Have you ever been tortured? I have. I have lived, hell I live, with the constant and agonizing terror of not knowing when my torturer will come back through the door–when the purveyor of pain will return to peddle their product to the innocent man that is me. For years, I have faced the fanatical fiend that found her way under the false pretenses of a fortuitous future into my life. The problem, my friends is that the perpetrator who propagates my plight, is so sweet in the day and evil in the night.
So this alliterative attempt, albeit now with added assonance, is the introduction in another episode of my anguished sleep life.
I have written to you all before of my wife’s nightly antics. I want to record them so badly, but I worry that if I was to show “Awake Whitney,” “Asleep Whitney,” that some tragedy would occur like in Back to the Future with the polaroid and the whole “Marty McFly disappearing while playing Earth Angel” thing.
Lately, its taken a turn for the even more insane. It has become a harrowing experience complete with me waking up to Whitney standing on the bed, looking nine feet tall from my vantage point, head on pillow. In her eyes, resided a look that said, “I am going to stomp your head now.” When I asked her what she was doing up there, Sleeping Whitney scrambled for an excuse, as not to give her true intention of stomping my noggin into flatness. Her answer was simple and logical.
“I was trying to catch the floating baby.”
I am not even sure how to have responded to her statement. Why? Well it’s simple. I am not sure that the floating baby scenario isn’t just about the creepiest thing she could have said at that moment. It’s like interviewing a psychopath using the Rorschach Ink Blot Test. You know how it goes. I hold up a card that looks remarkably like an innocent butterfly and say, “What do you see, Whitney?” To which Sleeping Whitney would respond calmly and like it is obvious, “I see a butterfly…………..with wings made of human skin and the ability to talk, but when the butterfly talks it can only say perverse and vulgar phrases.”
Adding to the drama, once Sleeping Whitney explained her heroic intentions of catching the floating baby, she panicked and dropped in place like she was shot, or worse still, like the demon in her body promptly exited, stage left, and in doing so, her hind end hit the marble top of the bedside table, cracking it, and leaving a triangular shaped purple mass. For two weeks now, when Awake Heath pats Awake Whitney’s butt as an affectionate gesture, Whitney glares at him in pain. For just a moment, a fleeting and brief moment, we remember what lies beneath the seemingly sweet facade that is my wife’s awake body.
And this, my faithful following, was only one event, and it was the most innocent of them all. The following night, I was scared awake by Sleeping Whitney yelling in her sleep. Sadly, this is not too out of the norm in my house, but what ensued was unexpected. After about ten seconds of unintelligible ramblings, Sleeping Whitney somehow propelled herself, without having left the laying down position, three feet out of the bed slamming into the wall. The abrupt meeting with the wall was enough to wake Whitney.
Dazed and confused, she looked at me and said, “See what happens when you steal all of the covers?”
This was horrifying.
“After the “Floating Baby Incident,” and the world record setting “Three Foot Flop,” I quickly realized that crazy had come to town and that it had taken up residence in my bed. Alas, these two were just the labor pains of something much more terrifying.
In the middle of sweet dreams of unicorns, puppies frolicking upon clouds made of marshmallow goodness, and beams of rainbows and Oompa Loompa’s singing rhythmic riddles, I was jerked out of slumber. Sleeping Whitney must have saw my Ooompa induced smiling and felt the necessity to end all happiness. I can only guess as to what led up to it, but I picture a wide eyed beauty, now overcome with evil, panting as she reached across the bed and dug her fingers into my eyes. Grabbing with such violent tenacity, one of her fingers was actually able to get beneath my left eyelid, so that when I jerked away and grabbed her hand, my eyelid actually popped from Sleeping Whitney’s gripping fingers and slapped with elastic fervor back onto my eyeball. It was stretched so far and tight that when it connected with my eye, it created an audible popping sound and sent my head backwards; back and to the left; back and to the left like JFK.
Quickly, I blinked and felt for my eyes, certain I would find a gaping hole where once a deep Sinatra blue orb, capable of wooing myriads of women existed. To my surprise, I still had both eyeballs and my vision seemed only momentarily blurred by the tears resultant from a good quality eye gouging and eyelid popping.
I pushed Sleeping Whitney back onto her side of the bed. Sitting still, breathing heavily, I watched Sleeping Whitney. She appeared to be back to normal sleep. Curiously, I leaned in closely and tried to see through blurry tears. Too dark to get a really good look, I leaned in even closer. Silently breathing, eyes closed and resting, she looked as if nothing had happened. I kept close.
The following is not an exaggeration. I would not joke of such things. As I stared, Whitney’s eyes popped open glaring into my face, a small grin appeared on her face as I jumped back and recoiled under the covers. For the next three hours, I felt that lifeless, wide-eyed grin watching me as I feigned sleep. It was the longest night of my life.
So, let me retract my earlier contestation that crazy was now residing in my house, or in the least, let me revise the statement. Crazy just doesn’t do it, for Sleeping Whitney is far more sinister.
I just wanted you know, because I have been holding it in for years.
LifeasIKnowit, the HAPhillips Story 