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God, I’m tired. Let me sleep. Please, just let me close my eyes.
No! I can’t sleep, I want to, but I can’t. Instead I sit here in this craphole diner, staring out a cracked window, drinking my twelfth cup of coffee this morning. I wonder if people can die of caffeine overdose. Ha! There’s a laugh, funny haha. I got blood on my hands that no one else sees; burning silver pythons crawl up the walls. And I’m worried about dying? I should worry ‘bout living long enough to hurt someone else.
I ain’t slept in ninety-three hours. Before that, I got two hours. Before that, I sat awake sixty-seven. Before that, don’t really remember what happened. Don’t want to; you can’t make me. Two hours outta one hundred sixty-two—one eighty-first of my time—always was good at math. Twenty to life is what I add up to now. She said she wasn’t coming home again, and I believed her. It even made me happy because I couldn’t hurt her any more. Then she did, and I did, and now I’m in a craphole diner, staring out a cracked window, drinking my twelfth cup of Joe. My body is soaked in a hot, sticky sweat. The hallucinations started after almost two days. Burning silver pythons are the least of it.
Feel something wet on my face. Across the aisle, the waitress sits, smoking, giving me that out-of-the-corner-of-her-eye stare; I must be crying again. Her name is Cyndi—her nametag says, HI MY NAME IS CYNDI—and she has black eyes. I mean completely black, irises, and pupils, and what’s supposed to be white and all. Like the black balloon in her head, where she does her thinking, got popped, and it’s coming out her eyes.
God, I’m so tired …
Shit shit damn God no, shit.
I don’t know how long I’ve been out, but now Cyndi’s screaming and I can’t blame her; I’d scream too with a shattered coffee cup sticking out of where my black balloon eyes are supposed to be. Dunno if the balloon was popped before, but it’s popped now. POP goes the weasel! Blood’s black too, liquid night oozing down her face. Everyone else is standing up, staring, not doing anything, and here comes the short-order cook. Short order—now there’s a laugh for a guy the size of the goddamned Hindenburg. The meat cleaver in his hand looks small in comparison, but I know it isn’t. Hindenburg Junior swings it like he’s frigging Babe Ruth on opening night but he can’t hit shit and it goes wide. It lifts my hair in its wake and—oh God, oh Sweet Jesus—plants itself in Cyndi’s shoulder. Now she's got a better reason to scream, and she gets even louder. Blood sprays, along with the smell of fresh meat. It gushes across Junior’s face and now he’s puking.
Watching other people get sick always makes me sick and I struggle to control my gorge. Everyone else in the room is screaming. I bolt out the front door, across the street, and down the alley. I stop next to the rusted green Dumpster and vomit up a sour mix of stomach acid and coffee. Over the ringing in my ears, I hear the wail of approaching sirens. Good Samaritans in the diner, obviously. Good. Maybe they can do something for Cyndi’s black balloons.
God, I’m tired.
Soft giggles come from the Dumpster. Quiet, cold, high-pitched dead sounds, drowned schoolgirl chuckles. Another goddamned green goblin. I hate calling them that. Makes them sound real when I know they’re more hallucinations. These ones turned up after forty-six hours of insomnia. Hunched over like troll bridges, but no larger than cats, they stare through dead-shine eyes, the glazed gaze of a corpse. They come for the blood and I think they come from miles around. Land-sharks, scenting it out through thousands of cubic feet of air. Goddamned goblins. But I know they’re not real.
I’m so damned tired.
Tiny claws prick my ankle, my calf, my thigh, my back, my shoulder. Blood trickles from each spot, and I wonder in my mind of fog how I can feel it when the goblin isn’t real. Dead girls whisper in my ear, and I nod. It makes sense. I can stop hurting people. It can go away. I can get some sleep.
I step out into the street, and the screaming, wailing, flashing cop car screeches to a halt not ten feet away. Out jumps a cop, who is probably twenty and looks twelve. He looks scared, and who can blame him? Not me. Not me. My pocket-knife’s in my hand; I raise it and run towards him, and his hand goes down and comes back up holding a big black cannon. BOOM it goes off. Mule kicks me in the chest and I drop, knife clattering to the pavement. Goddamned pigs, always going for centre mass. Head-shot and this would already be over. I can’t move—which is nice—and finally I’m cool, getting colder. My goblin friend chatters next to me, a dry black tongue slipping through the blood on the ground.
Black shoes approach. Whatever the cop says is lost behind the ringing in my ears. Through failing eyes, I watch my giggling goblin friend skitter over and crawl up the blue pants. I want to tell the cop not to listen to him, that he tells lies about dead girls and their friends, but my tongue’s too thick to move. He’ll work it out soon, anyway. About two days from now, I figure.
God I’m tired …
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