Restless Night

It was one of those nights where you lie down, close your eyes, and sleep just wouldn’t come even though you were setting yourself up like the town whore. It was too hot in the apartment, my toe was aching, and for whatever reason, my body had decided to come down with a case of Restless Leg Syndrome, a terrible condition finally recognized this year by those crazy doctors that decide which Syndromes are actually Syndromes and what Syndromes are crazy people trying to cash in on medical insurance. RLS characterizes itself as the uncontrollable urge to move your leg while at rest; usually to kick out, and there’s no greater awakening than kicking out in the middle of the night, jolting your entire body.

Instead of playing the game and just lying still, I came downstairs and drank the contents of the fridge. Half a bottle of Merlot, half a bottle of Diet Coke and a few glasses of Orange Juice. It was quiet possibly the worst act of frustration ever, but it did calm my nerves enough to sit down and listen to some soothing music, something that usually helped me on the nights when I couldn’t sleep. After helping myself to a slice of banana bread, a staple in this house, I clambered back up the stairs, bound and determined to get at least an hour of sleep before I was forced awake.

But my leg had other plans. After a few minutes of needless kicking, I was sitting up, my feet dangling over the side of the bed. My lamp was on, and I watched as a few mosquitoes buzzed around, trying to find a suitable hiding place in my tiny room. I grabbed a magazine from the floor, rolled it up, and vented my frustration, knocking the tiny creatures asunder and hitting them again when they were on the floor just in case they decided to pull a Nazarene and bother me again.

I walked into the bathroom, propping my leg up on the toilet bowl, looking down at the bandage that covered my big toe on the left side of my body. There were two, in a cross shape, that folded over the nail to prevent the abscess underneath from bleeding out onto my socks when I wore them, and to keep the odd looks of having such a bizarre problem with my foot at bay. Removing the bandages was painful; both adhesive strips had managed to find their ways onto the two hairs I have on my feet.

My nail was bloody under the bandage, on the left side where nail meets skin puffy and red, the bottom crevice a darker color. I believe I had an ingrown toenail there before that I dug out six months previous with a pair of nail-clippers, thinking nothing of it, but instead of going away, it had come back with a painful, slimy, smelly vengeance that sent me into brief waves of agony every time someone so much as brushed my shoe.

I had tried treating it with Epsom salt earlier in the year, but after almost a month of treatment, the swelling didn’t go down and I declared it a lost cause, even thought my toe had started to feel better. It had gotten time consuming, boring, and I could never get the bath in which I soaked my toe the right temperature. But I had bought an additional four pounds of the sometimes laxative/all time muscle relaxant and stashed it under the sink before I decided the treatment was a lost cause.

I limped over to the bathtub, turning on the water to what I hoped was hot before I began spelunking under the sink for the cardboard carton. The bath was a decent temperature when I pulled my head out from the rusty pipe zone, and I cracked the new carton, dumping a large amount of salt into the bath and stirring it with my hand. Hell, it wouldn’t heal my toe, but it would probably make it feel better.

I turned the water off, sitting on the corner of the tub beside the counter, absentmindedly reaching for a book before swinging my leg over. I gimped my pants up my calf and slowly slid my foot into the water; Holy Jesus Mother of Mary, it was hot, but it felt good. It felt good and bad at the same time; exactly how you would expect hot, salty water to feel on a constantly open wound. I closed my eyes and tilted my head back, breathing.

Painful, painful relief.

I flipped the book open to a well-worn dog eared page in some kind of Stephen King ditty that my brother kept in the lavatory for such emergencies as Taco Night where he knew he would be spending the evening curled up with a good author either with his head in the toilet or his ass on the bowl. He had dog eared every chapter and some pages that he found particularly amusing, but I didn’t have much of a stomach for it. There was nothing else within reaching distance from where I was seated, so I retired myself to the nocturnal terrors of things that go bump in the night, the yellowing pages smelling lightly of past bathroom visits and Lysol spray.

As the water began to cool, I heard a slight buzzing coming from the other side of the bathroom door. It had been a commonplace noise, with mosquitoes practically owning a timeshare in the house. One such fellow made its way under the door, stopping on the white paint and looking over at me. I was in no position to get up and chase it around the room; I considered it an uneasy truce. You can stay on my wall, you little cock-sucker, but as soon as you come near my tub, you’re a dead man.

I turned my attention back to the book, some kind of story about a set of something or other that was out of the ordinary, slightly self-referential and filled with off humor and macabre delight. The font size was too small and the book was too smelly for me to really care for it, but I set it down next to the tub just in case Mr. Mosquito decided that he was hungry.

I reached blindly under the sink looking for an old Maxim I had stashed away for some such purpose, holding my breath and thinking that maybe, just maybe my brother had moved it across the room. My hand slid across the soft cover, and I pulled it out from under the sink, breathing a sigh of relief.

There was a louder buzzing as the mosquito flew near my face. I reached for the book slowly, surely, and tried bringing it up against the blood monger, but I missed, creating a vacuum that spun the little shit around. It quickly regained its composure and lit of the far right wall, looking back at me.

I stared at it out of the corner of my eye as I flipped the magazine open, hoping to find a humorous jaunt into the world of misogyny. I was halfway through one of the splendid articles on one of the models when the buzzing by my ear became annoying. I looked up, grabbing the book and swinging it again, this time connecting. I swear I felt the little body hit the flat side of Mr. King and fall to the ground. I was the victor, and my spoils were the rest of the article and a peaceful foot-soak without having to worry about missing any more blood that I already did.

I heard my father raise in the house, his mattress squeaking. It was rapidly approaching 6am, he would be in here soon to use the bathroom. If he found me in here, he would probably throw me around for good measure, but I didn’t care; it took him three tries to get up. Once to turn the alarm off, once more to shut the blinds, and the final time when he realizes that he’s a little late and it’s not his fault.

