Sleepwalking

Brian hadn't slept in three days, but it felt like it had been a thousand years. His eyes were red and puffy and had stubble growing on his normally perfect face. He lifted his hand to stare at his once neat fingernails, which were now split and threatening to fall off. That was what sleep deprivation did to you though, your body slowly shut down until you fell asleep and couldn't wake up again.

In some ways that would be nice, to be able to drift off and not worry anymore. All he wanted to do was sleep but he couldn't, every time he closed his eyes he saw it happen all over again, heard the screens all over again. Brian rubbed his eyes with the back of his hands, even though it felt like he was rubbing sand into them, just to try and get over the exhaustion that was slowly overcoming his body.

He thought he could stop the nightmares by repeatedly smacking his head into the wall. The idea was to knock them out. It turned out that idea wasn't as great as he originally thought, all he got was five stitches and sent to St. Anne's Hospital for the Mentally Ill. He still hadn't slept, but in some ways he didn’t want to. Actually, most of the time he didn’t want to sleep. He needed to stay awake or he would hear those horrible screams.

Brian yawned and his hands started to tremor uncontrollably. Yawning always started that off. He glanced up and noticed another patient eyeing him strangely from across the room, so he shoved his hands under the table. The guy across from him noticed nothing; he was absorbed in organising the colouring pencils.

Brian wished his life was that simple. He could just organise the colour pencils without having to worry about falling asleep and the man getting him. Even just sitting there he was worried about falling asleep, and the pills that they were pumping him full of weren’t helping. He had to keep pinching himself so he would stay awake, and now his left arm was marred with bruises.

He noticed the guy was also muttering under his breath. He strained his ears but couldn’t make sense of it, so he tried reading his lips.

“Five. Five. Five. Five. Five”

Brian cleared his throat, trying to get the guys attention, but his left eye twitched slightly and he continued to organise the pencils. “Hey” Brian said, slightly gruffer than he expected. This whole lack of sleep thing was really getting to him.

“Can you not bother me?” the guy replied, sounding irritated. “This needs to be right”

“I was just wondering why?” Brian continued, hoping the guy would answer.

“Five is my lucky number. There always needs to be fives, if not, everything will be wrong” He clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth five times. “That wasn’t five, something bad will happen, four is bad, four is death, yes death” He continued to mutter, moving quickly now with the pencils, almost frantic.



Brian found out later that day, through eavesdropping and snooping through medical files when the doctor wasn’t in the room, that the five guy was called Jimmy. At the age of four, he was violently assaulted by his uncle. The abuse continued for a year, then Jimmy told his parents and the uncle was put in prison. At the age of six, he developed his obsession with the number five. He parents finally admitted him to the hospital at the age of sixteen when he tried to kill his sister when she wanted to move out of the house because it would have left four people in there.

He found the whole story sad, the poor guy thought that five was his salvation because that was the age the abuse stopped. Brian dreaded to think what he went through.

During their second ‘recreational period’ of the day, Brian sat opposite Jimmy again. He didn’t have the pencils this time; instead he was tapping the first two fingers on his right hand onto the table. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

Brian watched his long, chewed fingers drumming against the table in the curious pattern. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. It was so relaxing, so relaxing you could just fall asleep. Brian’s eyes slowly drifted closed. He snapped them open. He couldn’t fall asleep. Not now. Not ever.

Then he noticed he was somewhere else. A bedroom or what he assumed was a bedroom. There was a double bed in the centre of the room and a huge window dominated the opposite wall. The window was open and the open curtains fluttered in the night breeze. The room was dearly cold and was lit by the full moon and outside the trees bare branches reached up to the sky, trying to snag the moon from its perch.

He noticed movement on the bed, a ripple of the sheets. Then a figure appeared; huge, black and dominating. He was on his knees, his hands held in front of him, squeezing something with such force his arms shook. He heard the muffled sob of a woman before he was snapped from his dreamlike state by something hitting the floor loudly.

Brian's head snapped up and the recreation room came back into focus. The man who always sat in front of the TV had knocked over a chair in a fit of rage and was being subdued by two orderlies.

Jimmy was looking at Brian, " Can you tell if you're awake, or are you asleep?" he asked softly, then looked down as he started to tap his fingers again like nothing had happened. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

"What do you mean?" Brian questioned, but Jimmy didn't reply.

Then Brian realised how glad he was that he didn’t. He couldn’t answer the question. He didn’t even know if he was awake or asleep at that moment.



Brian felt so lonely in his room, or as he liked to call it, cell. There was no noise, unlike in the stereotypical mental wards he saw on the TV; there was no screams, no gibbering patients. There was nothing. No noise at all.

Until the scream.

It was so loud.

Ear splitting.

He rushed over to the small window in his door and peered out. The corridor was empty. Shouldn't someone be coming?

He peered harder into the darkness. It felt like it was moving towards him, ready to swallow him whole. Then he made out the shadow. The man. He turned slightly, revealing gleaming eyes and white teeth that glowed in the darkness. When he smiled, the dark seemed to thicken. Brian's as suffocating. He moved backwards and tripped, hitting his head on the corner of his bed. The dark swallowed him.



Brian awoke in a cold sweat, but the room was bathed in light from the corridor. Orderlies were pacing and shouting that it was time to get up for breakfast. When he sat up, he realised he was still on the floor. He gingerly touched the back of his head where it hit the bed, there was a small lump which a started o throb as soon as he touched it.

That meant it wasn't a dream. It was real. The man was real. He was here, controlling the blackness. Panic rose in Brian's chest until he could barely breathe.

An orderly knocked on the door once then shoved a tray of good under, "Breakfast" he said as he did.

Brian looked at the food. It was too dark looking. The man must have spread the darkness into the food, trying to poison him. Brian shuddered. Maybe if he ate the food he would become like the man; a shadow.

He pushed it aside, feeling nauseated.



In the recreation room, Brian sat in the corner. He needed to keep an eye on everyone. He needed to make sure none of them had eaten the poisoned food.

The shadows in the corners of the started to lengthen, threatening to ensnare him. The man stood upright, smiling his shiny grin at Brian. He leapt forward, hands outstretched. Brian jerked and screamed. Suddenly, the man was gone. Everyone in the room was staring at him like he was crazy.

"Brian, are you okay?" one of the orderlies asked.

"The man. Did none of you see him? He was right there!" Brian pointed in the corner where the man appeared.

Two of the orderlies came over and quietly escorted him to the chief psychiatrist, Dr. Levil.

"Brian, your lack of sleep is causing hallucinations. If you sleep, then everything will stop" Dr. Levil said in what he thought was a reassuring tone.

"But when I sleep I'm more vulnerable. He can get me. He'll kill me" Brian tried to explain.

"He isn't real. He's a figment of your imagination. He can't hurt you"

Brian knew Dr. Level was wrong. So he screamed and screamed and screamed until orderlies came in and dragged him away to the medical bay.

One of them held a sedative, and no matter how much Brian begged him to stop he wouldn't.

Just before Brian slipped out of consciousness, he saw them for what they really where; shadows. Like the man. He was going to die.