Insidious Wrath - K.TH.

Three

A few more days passed and your sleep schedule wasn't getting any better, but rather taking a turn for the worst. 

The rent to the studio apartment was looming in quickly, taunting you, holding you accountable to pay upfront--unlike the last time where it took months to pay back the landlord. You didn't have the money. Even buying the bare essentials at the store that would cook you a small dinner for a few nights didn't pay back the money you needed. Though, your boss came to the rescue: the opportunity of a few extra shifts came up. You instantly snatched them before anyone else could. 

The night shifts were already taken, but there were the early morning ones that the clock hit three-thirty and you were on your way to work until five in the afternoon. The hours that you weren't on the shift made up a total of about ten hours, to which were the times you had to get personal things done. The greatest amount of sleep you were able to get into your system was five hours; this was the perfect number for more disoriented hallucinations that were growing worse by the day. 

It was seven o'clock in the evening, your body hopping onto the bus after doing some minimal shopping that forced you to save as much money as you could. One shoulder held your purse while the other held a plastic grocery bag filled with rice, pasta--anything that came cheap and easy to make. The heavy bags under your eyes and your hunched back with piled on stress drew no eyes your way on the public bus; everyone looked that way. 

You maneuvered down the aisle and placed yourself in the normal spot that you usually claimed for yourself. Both bags on your shoulders fell to the seat beside you, the plastic of one rustling. You made sure that nothing would topple over or crush the other and proceeded to relax into your uncomfortable, hard plastic seat that was heavenly compared to standing on your sore heels that you didn't have the ability to feel. 

You barely noticed the bus beginning its travel down the streets to its nightly path. The hum rumbled your feet, the radio up front buzzed your eardrums, but none of it seemed to exist in your mind. All that mattered was that your muscles were loosening, telling you that it was time to sleep; no, you couldn't sleep. Not yet. You needed to make it back home and make a small dinner before you could sleep. Until then, you had to be alert. 

The back of your brain didn't listen: you found your eyes blinking for one second, only to end you up a block further than where you originally were at. You were dozing. You tried desperately to struggle back to a semi-conscious state, but it was failing faster than the bus was moving. The only thing that poked you out of the dark world was the thing that kept poking the back of your neck. 

No one was in the seat behind you; the people on the bus were all the way at the front, which were only a few. It was one fingertip, though, with a nail attached to it, cold as ice. It reminded you of something close to a witch in a fairy tale that had the long, disgusting fingernails, but this fingernail more closely resembled an acrylic you got at a spa place. 

The description of who was poking you didn't matter. What did matter was that there was no one behind. Each poke startled you from your nodding sleep, the pierce of ice hitting your spine and freezing your veins for a moment. Each led to a quiet gasp under your breath, like you were brought back to life. The first few times, you reached behind to grasp whatever was bothering you, but when you discovered it was your imagination, you left it be.   

It continued like this for about forty-five minutes. One minute you would be passed out, the next a shock of chills hitting your nerves. It was a continuous cycle until, the next time you woke up, you found yourself to be at that part of the bus stop. 

The potholes were treacherous while the figures wandering the streets sent bad vibes your way. You huddled into your bags that sat at the seat closest to the aisle, draping an arm over them. The sleep left your body, but you knew once this all passed, you were falling right back into the loop of slumber and cold.