Teodros Kiros - The Insomniac

The Insomniac

26 February, 2010 | Teodros Kiros (Ph.D)

He has not slept for three nights in a row.

He tosses and turns. First on

his back. He stays there for a

second, and turns his knees up

and the blanket tightly locks

him. He could hardly breathe.

A strong wind whispers in his

ears. He whisks that away. A

few seconds later, a huge figure

stands right in front of him and

threatens to kill him. He

survives that onslaught by

holding the cross right to the figure’s face, and the figure
screams out of the room.

He is relieved.

He closes his eyes for the hundredth time, and begins to count
up to a thousand, as his mother taught him.

That does not help either. He is still wide-awake.

This time, he turns to the left, pulls the blanket in and tightly
covers himself, and begins to sweat. He sweats profusely and
wets the upper part of the bed.

A figure stands by him, holding a stick and threatening to hit
him. He lifts his hand and throws a punch into darkness, and the
figure disappears.

He takes a deep breadth and readies himself for sleep. He
actually falls asleep for a minute, until he is woken up by a
phone call, past midnight. He wonders about who it might be, at
this hour.

The person at the other end informs him that he had won a prize
for one of his books. Upon hearing the news, he kneels on the
ground and thanks God for this dream of a lifetime.

No wonder, he says to himself, that he could not sleep for the
past three days.