I don’t sleep anymore.

It started out innocently enough; I was experimenting with modafinil. You’ve heard of it, right? That stuff they give to fighter pilots to keep ‘em awake for 40 hours? I thought I’d get myself some and try it out, see just how long I could last.

At first it was fine. I stayed up all night for a few days, wasn’t tired at all. Sure I started having these weird periods of disorientation and times where I’d black out for a few minutes but it was worth it for all the extra free time I had.

But then I started seeing the shadows. You know those shadows you sometimes see out of the corner of your eye but when you turn your head they’re gone? Yeah well, they don’t go away when you’ve been up for three weeks straight. They didn’t really act like they noticed me or anything, though, they were just doing their own thing. I couldn’t really figure out what they were, until that night.

It was about 5 AM or so and I was taking a stroll to watch the sun come up over the city. I passed by this bum asleep in an alley and for some reason he caught my eye. When I looked back at him I noticed those shadow things were all around him…and not just all around him, all over him. When he woke up screaming I realized what they are.

They’re fuckin’ nightmares.

Since then I’ve figured out I can sort of control them, sort of bring them to me by thinking negative thoughts. So that’s what I do at night now. I keep the nightmares away from people by drawing them to me. There’s an orphanage near my house and I usually hang around there keeping them away from the kids.

The only problem is that they don’t actually go away. I can keep them away from people, but then they just hang around me. And they’re angry. They can’t do anything to me when I’m awake, but…

I don’t know what I’m gonna do. I haven’t slept in four months, and now the back alley doc I used to buy the modafinil from got arrested. I’ve only got a few days’ worth now. I don’t want to think about what happens when I run out.