Insomnia - A Dirge

I am in Hell.

 

So many nights she eludes me - taunts and haunts me as I lie in bed, ever awake. Always awake. Her soft, mocking laugh chases my every toss and turn, narrowing her half-lidded eyes and writhing her seductive dance with spectral, moonlit grace. Touching me just enough to keep me from tipping over the edge into madness, only to coax me back to this accursed nightly torment. She is the sole object of my truest, deepest desire, and I covet her with the single-minded instinct of a starving reptile -- but she is also the target of my undying, smouldering hatred, and there are nights when I pray she will finally give in and let me have my rest, if only to choke the life from her so as to achieve an evening's peace (and perhaps the cold satisfaction of long-plotted revenge).

 

But is it not my soul, my being? Am I not the master of my own fate, architect of my own peace, on my own terms? Surely a score ago, I believed myself immune to such trivial things as rest or age. My body an impenetrable fortress, unconquered by substance or schedule, free of vice or any real mortality. Rest was for the unwicked, after all -- and I was wicked, I assure you; steeped in sin with no regard for consequence. Surely some ember still exists of the young man who laughingly spit in the face of sleep, and carried on unpunished by time. Perhaps the flame still burns, and I can escape my captor by refusing her empty advances.

 

Unrelenting demon witch! Just a little closer, ghostly succubus, so that my hands may close about your throat. What price must I pay for your reward? How must I earn the right to close my bloodshot eyes and trust they will remain shut? Should my wrath boil over into my days and scald those I care for? Shall I, in a fit of pique, dive into assured self-destruction of drugs, isolation and madness for you, until my body withers and I am left with only my weakening heartbeat and dessicated sanity to keep me company? What more can I sacrifice?

 

Tell me, spirit -- please. What must be done? Tell me what toll I must pay, even if it is only the final coins on my weary eyes for the Ferryman, for at least then I will know a final peace. Please, I beg you -- share with me the secret to rest. Whisper it in my ear, and let it be a secret between us alone. Give me back my dreams, my captor, and all is forgiven. Give me this one thing that you have taken, and I will swear loyalty -- I will give you whatever you ask. Any prize, any cost -- just turn back to face me, love. I was ill-tempered with you, and I am ashamed. Forgive me. Dry your tears and talk to me. Please.

 

But why should you? What spirit would abide the rudeness of a deranged, unreasoned fool? My carefree negligence has decided my fate, and perhaps you are my punishment, yes? If you are the debt I must pay, this nightly agony of staring bleakly into the darkness while others dream, then it is a debt I have earned. Decades of indiscriminate sin, filling my 'fortress' with delicious poisons and toxic vices, railing against my body's vulnerability by refusing to admit it was fragile. I am architect of nothing, save for my own sleepless prison.

 

This is my hell, and I have doomed myself to it. You are right, my love -- this is where I belong: lying here in the dead of night, staring at nothing, trying desperately to think of nothing, fantasizing about a tranquility that I have prevented myself from ever achieving. I have chained myself to the wall of this place, and like the ever-loyal Renfrew, I will wait for my ultimate reward. Even as the fog of madness closes in around me, devouring my faculties as it comes, I will embrace the gloom and trust that peace will come. I will have faith that my Goddess will see how well I have served Her, and will finally grant me her final kiss.

 

-J.