For the last week I have not been able to fall sleep before seven or eight in the morning. My intention was to start going to bed at four at the very latest, and here I am, stretched nearly four hours beyond that. Needless to say . . . this is not sustainable! And so it is that I have once again found myself relying upon dreaded Trazodone, the Chemical Sandman and the gateway to Deep Darkness, which my psychiatrist gave me some time ago now “in case of emergencies” . . . I try everything before I resort to Trazodone because it is absolutely the Nuclear Option. This stuff essentially puts you in a coma. On the label it says I can take a quarter of a pill up to two whole pills depending on the severity of my insomnia. A quarter of a pill is enough to send me under for twelve hours of ice-cold sleep . . . if I took two pills, I’d wake up in my forties.

Yesterday (at seven in the morning) I gave up and broke off a piece of a Trazodone pill out of pure desperation. There is a vague sorrow you feel when you use it, as if wielding a dark instrument . . . the sleep it grants you is a sort of handshake with the devil. But yesterday I just could not keep my eyes closed, and the sun was blazing outside my darkened windows, so I swallowed the curse. It immediately vaporized me. I must have passed out within five minutes. I then had a series of frightening dreams that seemed to last for a decade. Upon waking I recalled them. I won’t bore you with a post about my long dark dreams . . . but I will say that in the Final Dream— the one I can see most vividly in my mind, as it had occurred just before opening my eyes— I was hiding in a closet in a vast estate. I was in the basement of this white mansion, peeking out from behind a wall of clothes. I could see out into the hallway, where a dozen or so spirits were marching in line and holding little lanterns. In the dream I knew they were evil spirits . . . or at least they seemed ill-omened to me. They wore white masks and the spirits were different sizes, some of them as small as children. They resembled those creeps from the Dutchman’s Lodge:

They were going through the house and presumably killing or possessing all the people in it. Or anyway, I could hear people screaming and it weren’t in rapturous joy. In my dream I felt a real fear of death. My skin was numb and I had broken out into a cold sweat. The spirits were speaking to each other in a language that, as far as I know, does not exist . . . and their odd mannerisms and the ethereal glow from their lanterns made them terrifying to behold. The sight of a spirit is more or less proof of an afterlife, and knowing that Bad Spirits exist means they probably came from a Bad Place, and if they are able to harm you or even consume your soul, then it stands to reason that they can take you with them back to the Bad Place. In other words: a fate worse than death. Such was my fear!

I wish I had more to say about it, but as soon as their dreary procession passed by and they had gone down the hall a bit, I quietly stepped out of the closet and casually walked toward the door which led to the stairs and then to the outside world. Just as I got to the stairs, they sensed my presence and began chasing me. I bolted up the stairs and out the front door. It was dusk and the sky was covered in grey clouds. The driveway was littered with cars as if I’d been at some kind of party. I could hear screaming inside the house. I tried to run, but a force stopped me . . . I felt the icy hand of something unnatural reach out and touch a part of me, and I supposed my life was over.

And then I woke up.

I was drenched in cold sweat, just like in the dream. I lay there on the couch for probably another hour . . . I really did have this intense feeling that I had died, and upon waking, had to slowly acclimate to the fact that I was still alive . . . or am I dead and merely dreaming I am alive? And had I, while asleep in death, dreamed of another death? Anyway . . . now as I am about to go to sleep once again, I feel a dread that I will be visited by these pale freaks which are summoned by godless Trazodone. I suppose that even without that stuff, they’ve been let loose. The memory of them persists in my mind AND THUS they are real. But are the spirits confined to dreams? Or can they walk with me in wakefulness??

AND THEN I REMEMBER, AS ALWAYS . . .