The Façade of Quad in Nimrod ✓ | Satire, family drama, dark society

VI

Gong!

In the silence as thick as stew, Henry heard the clock in the living room as it began to chime two o'clock in the morning.

Gong!

Time was torture to him. For Henry suffered from a bit of insomnia ever since he hit puberty and hated clocks that told time every hour. He hated the fact that he couldn't sleep but he knew that even if he did, only nightmares would engulf him. Sometimes he deprived himself of sleep on purpose just so he didn't have to go through with the one particular dream that haunted him even in his waking hours.

In the dream he would find these tall stairs leading to his success and try to climb them until it was too high for him to reach. He would feel like a miniature doll in a giant's world. He would want to give up, but success was there, only a few more steps up. He would feel hope when the stairs beneath him crumble. Down a hole he would fall, and darkness would swallow him up. With a thud, he would hit the distant bottom. All around he could hear laughter and mockery calling him a 'Failure'.

"Please help me, please stop." Henry would wake up at the sound of his desperate voice calling out into the dark void of his misery. Henry was always a miserable wreck, a tragic mess, and a wretched individual who rarely found true joy in anything for even during joyful times, he would find arguments with 'Beagley' and bring himself into a state of agony. Such a tortured soul was he.

In her tower, out of earshot from any of Henry's screams unless he was out of his room, Valerie sat up in her bed, rubbing her eyes. Since midnight when Silla put her to sleep, she had woken up once an hour later and now an hour after that. Even though the first time around she was able to get back to sleep pretty quickly, the second time something nagged her, and she couldn't relax. She had this feeling that she was missing something.

Valerie had this experience once when she was about eleven. Her mother had been there that time, giving her warm honeyed milk and rubbing her shoulder until she fell back asleep. 

Of course, there was Silla, but it wasn't the same. Sometimes she just wanted her mother again. As years went by though, her mother became distant and now they didn't even talk to each other unless on rare occasions like Valerie's birthday. Neither particularly made effort either.

Thirty minutes later, at last Valerie felt the heaviness of sleep returned to her eyes. She still felt like something was missing and when she tried to remember it, there was a wall blocking her way. It wasn't the giant, terrifying wall like before though. Just before sleep, she could hear herself calling someone's name, but couldn't make out who it was.

Nothing was more gloomy than a night at the Quad mansion. Every member of the family was filled with stress or worry with not a moment to rest their tired, hopeless souls, waking up each hour or being sleepless all night. A good rest that refreshed them had not been had in years especially since Henry's manic grew worse.

But the reasons for their torment was not just because of Henry. There was something else that sat in their past which had been sealed and locked but was now resurfacing and plaguing unconscious thoughts bringing to their already troubled nights, added distress and mental torture.