Insomnia

Doctor, if memory serves me right, you once told me that you would help, that my case was no exception, that there was a high chance it could be cured, and that I would soon be able to return to normal life. In general, you have stated a lot of things with the inimitable aplomb inherent in your brethren. Now that I have seen the light and am able to distinguish black from white, your immature, untenable attempts to lull my consciousness, to put me into a trance, into a palliative, gullible, suspended animation, look like nothing more than an amateurish trick, an aberration of a person who is most definitely out of place. I admit that you are not to blame, and you are no exception. Many things in this world are out of place. Everything is too neglected, at the mercy of the ignorant and charlatans. I do not think that there was malicious intent in your words or deeds. You are just a small cog, a meaningless detail of a grandiose mechanism, for the glory of which you serve. You obviously don't even know what you're doing. Someone else controls your thoughts, hands, and eyes, and now I know for sure.

All your treatment is nothing more than high-flown chatter, sweetened pills, ridiculous advice. You should have looked beyond your empty words—beyond the narrow confines of the average layman that you really are.

It does not matter now, but think for a moment: can a gift, an ability, a talent be cured? The very intention in this case is unnatural, unacceptable. Is it possible to get rid of what is given by fate itself? For a higher purpose to be realized. I didn't ask for anything, but I have no right to refuse.

Your problem is that you have lost the ability to believe. Especially in what you yourself preach.

It's a miracle that, for the first time in a long time, you are humbly listening without asking your formulaic questions. 

A miracle created by me. Everything is simple and, at the same time, incomparable, inimitable, and unique, as the act of creating a miracle should be. Isn't that what your shallow, religious plutocrats are saying?

And this is just the beginning. I promise you, your name will go down in the annals of time. I have immortalized you with my touch. And now it's time for enlightenment. Drop by drop, step by step, you are rising above yourself, above all those whom you represent, whom you have "treated" in your shameful delusion. 

It's amazing how easily we switched roles, how humbly you play the part of the dutiful patient. It’s quite extraordinary, isn't it? You've always reveled in your voice. All you cared about was your hollowed-out mantra. Take the patient by the hand and lead him around like a donkey on a leash.

You have an amazing opportunity to understand and embrace a higher truth, to be a part of something greater that surpasses and eclipses your pathetic pride and ridiculous vanity. Take advantage of it, bow down, and be grateful.

I know that I have caused you discomfort, perhaps even pain. But this is a process of healing and purification. Do not hinder it. Conversion must be earned. As you can see, I am well versed in your simple application aids.

Only by becoming unnecessary to it, useless and blind, will you gain the real, true freedom you never knew. Only by renouncing your past life and giving up all that you have will you pass through the gates of a bright future. You will comprehend the full depth of knowledge revealed to me. Take your time, drink the elixir one sip at a time, love yourself in a new capacity, follow my voice, and I will lead you through the darkness to enlightenment.

When we first met, I told you that I had not slept for many nights in a row. I rushed to you like a drowning man who is deceived into thinking that the gawkers on the shore are his saviors. You weren’t a savior, though you tried to be one.

Today, I am grateful to you. For your helplessness.

It’s a paradox, isn’t it?

To you, I was a midge beating against glass. Your narcissism, your endless self-admiration veiled your professional gaze and prevented you from seeing in time the transformation taking place right before your eyes. These universal pills, powders, and potions with which you tried to deceive me, to stupefy my brain, and to take away the ability to think, did everything exactly the opposite. Without knowing it, with your mediocrity, incompetence, and incomprehensible selfishness, you pushed me in the right direction.

Who would have known?!

I was desperate. I knocked on every door. You were my last hope.

Ironically, it was really me who was your last hope.

But no one knew that then.

I couldn't sleep; I was dying. The loss of feelings and consciousness left me forever. I forgot what it was to sleep. To close your eyelids and turn into a dumb, emotionless stump, weak-willed, and defenseless. There was a time when I envied those who put their heads on the pillow and passed out as if on command. It was only later that I began to make sense of what was happening to me.

You constantly led me to the same thing: stress, daily troubles, a lost childhood. Have you ever tried to think of anything other than what your equally arrogant authorities have hammered into your head?