I heard his body slam as he hit the mattress again and turned my attention back to the magazine in my lap, oddly disproportionate against the plaid pajama bottoms I was wearing. My heart gave a little tick, a tired indicator that I should be in bed, but I had to work through it if I was to appease my leg. Another fifteen minutes in the soak and I would try to head back to dream-land, a place where I would be awoken with the flipping of the mattress and a military salute.

But that goddamned buzzing came back. I could have sworn I killed the mosquito, but when I looked up, it was on the right wall again, only this time, something was different. It took off towards me, looping in the air, a bizarre spectacle as if it was putting on a show, but I had no stomach for games. I reached down for the book again, but it wasn’t where I had dropped it.

It was in the middle of the bathroom.

How the hell did that get all the way over there?

I rolled up the magazine, careful not to break the thin binding, and batted at the mosquito. There was a satisfying thud and I watched it fly without use of its wings against the toilet, a satisfying thud when it connected.

But should you really be able to hear a mosquito when it hits the ground?

Ten minutes left in the foot soak. I heard the mattress creak again; the sun was up, the ultimate betrayer, trying to send my father into battle early. E tu, Brute? And what have I ever done to you to warrant such traitorous behavior?

Well, I had tried to kill one of Mother Nature’s daughters in here, but that was excusable because –

The buzzing was back again. That stupid loud sound of tiny wings cutting through the air, heading all around the room, up to the ceiling, back down to the shag carpet that father insisted that we get because it hides stains so much better than just a throw rug. There was something definitely different about it; it was staying on its side of the room this time, that was for sure. Maybe it had learned its lesson not to mess with the kid with the fucked up foot and rolled up magazine, or maybe I had caused it to go blind in one eye and fly around in circles. Whatever, I could attend to myself in –

It flew right in front of my face and took a sharp turn before it hit the tiled shower wall. That persistent fucker was putting on a show, hairpin turns, dare-devil acrobatics, but all I wanted was it dead on the ground, maybe. Maybe in the tub so it would go down the drain, because this thing had a serious Lazarus complex and didn’t quite like staying down. When it had flown it’s tiny ass –

Is it so tiny anymore?

- out of the shower, I grabbed the curtain and pulled it shut, rippling the water in the tub. I grimaced; each ripple hit my toe causing a shock-wave of pain to shoo up my leg. I cried out quietly, not wanting to awaken the sleeping giant before his time was due. I could imagine him ambling out of bed, pissed that he was up on time, looking for the culprit, something to hit before Cheerios and a house without OJ, soften up his fists in time for work.

Shitty beat-cop, pun-not-in-fucking-tended.

But I could hear the buzzing from the other side of the curtain, slowly, persistent. The little creature was ramming itself into the blue plastic once, again, dropping the ground but renewing its efforts each time. I pulled the curtain back just enough to get a good look at it as it dove against the shiny plastic.

It was the size of a quarter. I could see its wings flap, it’s tiny legs dangling behind it, the sharp straw protruding from its nose. Something that size wouldn’t have been able to fit under the door; when it came in, it had barely been the size of a dime. I pulled the curtain closed again, and shut my eyes.

They were playing tricks on me. I had half a bottle of merlot, I was breathing in Epsom fumes, maybe I had a spotty potato last night or something. It hadn’t grown in size, that was for damn sure; something like that just isn’t possible.

The shallow beats against the curtain subsided, and I once again breathed easy, no longer wanting to leave the bathtub when my soak was over, wanting to stay and hide from the incredible growing mosquito.

The pounding on the curtain began to grow again, this time stronger and more deliberate, the first blow catching me off guard and sending me into the now cold water entirely. I was soaked and smelled funny, but that didn’t bother me at all. I was holding the shower curtain in place with my body, hoping and praying under my breath that it wouldn’t get through, that the plastic would hold.

Jesus, Mary full of grace, help us win this match-box race.

No, no, the time for blasphemy –

Oh God it hit the curtain again you have to get out of here or else it’s going to suck ALL your blood, sonny Jim and they’re just going to find a pile of bones and skin in the tub and use your teeth to identify you now!

- I just needed something. It hit the curtain again, a small tear forming in the plastic, and I could see its sucker poking through. It was a little longer than a pencil-stub now, trying to saw its way through the curtain furiously moving back and forth.

When it’s body was halfway through, I grabbed the curtain and pulled it down, knocking the entire rail onto myself but burying the mosquito under it. I had no definitive size on it, but if its sucker was the size of a pencil… Jesus.

I could see it moving, fluttering, back and forth under the plastic, bumping it up every time it moved, pushing the metal bar aside. I reached for the closest thing I could get my hands on, a can of Axe, and sprayed it inside the bathtub. I was dripping all over the carpet, a grimace on my face as I shot aerosol into the tub. The thudding stopped momentarily, but I could tell it would be back.

The thing was growing so fast, so exponentially, that I heard the curtain rip in two as I shut the door to the bathroom behind me, moving quickly and quietly back to my room, careful not to look behind me.

I heard the squeaking mattress from the bedroom as he got up one final time. I made sure to hide in my room, in case he got up on the wrong side of the bed, and let’s face it, when your bed is against the wall, it’s always the wrong side.

I thought about warning him that there was something in the bathroom, but he probably would have thrown me against the door and told me to stop being a lying little shit, that lying little shits go to hell with their mothers and would I like to go to hell today, because I haven’t seen hell yet, no sir.

I heard his footfalls pound down the hallway. I reached up, turning the blinds and blocking out the sun. I crawled under my covers, looking down at my leg which sat complacent near the edge of the bed. I closed my eyes.

His shower was his morning coffee.

Sweet dreams.