation of Queen Elizabeth the Second, they really should be more careful with some of the positions they’ve been trying.

I’ve finally solved the mystery of the ever-growing pile of dog crap on our road. It’s that Mr Dakers and his bloody Alsatian from number 28. I never would have suspected that Mr Dakers would be the sort of person to allow his dog to shit all over the road and not clean up after it; he’s the first person to moan when someone leaves their trash out the day before pickup.

There’s also a tortoise shell cat that I’ve never seen before anywhere in the neighbourhood. It must be a long-time regular visitor though as it seems quite at ease. I’ve watched it the past few nights as it’s rummaged through garbage cans, done its business where it pleased, and for some reason I haven’t figured out, it has seemed to linger outside number 22.

I glanced over at the digital clock on the kitchen wall and it read 23:35:59.

I heard a loud noise and looked through my window and onto the street that I had known my entire life, and that was when I saw it. Quite what it was I was witnessing I have no idea, but Old Man Myers at number 22 had come out onto his porch, when the tortoise shell let out a god awful screech and lunged for him.

Old Man Myers caught the cat in midair, as it hissed and clawed at him. It scratched him across the face and what happened next must have been a trick of the light. It looked as though the cat had quite literally scratched his face off.

The porch lights at number 22 suddenly came on (I suppose they must have been motion sensitive), and threw a horrible light onto a grisly scene. With the bright light now providing illumination, as hard as it is to imagine, my initial impression seemed to have been correct. Instead of the bloody mess I was expecting to see, Old Man Myers appeared to have a dark-blue face that resembled frogspawn.

The cat let out one last screech as it once again jumped at its victim. Old Man Myers quickly pulled out a large knife and stabbed the cat through the stomach. I then saw him pick up the piece of flesh the cat had clawed off him, and he pulled it over his deformed face. Just as he was finishing reattaching the faux face, he glanced in my direction and I quickly ducked behind my curtains.

In spite of my quick reflexes, I knew that he had seen me. While I was in a panic as to what he might do to me, I noticed the time on my digital clock flicking over to read 23:36:00.

That could not have happened in a fraction of a second. Could it?

I looked back out onto my road and it was deserted. Well, the couple at number 20 were still going at it like rabbits in the mating season, but apart from them my road appeared lifeless.

Ten minutes later I fell asleep, and boy did I sleep the sleep of the dead.

I didn’t wake up until nearly two o’clock the following afternoon. As I stepped out onto my porch to pick up my newspaper, I was greeted by a truly grizzly sight.

It was a tortoise shell cat . . . with a large knife stuck in its abdomen. The knife was stuck through a note.

The note simply read “YOU SAW NOTHING!”

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