The Geneva Conventions Say Sleep Deprivation is Torture

I've been having a lot of trouble sleeping for the past several months. I've tried everything I can think of short of sleep aid medication: warm milk, turkey, oatmeal, NyQuil - but no, I still find myself wide awake. I've decided maybe the problem isn't so much that I need some magical sleep inducing elixur, but that I might need to consider finding some different friends.

*****

Monday morning I woke up around 4 a.m. and immediately noticed that there was one more human voice talking in my house than normal, and also that this human voice was really loud. Moments later, Hellbilly burst into my room and flipped on the light.

"AMBER! Hey, what's goin' on? I ran into your boy [the bartender] over at the bar there and I decided to come over and say hi!"

"Great. Hi. You need to turn off the fucking light now."

"Whoa, hey, aren't you happy to see me?"

"I'm happy I have this blanket on me." I was dressed in a pair of black panties. That's it. For once my blanket was actually on top of me instead of in a twisted heap half shoved into the corner and half on the floor. "I'll be even happier when you shut off the light and go the hell away."

"Holy shit! Why are you being so hostile?"

From the kitchen I heard the bartender shout, "See? I told you! I win the bet!" He appeared at my door all smiles and joviality. "So I'm at Underbar with [Vicodin] Jim and the psycho, and out of nowhere, [Hellbilly] shows up! Oh, by the way, the psycho actually complained about something else besides Jim today. Twice! Anyway, so [Hellbilly] asks where you are and I said you were in bed and he was all, 'I'm coming home with you and I'm going to climb into bed with her.' And Jim told him that was a really bad idea and I told him you'd be mad. But he didn't believe us, he thought you'd be all happy to see him, and he bet us you'd like it. But you're not, you're all pissed, so now we both get a steak dinner, hahaha!" This sparked an argument between them, because Hellbilly didn't think he'd lost as he hadn't actually climbed into bed with me, while they both stood in my room shouting with the light still on.

"HEY!" I interrupted. "Drunk #1 and Drunk #2! Get the fuck out of my room and either use your inside voices or shut the fuck up because if you wake me up again, I start ripping balls off, got it? Out, now."

"I told you," mumbled the bartender as they filed out the door. But something was still wrong.

"Hey asshole, get back in here!" I yelled. The bartender poked his head back in. "Shut off the goddamn light."

I never really got back to sleep.

*****
This morning I was awakened by a nauseating smell. I laid in bed listening for the bartender. When I didn't hear him hopping around in the kitchen, I got up to investigate. The smell got a hundred times worse when I opened my door. Also the kitchen lights were on and the entire house was filled with smoke. I walked into the kitchen and found a pot on the stove with the burner on full blast underneath it and something that was probably once food black and sizzling inside it. Actually, it was Kraft macaroni, which I only determined by the packet of imitation cheese powder sitting unused on the counter next to an unused bowl and an unused spoon. I checked the clock and discovered it was 6 a.m. which meant two things: the pot had been on the stove for at least two hours and probably more, and I needed to check the kitchen smoke detector because apparently it's defective. I shut the heat of and started running hot water in the sink. I don't know how it works with metal, but if you heat up glass to a high temperature and then drop it in freezing water the glass will crack. I wasn't taking any chances. I don't really know why, it's not like the pot is usable. I opened the kitchen windows despite it being 4 degrees outside, lit a bunch of candles and sprayed some Glade through the house. This did nothing. In fact as I sit here right now at 1 p.m. at work, I can still smell burning burnt shit on my clothes which had been hanging up in my closet. As I was leaving the house the bartender woke up. "Did I leave that on?" he asked.

"Yep."

"Oh, sorry."

"That's ok, I took care of it. The window is still open in the kitchen." I have no idea why I said it was ok, because I was furious and it was decidedly not ok, and who gets in their bed while they're cooking something anyway? But I didn't have the energy to yell at him because I didn't get any sleep this week.