Lost Inside My Head

Insomnia is a gross feeder.
It will nourish itself on any kind of thinking, including thinking about not thinking.
~Clifton Fadiman

The display time on the microwave read 2:48. It’s dark outside and most of the wailing traffic along the highway, which sets outside my window, has faded to the low howling winds blowing across a lonely stretch of dimly-lit road, seemingly leading to nowhere.

The neon blue numbers have a brilliant shine bright enough to bathe the entire kitchen a soft glowing hue.

It is way too early for me to get out of bed, but it’s also too late for me to get a decent night’s rest. I’ve been lying here for hours with both eyes resting comfortably closed, but I just can’t seem to find any sleep….

Also outside my window is a rotating neon sign that advertises the weekly rates to this particular hotel where I am staying; this does little to guide me into tonight’s nocturnal journey. The blinds are drawn completely, but somehow the radiant neon glow still manages to slice through the darkness as horizontal bars of light.

Somewhere down the hallway I can hear a couple fighting—about what, I do not know. They’ve been at it all night—hell, every night this week for that matter. I can plainly hear muffled screams and stomping fits lingering ghostlike down the empty stretch of corridor, creeping beneath each doorway it passes.

The audible banging and slamming doors enter quickly into my room and then fade back to silence as they trail the heavy footsteps trudging out onto the stairwell. The slamming exit door startles a slight jump up from my pillow as the loud commotion is left ringing through my ears and bouncing into my brain.

In the dark, my eyes find the computer that sets motionless on a table at the foot of my bed; I can clearly see the monitor’s shadow just over the peak of my toes. Despairingly, I arise from bed—pushing the covers over far enough that they slide down to the floor—and I walk over and press the power button beneath the cold black computer screen.

Slowly the monitor comes to life behind a gentle burst of static, casting my long and crooked shadow across the bed and adjacent wall.

The monitor’s display is bright and burns water from my tired, itchy eyes; I’m sure, however, that somehow my insomnia is partly to blame for most of this discomfort. After rubbing the stinging tears from under my lids, I can feel my pupils trying to readjust themselves to the new environment inside of my room.

I reach blindly behind the PC tower until my fingers find and trace along the cord that connects my speakers into to my soundcard. With a quick jerk: I yank the cord free—keeping my finger as a placeholder—and swap the plug-in with some headphones that have a long enough extension cord to reach just over the foot of my bed.

After I feel the click of the jack setting into the soundcard’s input, I find and launch the WinAmp Media Player on the computer, which loads a meditation playlist that I had been listening to the past nights before.

Powering off the monitor screen, bright glowing dots appear before my eyes, dancing wildly in circles, as my sight is cast into darkness. Now, I am truly blinded by the throbbing colorful spots as I feel my way through the shadows until my leg hits the edge of the mattress.

My eyes are having trouble focusing in the sudden darkness that has been poured over my room, but thankfully I can hear the tinny sounds coming from my headset, and I use it to guide my head onto the pillow.

I feel around the top of the mattress for the folds of my blanket to cover with, but my hands only find corners of the bed sheets. By now my pupils have partially readjusted to the dark and I can see—barely—that the bedspread has fallen down the side of my bed.

The blanket rasps quietly in the night as I pull it up from the floor, giving the same abrasive noise that you would imagine a young child’s diaper sounding like as she slid her little bottom across the linoleum floor.

The sheets are stiff and itchy making it difficult to adjust my body to comfort, and this cheap mattress is wreaking havoc into the grooves and dimples along my spine.

As I fall back onto my pillow, my head quickly finds the earphones, catapulting the plastic headset arc painfully into the side of my face.

I feel along the side of my head and find the head strap in the dark, and then I pull the plastic band over the top of my head. Ouch! These damned headphones keep plucking out my hairs one follicle at a time.

Oh, I like this. This is something called Nature’s Remedy for Sleeplessness and right now playing is a distant thunderstorm as it begins to pass overhead. I love the sounds that a rainstorm brings—especially at night—while I am trying to find my long lost sleep. Don’t you?

The swirling dots that had been doing the Watusi before my eyes have finally turned to black and did not reappear again once I closed my eyelids. They did, of course, reappear briefly as I rubbed the remaining itchiness from my dry, tired eyeballs, hoping that the discomfort of shutting my eyes would slowly fade away.

It’s five ’til three and I really need to get some sleep—I have a long commute to work in the morning and I have an early morning wake up call that should be arriving once the time reaches six a.m..

