Ghost Flowers

Insomnia

Is it normal to fear sleep as I do? I have good reasoning, if you’d just hear me out. You see, they can only hurt me when I sleep. This all started when I was just a boy. At first, I only heard them whisper in a beautiful language unknown to mankind. It scared me in the beginning, and so, I told my parents as any young child would’ve done. In the eyes of a child, a parent can do anything. They dismissed it as an overactive imagination. 
A few months passed by, and I stopped paying the whispers any mind; they were just a part of daily life by that point. When I was about 8, they began to show themselves to me. Just in the corners of my eyes, I would see a tall, thin shadow near me, but when I turned to look, it’d be gone. For a while, I was terrified, but when I told my parents, they said it was just my imagination and to stop being a baby about it. After that, I stopped telling my parents about anything related to them. 
When I was 13, the first scratches appeared. Four deep scratches from my right shoulder down to my left hip. I was horrified. Blood had soaked into the bed, and my back was in so much pain. I screamed for my parents; they immediately took me to the hospital, and the doctors gave me 56 stitches. He gave me some pills for infection and pain and told me to keep them clean. I followed his instructions and soon, all that was left were four jagged scars. That was the most memorable incident of my childhood. 
Scratches kept appearing on my body, mainly my thighs and stomach, leading my parents to believe i was self harming. Because of that, they sent me to my first inpatient facility when I was sixteen. It was while I was there that they revealed themselves to me. I walked into my room after lunch for quiet time and screamed. It was standing in the far corner of my room. It was tall, taller than the ceiling; its back was bent forward, brushing against it. Black ooze dripped off of its body, pooling on the floor, and thick shadows swirled around its hands. Its eyes were a glowing, milky white, and its skin was an inky black. I could see every single one of its bones. It had no mouth or nose, yet its whispers still pounded in my head. I curled up in a ball on the floor and covered my ears, screaming all the while. Staff rushed in, asking what was wrong, but all I could do was point at the creature. 
I was diagnosed with schizophrenia after that incident, and was told I would be taking thorazine twice a day from then on. I did as I was told, but it didn’t help, so I stopped taking it. I saw the creatures many different times, but no longer had a noticeable reaction aside from maybe a gasp. They had simply become a part of my daily life, as had waking up with new scratches. One night, though, shortly after I had turned 23, I woke up around 3 a.m. to a sharp claw resting above my jugular. It was going to slit my throat. It saw that I was awake, started whispering then melted into the shadows, disappearing from sight. 
I have insomnia now. Fear keeps me awake for days, and when I do finally sleep, I sleep during the day. They can only hurt me at night. I’m writing this for anyone else who can see them, to tell you to be wary, for one day they will try to take your life.