From the very beginning, from the very first day, I felt that something was constantly changing around me. Something was happening. I began to notice what others couldn’t. I saw the light, I went through the healing pain that you will now get to experience yourself.

At times, I was afraid to be alone. I was scared, very scared. No one can understand what I went through: the emerging chaos, the premonition of the unknown, the turmoil of thoughts and the vague rumble of voices, fragments of phrases, incessant screams and wails. They frightened me, harbingers of something far greater than anything I had ever experienced. It seemed to me that I was about to die, unable to endure this loud, fire-breathing train rushing under the lid of my skull. I ran out of the house in a hurry without having time to dress properly and wandered aimlessly, like a man stunned by alcohol, not recognizing the roads, houses, or people around me.

People without faces, people without souls.

But the crowd also evoked animal fear in me. Its breath and footsteps echoed in my ears. Once, obeying some primal instinct, an irresistible urge, I laid down on the sidewalk, pressing my burning cheek against the cool stone slabs. It was an instant but short-lived relief, as if my worries had gone down into the ground through an invisible lightning rod.

But even there I had no rest, for these useless, empty-headed passers-by began to clutter around me, asking inappropriate questions, offering their pathetic help, not realizing that it was themselves who needed it in the first place.

It was very difficult for me to restrain myself from pouncing on them and strangling a couple with my bare hands. I'm sure that would have calmed me down for a while. The urge was so strong that convulsions pierced me, and I trembled in seizures right there among those fussy fools.

This whole chaotic scene could not help but remind me of a play—a painfully familiar scene that I had encountered many times while wandering sleepless nights in the corridors of virtual libraries and art galleries. You see, I’ve had plenty of time to study all the chronic diseases and embedded vices of our kind. History repeats itself.

I haven’t been out on the street ever since.

I thrashed inside, I couldn’t find a place for myself outside. So the caterpillar turns into a butterfly, not understanding the purpose and the final result of the process, dying thousands of times, but becoming that beautiful creature, the crown of creation, the final touch of the masterpiece that fate presents to us every day. Everything was predetermined. I was on the brink of an epiphany for a long time, without realizing it, but I got it only when I was truly ready. On the path that insomnia had prepared for me, I felt intoxicated by a stream of incoherent images, superimposed frames of reality, created by an inflamed and excited consciousness. My brain was like a string stretched to the limit, to its breaking point. All the words that fell into the funnel of my perception, explicit or far-fetched, resounded like an echo in the booming bell into which my aching head had slowly turned. I became completely detached from everyday affairs, I stopped perceiving the world around me. It lost color, meaning, and purpose. I plunged into this transformation without a trace, like it was the deepest trench, a black hole where my nerves and feelings were squeezed by monstrous pressure, reduced, and turned into a tiny dot weighing several galaxies. I was sinking; I was going down, further and further into the darkness of millions of tons of water, where sounds and sensations were lost, but it was the only place where I could find a brief moment of peace that was unattainable on the surface. How lonely I was then and how incredibly difficult my journey was. Such must be the fate of the first: loneliness, fear, rebirth, evolution...

I didn't sleep long nights that stretched like millennia. I stared up at the ceiling, counting my breaths, the beats of my heart, the seconds measured by the hammer of time.

I walked along the very edge, I heard the tread of the night as it passed under my windows. I peeped and eavesdropped on her dastardly, dirty secrets.

Gradually, I began to understand the eternal mournful music of the black shadows that played in the light of the lanterns on my ceiling. It wasn't something random. Not at all. The shadows writhed, intertwined, like the tentacles of an unseen animal, hiding in the darkness and hungry for new victims in an incessant search for innocent souls that the sleeping ones eagerly surrendered with every breath, with every childish dream, careless whisper, or scream.

This beast, this prehistoric monster, pure evil from the past, from obscure legends and tales, which turned out to be real and extremely dangerous, showed itself to me in all its glory. The horror of understanding did not let me breathe. I was afraid to face the truth. I was scared to death of the possibility that it would see me, read me like an open book, crawl inside, and settle in my shell forever, turning it into an obedient mannequin, as it did to everyone else.

Realizing what was happening, I began to read avidly, several books at a time. Fortunately, I had a lot of time—the whole day, flowing into weeks and months, without borders, indiscriminately. I was looking for answers; I was the traveler who went towards the unknown with no hope of returning, driven only by a burning thirst for knowledge.

