51 Sleepless Nights

by Tobias Wade

  I’ve never slept so well in my entire life. I’m usually tense and unable to find a comfortable position, but five minutes after I lay down, I was sound asleep. I did have one troubling dream though: there was a soft light coming from inside the box on my night-table. In my dream, I got up to reach for it, but then I heard something inside of it scream like a man who has been pushed past the edge of breaking. I opened the box to see what was making the noise, and then Gobble gobble gobble. I woke up to the freshest, most miraculous morning I could remember.

  The last two weeks were perfect for me. I worked tirelessly, unfettered by the daily aggravations which I used to spend half the day obsessing over. I started bringing the box to work just in case something came up in the day, and things always came up. No point in risking my promotion, right? The box went everywhere with me.

  The sound of dry erase markers on a whiteboard. Slip.

  Suddenly the morning meeting was bearable again.

  “Hey did anyone hear that?” Mr. Elsworth turned away from the whiteboard to address the assembly. “Something like a scream?”

  A collective shrug, and sip of coffee. I thought I’d heard it too though. The moment I slipped the paper in, there had been a soft flash of light and an echoing scream.

  Clients who think they know how to do my job better than I do. Slip.

  Having to wear a tie all day. I could strangle someone with this tie.

  There it was again. It started out as a low moan, but rose into a gurgling scream after I had slipped the second note in. I glanced up to see Clive standing outside my cubicle.

  “What? What are you doing? What do you want?” Just looking at him made me agitated.

  “I wanted to let you know that I called Mr. Ikari, and he said you showed a complete turnaround. As long as nothing happens before tomorrow, your report is going to be clean. Congratulations buddy.”

  When people I hate call me buddy”

  Clive again.

  The box screamed. It was louder this time. Clive had already gone, but someone was going to hear it if I kept this up. This was the second note I’d had to use for Clive too. I guess some hatred is too deep to extract all at once.

  Worse still, the moaning continued even though I wasn’t putting anything in now. It sounded like the lamentations of a dying man. I shut the box in my drawer, but I could still hear it groaning away. Then a soft rattle. I opened the drawer, and saw the box trembling as a frightened animal.

  Well shit. I couldn’t just throw it away. I had to get my anger out somehow, or that promotion was gone. I couldn’t keep it here either though, because someone was going to –

  “What’s that sound? Is that the pipes?”

  I didn’t answer them. I didn’t look at them. I walked fast through the building with the box in my pocket. The warehouse – it’s always noisy down there. If I hide the box, then no-one will hear it, and I can still get down to slip a note in if I need to.

  The sound of forklifts backing up.

  The restaurant which always gets my lunch order wrong.

  It was 4:30 now. Only half an hour to go and I was in the clear. I was walking down to the warehouse to slip my last note of the day into the box.

  Mr. Elsworth keeping people till 5 even when there’s nothing to do.

  I opened the crate of printer paper where I’d stored the box and reached around. Odd, I usually could hear the screaming when I was this close to it. Especially now, since the machinery was all quiet after the warehouse workers left for the day.

  It wasn’t there. I practically dove into the crate, but my box wasn’t anywhere. It was only half an hour though, right? I could make it half an – but no. Without the box, the anger would still be there. Even if I did get the promotion, I’m sure Elsworth would notice sooner or later and bump me back down. It wasn’t fair. I’d put in the work – I was better than any of them. It wasn’t right for me to keep getting passed over just because –

  Scream. There it was. What started out as a horrible sound now filled me with relief. It was the next sound which I dreaded more.

  “What in God’s name are you doing in there?”

  I pulled myself out of the crate to face Clive. He was holding my box in his hand. And it was open.

  “Give it back. Now,” I snapped. “It’s mine.”

  But he was reading my notes. Those were personal! He had no right to –

  “Is this some kind of joke?” Clive asked. “Why is my name in here? And such rude language –”

  “You want language? Give me back my fucking box.”

  My last note of the day was crumpled up in my hand. I was seeing red. I wanted to grab him by the throat and – but no. I needed that promotion. I couldn’t lose it now.

  “I’m sorry, Clive. It was just an assignment from anger management class. It’s supposed to be confidential, so give it back. This doesn’t need to change anything with your report.”

  “My report?” Clive practically shrieked. “You’re still worried about your promotion? You aren’t going to have a job at all after this. If this is how you really think, then we have no place for you –”

  I punched him across the face. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t stop myself. All the little frustrations and pent up anger from the past two weeks were flooding back. I hit him for every day this company has stolen from my life, for every promotion which passed me over, and for every lonely night I sat at home too tired from work to go out. I pummeled his face into a pulpy mess, and still couldn’t get enough.

  The box was screaming like a banshee, convulsing on the floor where Clive had dropped it. I couldn’t tell how much of the blood on my knuckles was his, and how much was mine, and I didn’t care. As good as it felt to be at peace with myself, this felt better. At least for a little while, until Clive stopped moving.

  I dropped him back to the warehouse ground. The screaming– it was driving me crazy. I tried to stuff the scattered papers back into the empty box, but they wouldn’t fit any more. They spilled out over the ground, covered in my bloody finger prints.

