Sleep

TRIGGER WARNING: Unaliving, depression, grief, gore, the whole shabang.

The angelic face of my daughter lay before me, and she was beautiful. Her blonde hair flowed freely in the wind, her crystal blue eyes shone in content, and her toothy smile told all how gleeful she was. She was perfect. My Baby.

I loved her more than I’ve ever loved anything in my entire life. She lay before me in glee, giggling at the dog that chased a branch. Her laughing was infectious, and I soon found myself laughing with her. We were on our annual camping trip, this one was to the national park, and while it was beautiful, it paled in comparison to my daughter’s reaction to it all.

She was my whole world. She meant everything.

***

My eyes fluttered open to see my bedroom door ajar, that was strange to me at first, but as I got out of the foggy haze that comes with sleep, I remembered. I remembered and dread spread through my whole body. Desolation took hold of my mind with an aggressive force. The want, no, the need, to enter back into a world where she was happy and safe.

I guess I should catch you up. My daughter killed her baby and then self in my bathroom. She was 26 when postpartum had reared its’ head. As well, she didn’t have a father of her babe to lean on, that deadbeat had left as soon as he learned about the surprise pregnancy. I had known something was wrong with her leading up to her giving birth, but I had never imagined that it could have led to something like that. I was the one that found her. I spent a few weeks in the hospital afterwards, they didn’t want to let me go for fear that I might hurt myself, which I can’t argue with too much. How could that not be a worry when you just walked into a room to find a throttled infant granddaughter stuffed in a tub full of warm, red water with your daughter? Alas, they couldn’t keep me forever if they wanted to, so eventually, they sent me home.

Home. I must say that once you see something like that in your house it doesn’t really feel like ‘home’ anymore. That’s why when I first walked through the threshold of the house I, instead of feeling relieved, felt my heart rate immediately rise. There wasn’t anyone to greet me, or anyone for me to talk to. My wife died four years ago of cancer, and I am a bit of a recluse, so with my daughter gone too, everyone I knew and loved had officially left the world. I spent the day avoiding my thoughts by watching TV. It didn’t work very well. When I had to use the bathroom, I would go all the way upstairs and into the master bedroom’s bathroom just to avoid the room that was the source of my horror.

That night I had the dream I’ve just told you about. I spent the rest of the day after laying in bed, barely even moving, like I was in a stasis.

Eventually, late at night, I closed my eyes to sleep. Sleep was hard. I had something playing in the background for some noise to distract me, but it wasn’t particularly effective either. These things work sometimes, but in a situation like this, nothing can truly distract. At some point, I don’t know when, fatigue finally possessed me and carried me off into the dream world. 

***

I opened my eyes to see the image of my young daughter once more standing in front of me. She looked so beautifully innocent, standing there in her sweet little nightgown my wife had bought her for her birthday one year. “Hi sweetie, couldn’t sleep?” I asked her in a groggy haze.

“No, Daddy, you can’t sleep.” she responded. Her voice didn’t sound… right. It was unmistakably my daughters voice, however, she lacked the bubbliness that kids seem to have whenever they speak. I knew something was wrong.

“I was sleeping just fine sweetheart, what’s gotten into you?” I ask in a paternally strong but comforting way.

“Daddy. You know what’s gotten into me.”

This confused me. I pushed, “No I don’t, what’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong?” She asked, I could hear what almost was hate in her voice, “How about this?” She asked forcefully, thrusting her arms in front of me and pulling her sleeves back. Thick deep cuts ran up both of her arms, so deep I could see the tendons pulsating in her arm. Viscous blood dripped from her forearms onto the floor in a torrential glory as if exclaiming ‘Look at how pretty I am!’ I didn’t think it was pretty. The scarlet liquid was pouring out of her like a waterfall.

“No no no my Baby no please no!” I shout, throwing myself out of bed and to her feet, holding her frail little arms in my hands and trying desperately to stop the bleeding, to no avail.

“It’s okay, Daddy, I already did this, remember?”

“NO. It’s not okay this is not okay nothing about this is okay oh my god my baby my sweet baby please why oh my god!” The words came out in a garbled confused mess, tears were streaking down my face, and I just couldn’t stop the bleeding. Why was there so much blood?

Her face started to decay in front of me. Her beautiful emerald, green eyes started to whiten, her already pale skin was taking the parchment-looking colour of a corpse drained of blood, and while I held her arms I could feel them stiffen with the beginnings of rigor mortis.

Without knowing what to do, I just pulled her into a hug and squeezed her as tight as I possibly could, while a waterfall of tears streaked my face.

***

I shot out of my bed in a panic, face wet with tears and nearly screaming my head off. My heart was racing so fast I thought it might actually shoot out of my chest. I had had nightmares at the hospital, but none of them had hit that hard.

I spent two more nights in that house. Each night was worse than the last. After waking up to sweat-covered sheets and gasping for air for the third time, I made a decision. Anything was better than sleeping. So, I decided not to.

That was my mistake.

 Opening to a horror short story that I wrote, if anyone is interested, I can post the next part!