The oncoming rainstorm that fills my ears does well to wash away the fading chaotic blustering that had been bouncing rampantly inside my thoughts just moments prior.

The dark hollows of my mind are now filling with the onslaught of drenching rain sheets splattering furiously over glistening beds of pavement . . . well, at least that’s the picture painted inside my head by the foam padded earpieces.

Listening to the rainfall and visualizing life somewhere deep in the rainforest provides an escape that washes a highly soothing release over my person; I hope that sleep is not far from here.

As the thunderstorms flood the earlier commotions from my thoughts, the glossy wet concrete projects obscure visions that have formed together from what can now be called yesterday onto the backs of my eyelids.

The images seem to blur and then fall into sync with the rain and the thunderclap that is storming inside my head. None of the images make any sense to me; I just let them—alongside my thoughts—begin to wash away with the constant downpour of rain.

Why can’t I just fall asleep? Why won’t my mind quit racing and allow me to rest?

As I desperately try to escape from all of my competing thoughts, the horrifying sensation of free-falling overwhelms me and forces my mentality back into this room. A bright searing pain, which burns like torches across my fingertips, command the instant release of my claws from digging any further into the mattress trying to catch my fall.

I seem to travel these dark roads every night in seek of slumber, but they never seem to lead to anywhere. Where has it all gone?

I sit up in my bed, trying to gather my composure—my heaving chest lumping a thick painful bulge into my throat.

The outline of the hotel’s furniture can be easily seen inside this pseudo-dark room: the headboard of the bed, the nightstand and a chair that sets next to it. . . .

On the nightstand is the MetroCard that I use to pay my fare for the subway as I go to and from work. I have to swipe it at the turnstiles at the station in order to gain access to the waiting platform underground where the train comes in to collect all of its passengers; here is where you’ll see some of the strangest people in your life.

Posted above the turnstiles is a bright greenish metal sign that has been vandalized with so much graffiti and discarded food, that it is nearly impossible to decipher its original message.

Passing through the turnstiles you’ll come to a stairway that leads to the underground area where future passengers wait around for the next train to stop in. Be careful going down those cement steps, though—one time I was practically pushed down the bottom four by some careless people who were rushing past me. Just make sure that you are able to grab a hold of the yellow-painted railing bolted into the wall, if need be.

Once you get to the platform, it’s probably best to just keep to yourself and not make eye contact with any of the people who “live” down here. It’s still a mystery to me how they’ve gotten past the turnstiles without paying the fare; most of them look as though they haven’t been employed for years.

See that man sitting over there against the white tiling? No, not him, the other one: wearing the tattered brown jacket, who’s covering himself with newspaper? He’s been down here ever since I can remember; and he is always in that exact same spot whenever I see him.

God, I hate the smell down here! The airless tunnels do little to remove the overpowering stench of shit and vomit. People just stopped caring about the conditions of this place—hell, why should they?—they’re just passing through.

I’m sure it wasn’t always this bad, but it’s a lot worse now than I can recall from any of my earliest memories of this place. That’s weird. I can actually hear the rain and rolling thunderclouds bellowing out from the tunnel’s eternal mouth, roaring over the open platform of waiting passengers. I’ve never been able to hear the weather from down here before, no matter how bad the storms were.

Oh, good. Here comes the train, and it’s right on time. I really don’t like taking the train, but it’s the only mode of transportation that I can afford right now, so it will have to do.

After the passengers flow over into the subway cars, the train releases a loud sound before closing each of its sliding doors. Then, the pitch-black mouth of the tunnel swallows the train, engulfing it into complete darkness.

Throughout the ride, some of the lights overhead begin to flicker and shut off at random intervals—this happens more frequently depending on what part of the city we’re under.

I hate this, too: When the lights go off it gets so dark down here that anyone can do whatever they want to, and not even the security cameras can see them. And in this city, that is exactly what people will do.

I can tell that we’re moving faster now, my body seems to be swaying in bigger circles than before—this is when I begin to experience slight dizzying spells.

You can usually find me here, staring out the large compartment windows—hypnotically tranced—gazing out at the cement walls rushing past as they echo the faint protests of the railroad tracks under the overbearing wheels that scorn them.

