Ten years. It had been ten agonizing years since he had last felt the solace of a full nights sleep. He hadn't rested a full eight hours in ten years, forty- four days, seventeen hours, and the cruel minutes passing by him now. He had tried everything. He had tried every drug,both legal and illegal, every test, and every class he could take to ease the suffering. He had even tried emergency room sedatives, but nothing ever changed.
Every night was filled with tossing and turning in agony, and after hours of torture he would shoot up in his bed and just scream. He screamed about how he would have to hide the hideous bags, which had become a permanent part of his face, from everyone. He screamed about how his golden blonde hair was thinning from all the stress. He screamed about how the canyon-like wrinkles that ravaged his face made him look fifty-years old, even though he was only twenty-five. He screamed about how every night he had to scream to get all the anger and frustration out.
This night wasn't any different. With the moon and dark skies taunting him, he switched positions to the opposite side of the bed and back again for the fifteenth time. He counted and just like every other night for the past ten years, he threw the covers off his now frail body and screamed until his voice cracked, and he went into a choking fit. Still coughing, he shot from his bed to the nearest wall and punched it. He slammed his bony fist into the wall repeatedly until he had to recoil his fist in a desperate attempt to ease the pain.
He looked at the blood.While he watched the red rivers stream down the back of his hand, the worst part of the night had come, the voices.
So it begins.
They had come a year ago. A year, thirteen days, eight hours, and thirty-two minutes ago. By then he had felt the shadow of insanity creeping up on him, but he had managed to keep it at bay until a few weeks ago. Eventually he just gave in.
"What do you want now?!" He screamed, with spit flying everywhere as he spun around looking for the source of the voice, only finding shadows.
He could never understand what they were saying. It was just a collection of unintelligible whispers, which may have been the thing that bothered his mind the most. He curled up into the fetal position against the wall, put his broken hands to his head, and cried. As the blood from his hands ran down the side of his face, he suddenly stopped his uncontrollable sobbing and lifted his head. He actually, for the first time , understood what they were saying.
They told him that the doctors had lied to him, that the dose of the sleeping pills that they had ordered him to take wasn't enough, that they just wanted to prolong his disorder to fill their own wallets. They told him that the only way to finally end his suffering and sleep was to take the whole bottle.
His mind broken, he stumbled to the bottle. With his hand shaking as he grasped the bottle, he swallowed them one-by-one until the it was empty. He smiled. He was feeling sleepy-a feeling he hadn't felt in so long. He laid down. He was finally going to feel rest.....
So it ends.
Jonathan Gibson rested forever.
