After what had felt like hours, I decided that I couldn't sleep. I crept out of the room where my buddies and I had ended up crashing and walked out into the hallway. The guest room was out of the question seeing as the carpet had been torn up exposing those little nails that were invisible to the eye but not to the foot. Looking into Grandma's room, I baulked, figuring it was creepy to sleep in her bed on account of her being twelve years dead and all. The room looked exactly the same as it did when she died and the now old dusty pictures of me and my siblings sent a chill down my spine. The door creaked closed.

Outside, It was morning. I walked all the way down the hill into town hoping to wear myself down a little. After walking through the village center I decided that, yes, I did feel a little sleepy and directed myself towards the park. I found a bench with a table in the center of the park and put my head down over my crossed arms. Just as I started drifting off some political town rally startled me awake.

They were a bunch of pissed off squares ranting and raving over some shit that didn't apply or appeal to me. After a few moments more and more of them started showing up. Droves of them. A scruffy old bum sleeping on a bench a few feet away from me awoke, too. He wasn't happy. Yawning and shouting himself awake he started hurling his newspapers and other forms of crap at all the squares around him. The rally continued but a radius formed around the hobo, everyone keeping their distance from the poor, old crazy bat. As a salt shaker he hurled in my direction landed at my feet, I realized the ground was still wet from the rain the night before.

My new shoes were gonna get ruined. I got up mumbling under my breath that I couldn't get a damned break and started to walk back the way I came, but there were enormous mud puddles in the ground. I did that weird dance of someone who's both removing himself from a huge function he's not welcome at while also trying not to fuck up his new shoes. After about twenty yards out passed the sneers and shoves it was easier to walk. At this point, I was on the edge of the park and to my shoes' fortune, now walking on a gravel path. They looked marginally worse.

As the sun loomed ever higher overhead I began to get more and more sleepy. I decided that the walk back to grandma's was too far and my friends knew how to let themselves out when they woke up. The trolley to get over the other side of the hill could get me closer to my parent's house and was leaving shortly, so I decided to take that.

I was seated in the rear of the trolley and somehow had missed my stop. The next stop was just a little ways farther down the line so I just sat there. At the last stop, we all piled out. I walked down the steps and out onto the sidewalk along the path next to the supermarket with the red metal railings to each side.

Suddenly I was completely mortified, but the blows to my face and head made me violently kick at his crotch until after he let go. I ran through the crowd out towards my parent's and nobody stopped me.

I came up through the backyard after cutting through what felt like twenty years of high foliage. It was a long walk up the rolling grass and the afternoon sky had a purple tinge to it . Everything felt surreal. I was approaching the back of the house on the newly cropped grass and could see people moving around in the kitchen through its window. Lunch soon, I supposed. I wasn't really feeling sleepy anymore. I was passed the birdbath and the clothes line when someone waved to me from out the window and my neighbor roared up his driveway and into his garage ten feet to my left side.

As he did so a large black rodent creature sauntered out of the garage and into the sun. My neighbor's car sputtered dead and as it did so something really startled me because I couldn't identify what type of animal this thing coming towards me was. It was like a possum but slightly larger and all black. As it affixed its gaze on me and started to close in, I began to run towards the house but it was too late. I screamed as the beast ran up my leg and started to tear apart my hands and fingers. For a split second I resisted the strong instinct that suddenly took over as I ripped into the monster's body with my teeth.

As I bit into the animal's shoulders, I woke up in a panic, sweating, reminding myself why I always drank myself to sleep.

-Dry Sleep