Sleeping With Sleep

III

He took a shaky breath and spoke just above a whisper.

"Yes. It's... A lot to go through, are you prepared for that...?" I contemplated backing out of it all for a split second. This was all so crazy. The lead singer of the band I idolize just happened to be this powerful being with six fucking eyes and an entity possessing him. Sick.

"Y-yeah... I think so..." Vessel wrung his hands and sat up straight.

"So... before this whole band started, I had a fucked up past. Just... things I'm not quite proud of. One night, I decided to take a walk through this old forest. Help the intrusive thoughts stop. But one voice started to stand out... Sleep... They promised to take away my aches and pains, my mistakes. I didn't believe it at first, so I kept telling them no. But they were persistent. And very persuasive. So I agreed to let Sleep take hold of my soul. And everything felt better all of a sudden. I couldn't remember why I was upset in the first place. I couldn't feel my muscles tearing apart. I was finally at ease.

"But... Sleep drained me. Physically, I was exhausted and I felt like I couldn't fight them off. Sleep taunted me daily about how terrible I used to be, how I'm too weak to live without them. They constantly told me that I was worthless and nothing to this world without them. And started to convince me that I'm not capable of love, I'm just terrified of being alone. But Sleep saying that made me terrified to expel them, for fear I would truly be alone for the rest of my terrible life. So I kept them. I let them keep draining me. Sleep kept demanding that I swear my life to them. They never stopped convincing me how we were so perfectly synonymous and that they were so good for me.

"It continued like that for about a year and Sleep eventually made me weak, physically and mentally, to the point I really did believe Sleep was doing wonders. But Sleep still doubted my loyalty... So I... I did some awful things to my last love... I tore her apart in Sleep's name... So many bullets in such a small person... I was already so terrible to her, and I almost ended her life for an entity that only wanted to ruin me... But Sleep was temporarily satisfied. I did what they wanted and I heard less of the nagging hatred. Instead, Sleep decided to mock me and boast about how they really did have me under their thumb.

"Sleep said I could love them. And to do that, I had to consume. They demanded I eat a part of myself, and in my fear and delusion, I ripped a bite out of my own arm. But with the way Sleep numbed all of my pain, it almost felt... Good... And the taste was like nothing I've had. The warmth, the sweetness, the bite of iron, the salt of my flesh... To this day, the thought of raw flesh still makes me salivate...

"But for a small while, there was silence. No voices, no hatred. And it caused me to dream. But I dreamt about her. Or what I think was a dream. I saw her... slicing her arm. Where I had ripped a bite from my own skin. In the dream, we talked. But I felt no remorse... Sleep was numbing more than they promised and it made me only care about myself and Sleep. My life was for Sleep. It felt as though Sleep really was the only thing that cared for me.

"But soon Sleep wanted more. They came to me in a dream and we spoke. They demanded more devotion, and I was more than happy to give in. I offered another chunk of flesh from my arm and I was in pure bliss again, as allotted by Sleep. But the bliss was short lived and I craved more and more attention from Sleep. I begged for it, and it felt absolutely unattainable. I started to think that maybe Sleep was hurt in some way, or becoming weak, as if my offerings weren't enough.

"But all the begging and receiving the ring of tinnitus in return made me start to realize that I wasn't as special to Sleep as I once thought. It sprouted a seed of doubt in me. It caused me to reflect on who I used to be. As a child, growing from very little. As a young adult, being a menace to anyone who tried to love me. And when I was entrapped by Sleep, willing to drive through anyone and anything who got in my way or in the way of anything Sleep wanted.