I can easily get lost in thought as I watch the defaced walls rapidly zipping by. The weight of my eyelids grow heavier as I struggle to stay alert. I can feel myself passing over somewhere in the twilight regions between dreamland and reality, and I—

Abruptly, I am yanked from my daze with a sudden painful jerking of my body. Instantly my grip tightens around the handlebar above—a reaction spawned from a sublevel of my brain that I am obtusely aware I possess.

Looking around, I notice that some of the other passengers have been knocked down by this sudden downshifting in the train’s velocity. And with a painfully loud shriek, the sliding train comes to a halt.

At least the overheads are still on, I think to myself.

I can feel my heartbeat pounding into my throat, exploding as spiny tingles that are prickling across my cheeks, and burrowing into my temples; the thudding has become so powerful that it’s beginning to rhythmically influence my vision.

As the others in the car begin to help the rest of those who have been thrown onto the ground, I begin to look around in wonder of who has been seriously injured.

Scanning the others for injuries, something strikes me as odd: even in this perfect example of chaos, something isn’t right…

Shaking this thought from my head, I ask a woman next to me if she is in need of any assistance. She waves me off unassuredly, as though the answer came instinctively, before she even heard my question.

I turn and head to help the others, who are now brushing the dust from themselves, when suddenly it hits me: I know what it is that seemed out of place amid this unexpected disaster.

I stop mid-step and return to my original spot as my mind alerts the rest of me to the spark that had triggered my memory, igniting the flame now burning intensely inside of my head.

My crawling skin has turned into gooseflesh, beading up in a cold rushing sweat—please don’t let him. . .

To the rest of the passengers—who were probably too distraught to notice—any simple observation of this man probably passed unknowingly; if anyone were to have seen him.

In the course of all the chaos and excitement, he was the only one who didn’t seem remotely surprised by our newfound situation. He remained calmly seated near the sliding doors as though he knew this was going to happen.

Maybe he was just seriously hurt, or even too shocked to show any—

“Alright, everyone: Shut the fuck up!” he demanded, reaching into the oversized pockets of his dark maroon jacket. “If I so much as hear a fucking whisper, I’m gonna start shooting each of you, one at a time!”

From where I stood—distant and disbelieving—I could see the white foamy buildup at the corners of his mouth flecking out in small rubbery dots.

No one dared to even breathe. Everything had happened so fast—the incident with the train, now this—that there wasn’t enough time allotted for any of us to absorb what was really happening.

As it slowly began to sink in, a rousing shiver chilled my spine, inducing a quick shudder that wracked the entire length of my body—what am I doing here?

I squeezed my eyes tightly in hopes of miraculously escaping this nightmare when I realized that I had seen this man earlier on the waiting platform back at the station—he was the one who you had mistaken for the vagrant that I was pointing out to you.

It didn’t click until now, but he was acting strange back there as well: his movements were quick and fidgety, and he seemed to look over his shoulder at every startling noise….

Behavior like that isn’t abnormal down here, unless you compare it to—

Suddenly two pistols appeared, brandishing over the crowd, in the tightly gripped palms of the unidentified man. He surveyed the subway car and passengers, as though he were calculating the options for his next move.

“Just do what I say, when I say it, and we can all walk out of here in one piece.”

Just then I noticed the searching beams of light scanning across the arced tunnel walls and up along the side of the train; hopefully, this is the police coming to help us.

My heartbeat jumped to an incredible speed, beating painfully against the walls of my chest; the imprisoned blood-pump was about to burst through my ribcage at any given moment.

As the flashlights drew near, the beams of light grew brighter and—probably from the look on my face—the gunman was alerted that there was something behind him that required his attention.

His head spun quickly behind him and then back again and suddenly his equanimity exploded from a mild threat right into an alarming panic—both of his eyes becoming ominous gateways to the horrible thoughts ranting behind them.

The person nearest him was an elderly woman—no more than 87 lbs. in the pouring rain—who was clutching a black leather handbag tightly against her chest.

With almost no opposition from her body, the gunman heaved her weightlessly into the air and slammed her fiercely into the sliding doors. Her head banged loudly against the silver metal paneling and, with the force of his elbow, he shoved her face firmly into the glass while pushing a pistol into the thick silver curls on the back of her head.

“Don’t come any closer!” he yelled through the black rubber seals of the sliding doors. “One more step and I’ll fucking kill her!”

Although I knew that he was yelling something, all of the sounds inside of the subway car were lost to pumping blood rushing through my ears.

By now the woman’s handbag had dropped to the floor, spilling its contents and scattering them randomly across the dingy gray floor.