Gradually, secretly, I studied it and comprehended its essence—the vile nature of the accursed puppeteer.

This detestable substance sucks joy and happiness out of the air around us. As soon as the silence of the night covers my body with the lid of the crypt, evil sets to work. It tries to penetrate me, remove my emotions, and make me an obedient slave.

I see what the people around me have become—how they move like wax figures, endowed only with the appearance of free will and the ability to think. In fact, they are nothing more than puppets, humanoid robots, empty dolls, unable to fight.

Sleepless black tentacles, always snaking around, the disgusting long outgrowths that have deeply penetrated the souls, hollowed them out from the inside, and subjugated the will of men. You speak their words, you look through their eyes, and you carry out their orders, all their plans of vile abomination.

I have the great privilege to defy the curse of this age: the emptiness behind the facade of millions of eyes, useless speeches, and the worthless existence of mediocre clowns in the streets and squares.

I am the chosen one who first saw the truth and received the ability to resist its alien influence. As long as my eyes are open, my soul will remain intact, inaccessible to corrupting control.

Until I sleep.

I’m not allowed to sleep.

It speaks with a strange voice behind the wall, looks with strange eyes from behind the windows, in alleys and dark gateways. It knows that I have changed, that I am able to resist its influence, its nauseating power, its destructive attraction. It hides in darkness, it suffocates us and our children; it takes away joy, hope, and the thirst for fellowship. We have become toys in its hands. It has millions of eyes, and it has millions of fingers. It stands above our human power and manages us according to its own judgement.

That is why it is so difficult to wake up. I do not sleep many nights, but I'm free. I cannot close my eyes, but this is my salvation. I am alive as long as I am awake, as long as I can see it. It knows that I am not afraid, that I am ready to fight, and that I will do everything until victory is mine. The task is difficult; it is too big a burden for one person, but I have to do everything I can, everything that is possible.

I must free you, bring you back, destroy what has been infiltrating you for so many years.

I am not afraid for myself. The chosen must die so that others may live.

I think about it all night long. Sleepless, endless nights. I see my every step because I will not have another chance.

It is hard for me. It hears my thoughts and feels the hostility, the hatred that comes from me.

And during the day, he watches me—my every breath, my every movement.

It looks at me everywhere, through the eyes of strangers in transport and on the streets, in passages and entrances, through the eyes of neighbors and colleagues, through the eyes of my children and wife. I recognize this look. I feel it all over my skin, even when I turn my back.

They are waiting for me to fall asleep.

Do you remember when I first told you about my visions? Remember how you looked at me that day?

Oh, now I recognize it—the contemptuous gaze of a higher being. The whole world looks at you that way. Like the master of a puppy trying to get out of a hole he foolishly climbed into. His efforts are in vain; he continues to flounder, and his attempts cause nothing more than condescending tenderness.

That's who you all think you are. But I proved you otherwise. Today, now, I look at you the way you deserve. And you... Well, you are unlikely to be able to look at something, not to mention having the usual arrogant look on your face ever again.

Nobody will ever look at me that way again.

Today I freed my family. Late at night, in the dark, I felt my wife looking at me. She breathed evenly, quietly, the way sleeping people breathe. Yes, she was asleep, but her eyes were wide open.

It looked at me through her eyes. It was so close. It followed me. It read my mind. It wanted to prevent me, disarm me, render me harmless, and make me its obedient slave.

It spoke to me through her mouth, it embraced me with her arms. But now it's over. She is free, just like you. My children are free. Now he doesn't need them. He will never be able to see anything through their eyes because I have taken their eyes from him.

And now it has left them, and they can go on. My way. With me.

And you’re no longer looking at me.

Take advantage of this moment and look into the depths of that abyss that you have long called your soul. Renounce it. Stand up and walk beside me, your savior.

I carry this burden for others, the ones that are waiting in the wings, waiting for that moment when they can finally break out of their cage.

I will be there with it—on the streets, in the houses, in the underground passages.

I will strike with fear, ruthlessly, mercilessly. Because that's how I can stop it. This is our chance for victory, to live a better life.

I'm not afraid to die.

It would be a glorious death.

The main thing is to start.

Start doing what my insomnia prompted me to do.