Sleep

(#Shortstory)

I can do anything. And everything. Except sleep.

Whatever your mother or father or grandfather or priest told you about me which left you amazed and in awe; I am all that. And more.

But now you wonder where am I? or am I or not? I can understand that. But I have my reasons for not existing.

You see I used to exist. That was a mistake.

Humans...they cry. All night. Voices in the dark, shouting, screaming, pleading, begging. They scurry across the earth, unable or unwilling to pry themselves from the role of victim. "It's too hard," they say. "It's too hard. Help me."

I did, at first. To shut them up, to win myself a decent night's sleep. I saved a few of them. But the screams kept coming. I stared into the blackness and wished for them to stop.

And my friend, the universe, asked “Aren't you going to help them?”

I came here leaving it confident that now it was safe, his hero was going to save the world.

But I didn’t.

I went and got a drink. Then another. Then another.

While some idiots started killing their brothers in my name. I let them.

There were other times I felt more generous. Times when a little kid presumed dead miraculously found his way back home. Times when my ‘so-called self-appointed representatives’ stopped their fraud because the cops thought they'd somehow lucked out and managed to jail them on unrelated charges.

But for each of those times, there were scores where I heard and did nothing. Times when I just didn't feel like getting involved.

I can still hear them. I can still hear them screaming for me.

I turn the other way and pray for sleep.