“I always have thought that dreams have a way to fight away the nightmares tucked deep inside the recesses of the mind. I never knew that it was the other way around.”
I haven’t written for a long time. Now, I write because my psychologist recommended me to do so. He said that it helps with my sleeping pattern, because considering the fact that I don’t sleep much, I also have the need to dig up graves from my past.
Becoming a prime accountant for a growing business firm gives you two things in life: Good money and a noose around your neck. You get good money because you know the in's and out's of the firm; you get a noose around your neck for the same reason. But in all honesty, I never wanted to be an accountant. People with sleazy suits and pompadour hairstyles with pleasing personalities sends shiver down my spine, simply because they think they’re all that. They’re not.
Lawyers and businessmen, the cream of the crop, the best of the best, liars among the den of liars.
I chose to be an accountant because there’s really no money to be made as a writer, which was something I aspired for during my teenage years. Hell, there’s really nothing to be had in being a writer. So instead of working hard and losing money my whole life, I decided that I would work hard and lose myself in sake of money, and now, money is all I have, nothing more, nothing else. What else would anyone want?
However, I did have a chance at becoming a writer. When I was in high school I was part of the press. I documented and reported many events unfolding in school and in our small little town. There had always been bizarre happenings in that small town of ours. After I was discovered my writing prowess, I was hired to make short stories in a small column of our town’s newspaper. The pay was abysmal and the demands are worse. That’s when I had realized that there is no future to be had in writing. You need to be decently talented and you need to be fully invested and that means: losing a lot before you could even get a grain of what writers really earn. Years later, a man from some company told me that I should give it a try and that he’s willing to support me, as long as I give him manuscripts. But I was well off then without my need to write. Hence the end of my writing career. Ever since then I decided that I would never write unless my life depended on it.
Now, my life did depend on it.
If there’s one thing that my psychologist and I know (What a better way to spend my money than to pay someone to listen to my problems, right?) is that I have been seeing things: A man in a suit with no face nor hair, just a single eye on his face. A woman in a pink dress with once again, no face but with long and messy hair. She also had a huge gaping mouth, riddled with endless, sharp and pointy teeth.
A meat grinder for a mouth.
These creatures only pop up once in a while and they never do hurt me.
I would sometime see one eye man when I walk down the street. He would simply stare at me with his one giant oogly eye. Creepy.
The woman with a meat grinder of a mouth I always see in hotel lobbies, walking and well, showing off her massive teeth collection. No one else ever seem to notice.
My psychologist explained that they are just effects of not getting enough sleep. He also attributed the woman with many teeth to my mom who never breastfed me when I was a kid (which was true but I can’t really tell as to why that would be the reason for my hallucination). He also partly blames it to the fact that I wasn’t getting enough sex, he’s Freudian that way.
Days pass by and I start to convince myself that seeing such horrendous creatures is normal and unless they hurt me, I won’t think of them as a problem. So I went on with my daily life of being a person that I never wanted to be.
Which makes me think, if I had been a writer, would I be happier? Would I get enough sleep? Would I wake up in the morning and not think that I would’ve been better off as an accountant? I would never know. Or so I thought.
As I have gotten used to my days with little to no sleep (3 hours or so and decreasing by the minute, literally) and to seeing mister googly eye everyday as I walk down the street which goes to the building I work, I took the liberty of naming him Mister Stephenson. He reminded me of a certain Mister Stephenson when I was a kid. He was a blind old man who was our neighbor a couple of years back. I bet he would’ve wanted the same eye that my Mister Stephenson has.
I haven’t seen Lady Teeth for a while because I don’t really spend much time in hotel lobbies or in any hotels at all. But I made sure to name her Maria when I do see her again.
I never really thought that they would ever cause me harm. I always have thought that they were just a figment of my deteriorating imagination. But as I lose myself and the world around me, I had realized that my nightmares do exist and that they know how to walk with people in real life.
One day, as I head home, I saw Mister Stephenson waiting for me on the other side of a crowded street. He was no longer watching me from the building I work, but instead in front of a street that I had to cross to get to my apartment building. He watched me with his singular but massive eye, never flinching or moving, just blinking and staring. I decided that I needed to find another crossing to get home. So I walked and walked and in every road crossing, he would be there, staring right into my soul.
I would not be robbed of my home so I convinced myself that he was not real; that he was non-existent. He’s just an imagination, a symptom of my insomnia. I had then decided that I had to face him if I were to go home.
I took a deep breath and ready myself to cross the street and towards him. I decided that I was going to cross alongside a couple of other people so I would be safe. But Mister Stephenson had other plans.
When the signal went green for pedestrians, Mister Stephenson started to walk towards me. That’s when parts of him became clearer. He was taller and he had elongated arms and fingers. I was startled and I felt that something jammed my throat to prevent me from screaming. I decided to turn back and run away but due to my startled nature, my legs crossed each other and I stumbled into the ground. I turned around and saw Mister Stephenson walking fast towards me, reaching me with his elongated arms and fingers.
“Oh god,” I muttered. “Please no.” I pleaded.
