Insomnia

By Sean Morgenthaler

Rain pattered softly on the roof as Mark started to sleep. He took a big breath. ‘Today had been a long day,’ he thought. He had studied hard at school, been yelled at by fitness coaches and exercised tiring hours in the midday sun for PE. Relaxed, he started to drift off into sleep. Out of the blackness of his thoughts, he decided that he needed water. He sat up, yawning, and took several steps toward his sink. He slowly reached toward the handle, and cranked the faucet. The water started pouring out, and he bent over and drank it from the sink. Mark sleepily crawled back into his bed and lie down to sleep. Mark could hear the dripping from the sink’s faucet. Drip. Drip. Drip. ‘I cannot sleep with this noise,’ he muttered. He walked the same way again, and turned off the faucet all the way. He carefully inspected the faucet. There was no dripping coming out of the silver polished thing, so he shut the door and leaped into bed. Drip. Drip. Drip. Mark had had it. Fully conscious of what he was doing, he walked out of the bed, and plugged each and every sink in the house with towels, confident that he would not hear that mad noise again. He settled down into bed with the same thought in his mind, ‘I am going to sleep well tonight.’ Drip. Drip. Drip. “No. No. No!” he said, “This can’t be happening.” Mark, his eyes bloodshot, and his legs unable to move, screamed to the heavens. “MAKE IT STOP! PLEASE STOOOOP!!!!” His parents, who had put him to bed earlier that night, found him on his bed in the morning, his eyes blank, repeating the words he adopted as his own. “Drip. Drip. Drip.”