Insomnia has been pretty much a huge part of my life since I was seven. I must have slept like a baby from six and under but somewhere along the way; something happened. At seven years of age, I can still remember what I saw in the old house.
My father used to come home in the dead of night broken and bruised. He would often head first toward the basement while carrying something in his arms. He would cursed and slammed his fist against the wall as he descended down the stairs. The echoes of his cries and yells would carry on out through out the house. I would lie in my bed listening to him yelling and screaming from down below.
And some nights he would appear at my bedroom door after having a tumultuous breakdown. His silhouette beckoning the fray. And with a deafening silence; he would stand there watching and I could sense a smile on his face in the dark.
Father has long since passed on from this world but I will forever wonder what he does at night when the moon is not so bright. When the night is still. When the day is short and the night is long. When I sleep at night and hear those scraping fingers of branches outside my window on a cold winter’s night.
The basement was a forbidden place in our household. Father once dragged my little brother violently by the collar of his shirt and threw him into the red painted room and slammed the door shut.
I stood outside the door listening to the muffled sounds of my dad yelling and my brother crying. It sounded like a whirlwind. Afterward my brother would exit the room with his head hung low and he would not speak for days.
The red painted room is where we go when we are punished. I have never been in there but my little brother has on numerous occasion. He often came out of that room completely changed more and more each time.
It was during one night on the hottest night of the summer when our A.C broke. My father came home from work and got into an argument with my mother over something silly. It wasn’t mother’s fault that it was a cloudy night and the moon was barely peaking through it but he blamed her for the shitty weather. He blamed her because it was cold outside and then he started throwing all of the dishes on the ground and blamed her for it. And he blamed her for being lazy and not cleaning it up. I could tell even then as a kid that nothing ever makes sense with my father.
Afterward he would retreat to his basement and the echoes of him yelling down there resonated throughout the house.
I was sleeping in the living room one night when I heard my father’s car pulled up in the driveway. He was cursing and kicking something outside the house.
“Damn, fucking Raccoon!! getting in my trash again.” he yelled. And then he wrestled with his keys to enter the backdoor to the kitchen. “I’ll take your head off when I catch you.”
He slammed the door his truck shut and then I without knowing what he was doing; I could hear plastic bags being dragged. He took it across the kitchen and then toward the basement.
I got up from the couch and walked over to the basement and placed my ears against the door.
“Alex, what are you doing?.” came a voice in the dark. It was my little brother standing right behind me.. I was startled. “Father is working.” he said.
“Working?.” I replied.
“Please go back to bed, Alex.” he answered. “You want to know. Please go back to bed.” He insisted.
And as we were talking; I could hear heavy footsteps coming up the stairs from behind the basement door and it was coming up fast and suddenly the door swung open and…
And…
Everything was so bright and so red when I opened up my eyes. That was the last thing I could remember from days long gone.
And here I sit on the edge of my bed with my wife handing me my pills. I swallowed it . Trembling. My nights are longer than ever now.
And sleeping is giving in.
At last.