Sleepless Night

I check my phone as I lay back against the pillows on the bed. It has been a long day, and I am exhausted; however, I do not want to sleep. I try to stay awake looking at photos – photos of him. Henry, my beloved. I can’t believe he is really gone. 

This morning, I had fed my baby for the last time. He was there, kneading me through the blankets as I woke up. He mewed and mewed his hunger at me. When I came home, he was gone – later to be found lying dead in the alleyway next to the apartment complex we had lived in together. This cat – he was my baby, my love, and my only companion.

When I got home from work, I looked around the apartment, checked every room, and noticed a window open – the window above the alleyway. 

He must have jumped, I thought, but when I climbed down the fire escape and saw the cat lying twisted behind the dumpster, I didn’t understand. I thought, aren’t cats supposed to be able to turn themselves over in the air and land on their feet? My window wasn’t even that high up – it was only the third floor. I looked at his lifeless body and noticed something. A ribbon. A long, dark blue ribbon tied around his neck – tied so tight it must have cut off his airway. Somebody had strangled my poor cat. 

Oh, Henry, I think as I lay in bed, scrolling through photos on my phone. I pinch the photo I took earlier when I had found him and sigh. Dropping the phone, I fight sleep. I am so exhausted, and my lids are so heavy. I get up and go to the liquor cabinet. I pour myself a hefty drink and swallow it in one gulp. Tears stream down my face. I stay up all night, crying. 

My cat Henry was all I had. I am 32, alone, and sad. I have no real friends, never been married, don’t date, and have literally no one to claim as family. 

There was someone once. A guy named Henry. I thought he had loved me, but before I could say those three little words to him, I saw him with her – his beautiful wife. I was devastated. I was sad. I was lonely. 

I found the tabby in the alleyway – someone had thrown away a bunch of kittens – picked him up, took him home, and called him Henry. Why I chose to name him after an unrequited love, I have no idea, but the name stuck, and he loved me. He was there when I got home. He was my baby – my little fur baby. 

Of course, it wasn’t the same as having a man, a lover, an actual human, but it was love – my love, so when I found him like that, I was torn up. He was something to take care of, and now he was gone. 

A week later, cops and a coroner show up at my door. 

“10-56,” one says into his radio. The code for suicide. 

“Neighbor was worried and called it in. Girl lived alone and rarely talked to anyone – hadn’t seen her come and go all week – called 911 – apparent suicide – hung herself” was the report. 

The truth? That night I didn’t want to sleep, I drank too much. I heard a knock at the window next to my fire escape and opened the window. Being drunk and lonely, we chatted – through the window at first. Then, I let him into my apartment. I didn’t know who he was, but he kissed me and made me feel happy. I was so incredibly lonely. I was pathetic really. I had let a stranger into my apartment. 

As he held me tight, kissing me, distracting me from his real intention, he slipped the noose around my neck, and pulled – tighter and tighter – until I could no longer breathe and was gasping for breath. They called him the “Lonely Hearts Killer”. Apparently, he stalked me, killed my cat, and returned later that night, knowing that when I don’t sleep, I drink. Drinking lowers inhibitions. Inhibitions stop you from doing something stupid – like letting a stranger through your apartment window fire escape.  He must have escaped through the fire escape window without anyone seeing him. 

As the police scour my apartment, clues come up that the Lonely Hearts Killer had, in fact, been there, was the man that I had let in through my window, and vow to catch him. I was his fourth victim. How did they know it was The Lonely Hearts Killer? Always – at every scene – he cut out our hearts and left them in a jar, lonely and sad. My heart sat alone in a mason jar, hidden in the corner of the room. 

*Epilogue*

I am at my own funeral. I am shocked to see people there – co-workers, neighbors, and people I liked to call acquaintances. So many of them – I never realized how popular I really was. If only they had bothered to call or text when I was alive, maybe I wouldn’t be where I am today. Maybe I wouldn’t have let that man into my apartment and instead had called one of them…

There’s a man in the back of the room – Henry. I am surprised. He never talked to me much since I spotted him with his wife. I did everything in my power to avoid him. I had been naïve enough to think that during our scene we had together in theatre group, he had fallen for me just as I had fallen for him. Now, he looks forlorn as he tosses a red rose onto the casket being lowered into the ground. A single tear slips down his cheek. He turns to the woman sitting next to him and says, “Best acting partner a man could have. I wonder why she stopped talking to me, Sis.” His wife – or so the woman I had thought was his wife – was his sister. Dumbfounded, I now notice the resemblance.

With that peace of mind, I turn towards the light and join the rest of my family – my parents, who only had me as their child.  Their one and only child... The light shines on me. Henry cries.