A feather light sleeper

All she ever wanted was a good night's sleep. She tried everything. At first, the warm milk before bed seemed to work, but then she had to move on to a glass of wine. A few weeks after that the wine failed to do its job and she tossed and turned with no relief. Drinking the whole bottle put her out, but in the morning she woke with a hangover.

Her job began to suffer. She couldn't concentrate, and often dosed off at her desk, drooling puddles forming beneath her cheek. The boss gave her a reprimand and ultimatum. "Come to work alert or don't come at all. And get some Lysol to clean that up!"

Her husband took her lethargy as a sign of depression and sent her to a doctor. The doctor prescribed a sleep aid, a nice little insomnia drug called, Ambiron. Low and behold, she slept through the night and felt like a new woman. But after a few weeks she began looking like a new woman too. She gained pound after pound until she was almost two new women.

One night, her husband awoke and found her in the kitchen munching on uncooked pasta and raw hamburger. He tried to shake her awake but she remained in a zombie state, eyes wide open but obviously unconscious of reality.

In the morning he told her what had happened, but she was skeptical, not really believing the story. He swore she was eating them out of house and home while they slept, and if she didn't get it under control he would have to handcuff her to the bed.

The next night he found her sitting before the open refrigerator, a chunk of cheese in one hand and a two-liter of Coke in the other. Her took her to bed and locked her to the brass frame for safekeeping.

In the morning, after being released from captivity, she stood before the mirror and really looked at herself. Spilled food and pop dotted the front of her nightshirt and dried cheese crusted her lips. She was repelled by her own image. She stood on the scale and when the little arrow flew well past where it always landed before, she cried.

Sleep was a commodity she could no longer afford. She quit taking the miracle drug and tried to go to sleep the old fashioned way, having sex with her husband. It worked for a while but soon even that was a waste of time.

Driving to work one day, she noticed that the cars were all going the wrong way on the freeway, and as she swerved to miss a semi-trailer she hit the cement barrier and fell asleep for good.

She felt feather light as she drifted slowly upward. No longer tired or stressed with life, she looked down on the smoking accident with utter detachment. Faint sounds reached her here: horns, squealing tires, and the whining of a siren as lights flashed and strobed. And then her once weary soul shot straight and true toward the brightest light of all, a giant neon sign with two arrows. One pointed up and said: "Heaven – Enter into eternal rest." The other pointed down and said: "Hell – There is no rest for the wicked."

While she was contemplating the sign, Saint Job handed her a pencil and piece of paper. "If you can answer this question correctly, you can choose your destination. If a train started its journey in New Hampshire and traveled North for forty miles, then picked up twenty three people, weighing 1547 pounds, then stopped for ten minutes for the conductor to get a beer, left at four-thirty and traveled another 239 miles and crashed into a bus, how many people would get off and buy souvenirs?"

She jerked awake, and looked around the very white, sterile room. Her arms were strapped down at her sides. A man approached with a needle in hand. "It's time for your next round of Ambiron. I'm certainly glad we have volunteers to try this stuff so we don't have to test it on dogs or rats. I hate to see those poor creatures suffer."

This is a work of fiction. Characters and places are a product of the author's imagination.  Drug name has been changed to protect the innocent.(Namely me)