Sleep: Night Five

By: M.G.J.

Looked through the wanted ads all morning long, I’m either too qualified or just don’t have any experience to do to any of the jobs. What else can I do other than education, it’s all I know. But there are so many educators losing their jobs it’s like finding a needle in a hay stack there’s just no openings. So why are they’re building so many damn new schools? Who’s going to teach if they’re letting everyone go? Why build facilities if there are no facilitators? Yet I kept searching like a pirate with map in hand searching for a cursed ruby, holding a bowl of stale cereal sitting in the boxer briefs our son gave me for Christmas. Do you remember the look on his face as he picked them up and said, “My Daddy would Love these.” Love, what a beautiful feeling, I’d never felt love until the day you came into my life, like destiny. Like it was written that I would be stranded on the train tracks, and no one would stop to help but you, an angel sent from heaven to rescue me from a life of loneliness, sorrow, and guilt. And I was never happy until I heard the cries that filled the room after our son took his first breath of life. A scream so beautiful it brought me to tears, a man sobbing like a child with a scraped knee.
A howl in the distance, a cry from a neighbor’s dog begging for a bit of food that they do not have to give reminds me that it is night, reminds me of all the sounds that surround my place: the leaky faucet, the Ticking clock, the beating of my wicked heart. All sounds that fill this restless night. All are sounds that remind me of the smell in the air, the putrid smell of decay in a decrepit room, in a death filled town of stranded travelers destined to never leave this place, San Cristobal. I can hear the cries of the neighbor’s daughter, and I am once again reminded of the life we created in this hell hole, a spark of light in an abyss, a cavern in the midnight zone where light cannot touch, yet here he was shining like a gift from the heavens, like a sunken treasure that would never be touched by a buccaneer, a treasure guarded by a Kraken.
I turn to you hold your cold naked body close to mine. You feel so cold so still, sleeping in the dead of night. I smell your hair, so different from the smells that fill the room. The musty smell of life now lost…death. How is it this place always smells of death? No matter how hard we work to keep this place clean it is never enough to take away that awful smell, and the sounds, the clock. How can the ticking of the seconds that come and are now gone sooth your soul? How can the knowing that with each TICK and TOCK we grow closer to the end bring you to peace of mind? How can loss of time bring you to the rest which I have been deprived for all these sleepless nights. I feel your breast and am reminded of the love we’ve shared. I remember the time in the car the night we fled from the cops, and then my mind is brought to that awful night.
I remember staring into the rearview mirror and seeing him, my father. And all the anger he placed inside my heart. I remember the heat inside my skin, the fire rising that night. You told me to let it go. You told me that he was probably in a rush. You even reminded me that our son was in the back seat. Yet staring into the mirror I saw it was not me in that car, it was him. Like father like son. Would my son too be cursed to be like him, or like me? Now I will never know. I remember swerving between cars chasing down that red Chevelle. Oh how I hate Chevy. I remember him driving so fast in an attempt to flee from the roars of his pursuer, from the roar of my Mustang. Your cries reminding me he was in the back seat.
The sound of the copters and the sirens in the air, just like the sounds that followed that night is the sounds that breaks me from my trance and I am reminded that I cannot sleep. I feel the rumbling of the windows grow closer, closer, until it rushes up my skin and through my heart, like the beating drum in a death filled battle field. The screams heard in the air, “Ahhhhhhhhhhhh, Abraham. Help me! Please save me! Help…. Abraham. Please. Help me!” 3:33 of course. I rush outside follow the screams, Copters above shining lights before me, as I make my way towards a dark silhouette, as I make my way to you, the keeper of the sound, the owner of the voice, the bearer of the scream. I reach for your arm, feel it so cold and soft, I must help you. What’s that smell; that taste? Mmmm Cherries….