Sinister - Larry Stylinson

Part Seventeen

Sleep is like a non-committal death. When you fall asleep, you never really know when you're going to wake up. You lack the sensory details to absolutely know that yes you are sleeping; especially those who sleep with an absence of dreams or the capacity to remember them. And that is why Louis always wanted to die in his sleep, because he'd never know. He'd just pass on into non-existence utterly oblivious because the only thing different between sleep and death is a pulse.

So as he sleeps, Louis has no capacity to tell if he's just sleeping now, or has died. His mind relays nothing, no dreams flutter by in snapshots of memory, just an oily black of an idle subconscious.

He hears something though, and the thin line of sleep and death is even further blurred. A soft, tentative voice speaking to him in languid sentences that are too muddled by some unknown distance of the mind and ear-to-brain translation. So perhaps he is dead, and these muddled words are here to rattle about his empty brain for the rest of his non-existent life.

If one can hope in sleep or death, Louis is doing so for the opposite. He somehow hopes that the muddled words will suddenly become clear instead of some consistent warble in his chasm and endlessly large black expanse of sleep or death.

Time stretches thinly, and the warble has diminished to just a faint noise of annoyance. But it continues on, ever present, and it suddenly grounds him.

Beep, beep, beep, beep.

It continues on, becoming suddenly so loud his own subconscious winces.

Beep, beep, beep, beep.

The oily black is obstructed by the thinnest line of grey. A horizontal line running from the brink of the black. It widens slightly, becoming more translucent to a white. Widening even more, beginning to suck in the black. The ever present noise suddenly becomes one consistent loud drone.

It drowns out everything else that wasn't there, the white now stretches across his entire psyche. The drone continues it's shrill cry, but beyond the thick noise is shouting, and some other noise. A terrible horrible noise of utter desolation, the sound of a heart shattering into a million pieces. It becomes so loud it drowns out the droning noise itself, and now it's all he hears. It's like absolute horrid screaming, a desperate sob that could derail the most soundly secured soul. The sound of someone losing their one and only thing that ties them to the world itself.

The warble of noise is suddenly crystal clear. Louis- someone DO something- please stay- don't do this to me, don't leave me, don't leave me. LOUIS.

This mantra of words is chanted into his numb mind and shattered sobs break the noise as it becomes warble again, the droning sound returns.

And suddenly Louis is very aware of the fact he is dead, it's like a slap in the face and the white collapses in on itself in a massive noise and feeling of electricity jolting through his veins. The black floods in like a barrier broken. The droning noise and the warble of terrified and broken sobs echoes about his long gone brain.

So this is it, this is death? Something thinks, or maybe says, he has no way of knowing.

You're just going to give up like that? After everything that has happened, you're just going to leave him? No goodbye, not even going to try to find out what happened, find justice for him?

He won't last long without you.

Fight, you fucking imbecile.

Fight for your life, he fought for yours now you fight for yours.

~

It's like everything that ever was became present in what felt like whatever God there is clapping their massive hands around Louis' existence and squeezing the death straight from his bones.