No Thanks, I've Seen This One Before

It’s one A.M. and I’m dead alive. One or both of those anyway.

It’s a nightmare. And not just any nightmare. It’s a rerun, written by the evil offspring of O. Henry and Hitchcock. It goes like this:

I find a man in a darkened room. He’s almost dead. He’s got a long, thin, curved face, like a lobster claw on a neck. At first, I think he’s dead. There’s no motion, no breath, so I leave.

After this, things get a bit hazy. What’s certain is that there are a series of suspicious deaths which look increasingly, to me anyway, like murder. Each of the numberless deaths appear to be a severe test of their physical limits. Ultimately, as my sanity strains with each death (over the course of a single day!) I wind up back at claw face’s to sleep. Because that’s restful.

I’m in a back room on a couch. Someone is in the room with me (I think). Finally, as the intensity of each death hits me, breaking down my sanity, I run through the house to claw face’s room. I was wrong. He is still alive, but barely. I start to wake him, fighting off the urge to rouse him so frantically that I kill him and almost burst my own heart.

As  he wakes, I realize that I’ve become another guinea pig for the test. I don’t solve the mystery of the person behind the curtain, because the realization of my situation pushes me over the edge, exploding my heart, and I die - waking up in the real world, totally disoriented and scared. I’m dead, right? Dead and gone. My mind shattered…

I want to run, but there are warm covers over me and my wife sleeping next to me. Is she dead? Did she fail the test? Did I do anything to stop it? Anything to encourage it?

As my eyes adjust to the darkness, my mind adjusts to the reality. I realize two things: I’m in my bedroom, safe, and I’ve been with claw face and the rest before. In the bright light of the back room, I wish that this is my last visit and that I’ll never go back.

And now, almost twenty four hours later, I’m too blood-shy to fall asleep.