  How did I let this happen? What would Ikari have done? He said any problem could go away if I put it in the box. Well shit, Clive was a problem, and now he was going in a box, but that only made things worse. I stuffed his body and the bloody papers into one of the warehouse crates, mopped up as much of the blood as I could, and ran.

  “Open up! Open up old man!” I was back at the anger management class. If this was anyone’s fault, it was Ikari’s. He must have known what the box did, or he never would have given it to me. He must know how to make things right. He had to.

  The door was unlocked, so I went in. Ikari was sitting on his cushion across from a middle-aged woman. I didn’t want to involve anyone else in this, so I waited in the corner for her to finish. She handed a box which looked just like mine to Ikari and thanked him. She was so grateful. It changed her life. Well good-for-fucking her, because it ruined mine.

  “Please have a seat,” Ikari said after the woman had gone.

  “It was opened,” I blurted out. “Not by me – somebody else – and they’re dead now. This isn’t my fault, so you gotta help me fix this.”

  “I understand,” he replied gravely. Then he leaned in real close – so close I wanted to hit him, but I held myself back – and he whispered: “Gobble gobble gobble.”

  I actually pushed him back into his seat. “Don’t give me that shit. You must know what happens. Why do you do this to people?”

  A slow smile crept across his peaceful face. “Because I am so hungry. And all the hate they pour into their boxes returns to feed me. But you have already let your Demon out, so what am I to eat now?”

  The dead man in the warehouse was suddenly the least of my problems. Ikari was standing, although for some reason I never remembered watching him rise. Then he was behind me, not having touched the intervening space. I was absolutely speechless. I back-peddled until my back hit a wall
–

  No, not a wall. He was behind me again. His arm wrapped around my neck, his long nails digging into the side of my throat.

  “When I look at you, all I see is a Demon now,” he said. “All I can see is your selfish hunger.”

  I didn’t dare speak. Even swallowing was enough to push those nails deeper into my skin. I strained against his implacable grip with my hands, but with every motion, the puncture became deeper. His arm constricted with the relentless predatory pressure of a boa constrictor, and I was utterly helpless in its grasp.

  “But your Demon has already fed on my meal, so here is what you must do. Find those like yourself with anger burning in their hearts, and collect it for me as I have done with you. Twice each month you will bring me a new box filled with hatred or…”

  He didn’t need to finish the sentence. Gobble gobble gobble. The pressure slackened just enough for me to nod.

  Maybe someday I will learn how to trick my Demon. Someday I will learn how to be kind, even with this hatred burning in my chest, and I will lock him away. Someday I will learn to control my anger and not the other way around, but until then …

  Would you like to stop feeding your Demon? You only need to ask once for me to save you.

  The Masked Orgy

  College is the time for experimentation. And no, I don’t mean titrating sodium hydroxide with hydrochloric acid in chemistry. I mean forcing yourself to try new things – things that excite you – things that scare you – for how else are we supposed to discover who we are and what we’re capable of without constantly pushing the boundaries of our reality?

  At least, that’s the excuse my boyfriend Mike came up with when he suggested a threesome.

  “Sure,” I replied.

  “Really? Wow, okay. You’re the coolest girlfriend ever –”

  “What’s the other guy’s name?”

  I knew what he meant, but I still enjoyed watching him choke on the soda he was drinking. Mike had been talking a lot about Amy since she joined our lab group in anatomy. I was jealous at first, but after checking out the competition, I had to concede his point. It was hard not watching the supple curves of her body everyday as she stripped her sweater over her head to put her lab coat on. I guess I was just relieved Mike was talking to me about it instead of doing something with her behind my back.

  He wanted me to broach the subject with her because “it sounded less creepy coming from a girl”, so I invited her to join Mike and I for drinks after class.

  “Have you ever done anything with a girl before?” I asked Amy after our third beer. Mike spluttered in his drink and excused himself to go to the bathroom, and I almost threw the rest of my glass after him. This was his idea. It wasn’t fair making me do all the work. Luckily, there wasn’t much work that needed doing.

  “Not yet,” she replied, a smile playing around the corner of her lips.

  Two hours later, all of us were in my room trying to figure out how one person fits in a dorm-room bed, let alone three. It was exciting for me, and I can only imagine how many flashing lights and alarms were blaring inside Mike’s head, so I guess it was understandable that he spent most of the time focused on Amy. Besides, Mike and I were already comfortable with each other, so it was really just her that he felt the need to impress. Afterward he said it wasn’t the case, but I still remember spending way too long hanging out and watching them go at it. I even left to use the bathroom at one point without either of them noticing I was gone.

  I didn’t want to get mad. I had agreed to this after-all, and I hated the idea of being one of those infamous girlfriends who said one thing and did another. I just wanted to get even. It didn’t help that he started acting cocky afterward, as though that experience made him a big manor something. He even started pointing out particularly geeky looking freshman and saying things like “I bet he’s never even been with one, let alone two“.

