I Don 't Know I Couldn 't Sleep

As I helplessly watch my fifteen year old roommate fall to pieces in front of me, I feel everything around me slow to a crawl. Blood pounds my ear drums, I feel the color drain from my cheeks, and my feet take me forward as if they have a mind of their own. I fall to my knees and suddenly everything speeds up again – the pounding in my ear drums intensifies, my hands are trembling but I manage to grasp the side of the bed in an attempt to bring myself close to her. Her face is buried into her sheet. Muffled screaming escapes her as I whisper gentle reassurances in her ear, hoping with everything I have that she can hear me. I know she doesn’t. Even if she does, she can’t make sense of it right now. She’s stuck somewhere else, somewhere she revisits every day of her life and every time she closes her eyes to sleep.

“Why do we sleep?” is a very popular questions that many humans ask today. Sleep is very sufficient to the human body. If it was not important, then God would not have designed for a third of our life to be occupied by sleep. During this time period, many people are interested to know what is a good amount of sleep and what are the harmful effects to not getting enough sleep.

I haven’t been able to sleep for the past month. I hear my door creak and I look at the door. I see someone open the door very slowly before coming in. I look to see Maria tiptoeing into my room. “What are you doing?” I ask “You know your mom would kill me if she saw us.”

I walked upstairs face red, hands trembling, and body aching. I didn’t even think I could make it up the first couple steps before collapsing into a heap.Before I reached the last glossy maple wood step I heard the sound of little paws and nails scraping, slowly, softly, and sadly through the house. This sound made my heart ache.

After a few more minutes of waiting Anna decided to get out of bed and walk down to the food court to see if her father was there. After getting out of bed, Anna found a note taped to her father’s chair that she hadn’t seen before scripted in scribbly letters saying Based on your actions he might come back don’t tell anyone about this and he will come back unharmed. Anna hurriedly found the bag of her clothes that her mother had delivered overnight and pulled on a hot pink mini skirt and a white long sleeve crop top. After getting dressed Anna opened her door and stepped outside, there was no one anywhere to be seen. She continued to walk down the hall and there was still no noise and no one in sight. She walked straight to the elevator and went down to the first floor where the food court should be, but there was no one there either, the hospital had been abandoned and she was sure that the songbook and the object that played her melody the night before were somehow behind it all. She ran back up to her room as carefully as she could trying not to hurt her arm, and once she arrived at the door she grabbed the music book off the desk beside of her bed, tried to flush it down the toilet, and stuffed her cell phone in her bag of clothes that her mom had bought. She was about to pick up her bag when she heard a new melody right outside of her door. La, La, La, La, La, La. La, La, La, La, La. La, La, La, La, La. La, La, La, La, La, La, La. She wanted to see what was making the noise so she carefully opened her door and peeked through the opened crack. There nothing was there! She grabbed her bag of clothes and ran down the steps as quickly as she could but then she heard a voice behind her, “Aaaaannnnnnnnnnnaaaaaaa!!!!” the voice moaned “Aaaaannnnnnnnnnnaaaaaaa it isn’t safe at your house!!!!” said the voice. She spun around and saw a scrawny old man

It was a normal morning, still laying down in the warm embrace of my down comforter. I set my daily alarm to go off at 5:50 a.m., and after about 5 clicks of the snooze button, I muster up the courage to emerge from the sheets like a kodiak leaving hibernation.

I had just gotten home from school and was standing before my front door starring at it in apprehension of what would most likely greet me on the other side. "Hopefully, today's different," I thought tiredly. Opening the front door I stepped silently inside and quietly closed the door then headed towards my room only to pause at the bottom of the stars as I realized there was no sound coming from upstairs like there usually was. I resumed walking up the stairs thinking to myself "wow, for once they've actually considered that they have a son living with them." At least that's what I thought until, right as I was about to enter my room, loud moans sounded from two different directions. "Or not," I thought in annoyance and slammed my door which did nothing to stop the moans.

It was a mysterious, windy, dark night. Annabel, a short young girl with jet black hair, eyelashes that reached the sky and eyes like a puppy dog, had just awoken on the floor of a cold dark forest. As she took in her surroundings and wondered how she had got there, a sudden pain appeared in her head and she had a brief flashback of painful memories of the car crash that she and her parents had just been involved in, a horrific accident; she lay there as tears slowly welled up in her eyes and rolled down her soft, pale cheeks. The thought of her deceased parents sent a shiver up her spine; she couldn’t believe they were gone.

“Okay. Okay. Tell them I’ll be right there… No, no I was, um, I was just sleeping.”

“Shut up!” A door slams. I bury my face in a pillow to drown out the noise. There is a large crash that comes from downstairs. It is quiet enough to hear a pin drop. The crying, the yelling, the pain, it’s over.

Sleep didn’t come easy, but I hadn’t expected it to. There was way too many things going on in my head. I tried to come up with a solution, but the only thing I managed to do was fall off the bed.

My mother had left my dad’s house slippers by the coat rack behind the door. I was grateful to her as the floor felt like ice. Hanging up my coat, I slipped into my dad’s bathrobe, which was hanging on its peg. We had a fireplace in the living room and the chimney exited the west side of the roof. I smelled the smoke of the dying fire, and I knew my mom was in bed. The bedrooms were located on the second story. Her room was located at the end of the hallway, and my room was at the head of the stairs above the

Ellie and I lay in our beds, neither one of us knew what to say. In the other room, our host parents were arguing. We didn’t know what about, but we knew it was serious. Then we heard a “THWACK” followed by silence. Ellie and I sat up in our beds and looked at each other, I could tell she was as scared as I was. “Was that? Did he just?” she asked me. Then the arguing started back up again. We calmed back down until we heard it again. “THWACK” We knew then, the noise we heard, was him beating her. We got up, our hearts racing; neither of us knew what to do. We got our nerves together to go get help. When we opened the door to our room we saw the children sitting on the couch crying out for their mother. I could see the fear in their face and I knew something needed to change.

We live our lives, do whatever we do and then we sleep - its as simple

Every night, as I sat on the table with my younger brothers assisting them with their homework, I hear a familiar sound at the door. As she walks her heels click, and I can hear her searching her bag for her keys, the next thing I know the keys are in the lock and as it turns me and my younger brothers’ jump. We run to the door and indeed we scream in unison “Mommy’s home”, one by one she gives us a hug and a kiss. My mother asks us how our day was, and if we finished our homework, she then looks to me and said “did you cook and assist your younger ones with their homework”; I replied “yes mom”. As I warm the food, I take my mother’s purse, jacket, and shoes put them away and prepare the table for her to eat dinner. As I glance at the