I haven’t slept for five nights now.
I stole an hour or so the other night. I know this as I must have finally dozed during a film I was watching as I woke up near the end. That is it. Strangely, I do not feel like I would had I purposefully been trying to stay awake for this amount of time. I’m not sure I could.
How it has happened I cannot say. It just has. I feel tired, deep down inside, but whenever I close my eyes at night they keep on opening. Nothing happens. I feel like one of those iPods when it hangs and you fiddle about trying to find the right sequence to reset the system and reboot. I haven’t found mine just yet.
A friend of mine reminded me of the short story Haruki Murakami wrote about a woman who no longer needed to sleep entitled, “Sleep”. Am I to become that? It made me laugh.
For the past week I have been working on an old short story I once cobbled together in a few hours. It was very shoddy work but the concept was always appealing. Anyway, I have been working on it, doing some research as well. It involves Jack the Ripper and so my room has been filled with photos of the period and the murders he committed. Undoubtedly, my state of mind is far from bright and airy at this moment of time. Coupled with lack of sleep, stormy weather, and perhaps the most infamous serial killers as company; I have grown even more anti-social than is normal for me. Still, my story is coming along well…
The story will conclude five ‘short stories of terror’ that I have had in my for many a year. I always wanted them to be put together into a book if I ever got myself into the position where my work was in demand. Well, at least I’ll have them finished.
The story in question should be finished this weekend and is entitled, “The Dark Seed”. Both this and the last story that I wrote (“Black Rain”) are better I feel than “How to Cook Rainbow Fish” which I have posted on this blog. Sadly, I do not feel I can post either short story amongst these pages since I have a hope to publish them at some point. Maybe I’ll provide excerpts… I’ll consider it.
Still no news from England on my prospective novel and I am starting to reconsider the idea that no news is good news. I’ll give them another twenty days or so and then try elsewhere. At that point, I shall be heading to España for a fortnight’s break in the mountains with my family.
Hope I get some sleep before then…