Her trembling hands flew directly up by her head in the same fashion that you’d see on television bank robberies, but something about this image held a profoundly different kind of horror: This was real.

{a name="Edit"}“Please,” her voice pleaded between jagged gasps, “take wha—”

“Shut the fuck up! I won’t say it again!”

The tiny woman whimpered a faint cry as the gunman jammed the muzzle harder into the back of her head, causing her cheekbone to thump dully against the Plexiglas window.

The terror in her voice caused my eyes to prickle at the corners and well up, but that quickly fell distant to the underlying panic that began to rage from deep inside me once I noticed that the flashlight beams getting brighter: They are going to get us all killed!

The gunman began to shout again and then, as if there were no other options for him, he simply stepped back from the old woman, extended his arm into the back of her head, and squeezed the trigger.

The boom was a deafening pain that pierced into my skull.

The woman’s small frame spun completely around before crashing violently into the sliding metal doors. Left in her wake was the splatter of bloody flesh and bone fragments that her body had dragged with it as it slid down to the floor.

She lied there prostrate and eerily still—for some reason I kept expecting her to just get up and walk away; but that never happened. Slowly, a thick pool of blood began to spread out around her, engulfing her entire body in a red clotting stain.

It was timeless moments that had passed as I stood transfixed, staring unblinkingly at the collecting blood. There was so much of it; much more than you would ever imagine coming from a person that small.

The car suddenly filled with multitudes of screams.

“I said quiet! Or I’m gonna start shooting each fucking one of you!” the killer screamed, pointing the smoking gun into the crowding people who were now scattering to the opposite ends of the car.

“This is your last warning!” he yelled at the others through the seal of the sliding doors. And just as a lion pounces on its targeted prey, the gunman reached into the frantic crowd pulling out another small woman and forced her against the blood-splattered window.

“Move back, now!” he demanded.

…He didn’t even count to three before he sprayed the doors with a fresh coat of brains from this unsuspecting woman’s skull. I vomited jarringly when I saw her body drop to the floor with a force so deadly that it would’ve killed her if the bullet hadn’t already.

The killer stood motionless as he watched the searching lights disappear towards the front of the train—his skin was covered with a glistening gore that shined grotesquely under the buzzing overhead lights.

Wide-eyed and now possessing a scowling grin, the hunter turned towards the frightened passengers and fired several shots into the crowd of horrifying screams; the frailty of his sanity had just splintered into darkening madness.

Several bodies crashed onto the floor, thudding hollowly, as their bodies piled atop one another flailing out random protrusions of lifeless limbs.

His extended arm remained locked in place as a single wisp of smoke escaped as a thin gray tendril from the gun gripped tightly in the clutches of this homicidal maniac.

I stood frozen with the stiffness of death as I stared in horror at the fresh corpses that had just been born.

Abruptly, a sharp blow exploded at the base of my nose, shooting bright lights and stabbing pains deep into my watering eyes. Before I could even pinch off the spurting blood that was now pouring over my front, a powerful grip had seized my throat, squeezing off any air that my lungs were struggling to get.

This all happened so rapidly that my brain couldn’t even alert me that the killer’s next victim had already been chosen: Me. My body went cold and limp—I knew that death had come for me.

The coppery taste of blood lined my tongue as it trickled down the back of my throat. Somehow during these final moments before death, a slow settling peace began to overcome me, bathing me in comfort as my mind began to reflect back on my life; so much left undone….

There are few precious moments left before the bullet shreds through my brain, leaving a thick vulgar spray of my life along its unforgiving path, and I can’t help but to regret not doing more with the short time that I had been given in this world. If only….

The muzzle is fiery hot as it presses firmly into the nape of my neck. The hissing barrel sears a small brown circle into my skin—but this doesn’t bother me; I know it will all be over soon.

His rubbery grip tightens around the handle as he braces himself for the kick from the gun as it lodges a bullet deep into my skull—I envision his forefinger entering the trigger guard just as he pulls the…

—Wait, what’s that noise?

Oh, hold on a second, that’s my phone ringing.

“Hello? Yes. . . Thank you.” *Click*

Sorry about that. That was my wake up call….10 minutes early even. Is it six already? Oh well, where was I? I forget…

I guess it doesn’t really matter now; I have to get ready for work.

God, I’m tired.

I wish for once I could just close my eyes and sleep instead of struggling all night with these racing thoughts as my mind desperately tries to flee from them. Am I the only one that sleep has forgotten?