  Although asking for another guy started out as a joke, I started pushing for it more seriously. I wanted him to feel what it was like to be jealous. I wanted him to appreciate what I had done for him, and realize I was the only one of us who had the power to make it happen again. And yeah, if I’m being honest, maybe I even wanted to humiliate him a little so he’d go back to regular old Mike and drop this macho facade.

  We started having fights about it, and the more he said no, the more one-sided our relationship seemed. I told Amy I thought I was going to have to dump him (she and I still hung out sometimes, although I never invited Mike when we did). I told her it wasn’t her fault, but she still felt guilty about getting between us (literally). That’s why she came up with a solution:

  “I know a place where they do it in a group. You’ll get your kinks out, he’ll have someone of his own to have fun with, and everyone is wearing a mask so nobody gets hurt.”

  Big rubber animal masks. Didn’t it get hot in there? I felt more than a little exposed wearing my stupid Mardi Gras mask I picked up at the dollar store on the way here. Everyone else’s mask was hyper-realistic and covered their entire head, but they told me not to worry about it and just relax. Mike and I were just “initiates” on a trial run anyway. If we decided this was our thing and we respected all of their rules and members, then they’d give us a full mask next time.

  At first I stuck pretty close to Mike, and we just fooled around with each other and watched. There was about a dozen people in total, and the teeming mass of bodies was pretty damn intimidating to approach. Several of them had covered their bodies in some kind of paint or oil, and they churned and writhed against each other with an almost animalistic intensity. Everywhere I looked, breasts were heaving, indiscriminate hands clutched and pulled on skin, and bodies lunged hungrily at one another as though nourished by their carnal lust.

  I was about to call it quits and leave when a man in a panther-mask pulled away from the others to approach me. His body was chiseled and slick with paint. Mike and I exchanged glances. Isn’t this what I wanted? I pointed him in the direction of a leopard-mask with fiery red hair spilling out beneath it. He hesitated, so I gave him a little shove. If nothing else, this would be a shared experience we could laugh and bond over, and maybe we’d both be stronger for it.

  I still shuddered a bit when the panther-man put his hand on my shoulders from behind, but his probing fingers expertly massaged down my back and I felt myself melt into his touch.

  Mike left shortly after that. We’d only been there about a half-hour, and I was really (really) starting to enjoy myself, when I saw him staring at me and the panther-man. Good, let him see! But then he just turned around and walked away, and my satisfaction quickly drained. I followed him, and we had another fight in the hallway while we were both still naked. He said he couldn’t even look at me again after seeing me like that. Somehow the fact that he was more hurt and sensitive than me proved that he cared more about me than I did him, so it was over. He got dressed and left, and I just stood there overflowing with frustration.

  I felt massaging hands caressing my shoulders again, and I immediately felt the tension flowing out through them. If I was looking for a rebound to get past Mike, then I couldn’t think of a more immersive, therapeutic one than this. I allowed the panther-man to lead me back into the room. The lights had dimmed since I was gone, but a lot of the paint people wore was glowing in the dark. More hands grabbed me, and I allowed myself to be swallowed up in the psychedelic dance of skin on skin, swirling colors, and the growing moan which encompassed me.

  As the night went on, the lights continued to slowly dim. The colors grew brighter, and the intensity of the sound and insistence of the sensation mounted into a crescendo of pleasure. I spent most of my time with the panther-man, although I allowed myself to be passed from one person to the next without complaint. There was no embarrassment, no judgement, no jealousy, only the acceptance and triumph of our shared celebration of life.

  I was back with the panther-man now, body flooded with gentle war
mth and satisfaction. His hands were so powerful yet gentle, and his low moans resonated with my own as though we were a single being harmonized with itself. The thought of leaving here and never knowing who he was – perhaps never even meeting him again – was more agonizing than I could have imagined. I felt an overpowering desire to look at the man pressed against me – just for a second – just long enough to recognize him if we met again. I slid my hands up his neck and tenderly slipped the mask further up his face…

  But it wouldn’t come off. I pulled harder, and felt the strain of living fur beneath my fingers. He grunted in pain – or was that a snarl? – and I pushed him off me. Suddenly every sound came to its height, and the mounting carnal cacophony enveloping me became tainted with other sounds.

  Were those moans? Or was someone starting to howl? And then a yelping joined in. I thought it was a joke at first, but one by one the people began to bray, bark, hiss, or whatever other sound was appropriate to the mask they wore. The panther-man knelt upon the ground and I saw his muscles coil as though preparing to spring. It was so dark that I could only see the parts of him covered in paint, and from a few steps away, he looked more like an abstract painting than a man.

  I ran toward the door, but tripped over a dark form along the way. A multitude of hands clung onto me in the shadows, and then a paw with razor sharp claws tore the skin on my outer thigh. I screamed and pushed onward, but the grips readily released me as though shocked I wasn’t appreciating their touch. I made it to the wall, but I couldn’t find the door. The panther-man crawled toward me on all fours. Some of the glowing paint was on his skin, but more of it was matted in patches of thick black hair on his body.

  I leaped along the wall looking for the door, ramming against another body and falling to the ground. The half-panther was almost on top of me now, but I couldn’t bear to look at him. I closed my eyes and screamed for all I was worth.