Sleeping Alone
There is a serial killer in my neighborhood.
I am hesitant to call him a ‘serial killer’ because he has only killed two people and they were both white. If the victims had not been white, people would just be like, “Oh yeah, that’s living in Chicago!” I’ve used that joke at some open mics and it killed so if you didn’t laugh, let me know. I’ll cut it from further routines.
I’ve started sleeping in my boyfriend’s bed because he lives on the fourth floor of an apartment in a safe neighborhood. My neighborhood, as you know, is not as safe and the first of two doors into my building doesn’t lock. One locked door will not stop the man who has already shot two people — execution style, less than one mile from my apartment — coming into my room. This serial killer in my neighborhood could easily sneak in, stand at the end of my bed, and wait for me to sense him. He could make me beg for my life and eventually shoot me right through the face at close range. This would make my head explode and force my family to have a closed casket funeral for me.
My boyfriend’s apartment is in a safe neighborhood and his doors have many locks. I feel more safe in his bed because he is another person to help me fight off any serial killer who might show up in the night or at least be someone to pull me back into reality when the coats on the door become demons. Another body helps, even if it has to sleep with its back to me.
I come up with escape plans when I can’t sleep. I can hide underneath my bed and hold my breath. I can use the floor lamp as a weapon, it’s long enough that I wouldn’t have to get close to the intruder. In the storage closet between my sister and my room in our family’s first home, there was a board covering an opening to the vents. Until my mom moved out in 2016 in the heat of a divorce, that was my last-resort hiding place if someone was murdering my entire family. I’ve thought a lot about staying thin so I can always hide in a clothes hamper.
A few summers ago, I lived with my post-divorced mom in her post-divorced Nebraska home to save money. I was also her free dog-sitter when she went on her frequent work trips. My mom lives in the perfect post-divorced home. It’s a three-story, slightly-above-basic house in an absolutely-basic neighborhood. The scariest thing about my mom’s neighborhood is the amount of middle schoolers on scooters. When my mom left for trips, I would spend my early evenings cooking pizza in my underwear, pretending I was a 30-something, successful, single businesswoman who owned the house. When it was dark, the neighborhood around me would melt away. I was transported to Amityville or Texarkana and I was Matty, a broke, 22-year-old scaredy cat. I lay awake in my bed and imagine how long I would be able to fend off the towering masked man who would inevitably break into the house, slit my throat, watch me bleed out, and sleep next to my corpse. A boy in my 6th grade class once told everyone about a killer who would murder his victims and then sleep in their beds with the dead bodies. Fixating on this fear every night was real, genuine, and valid.
I’ve reacted mostly positive in stressful situations. I fight, fly, and only a few times I freeze. Sometimes, my brain focuses, I take control, and react the best possible way anyone could ever imagine. I was in a car accident once, T-boned on the drivers side, spun around, and shot into the ditch in front of us. My high school boyfriend (I’ve had a lot of boyfriends, let’s get that out of the way.) screamed the moment we were still. The first thing I said was slow. “Jon. Where’s the weed? We need to hide the weed.” Without his help, I got it out of the glove compartment and put it under the brush next to the car. I managed to protect myself and get out of this situation unscathed. I know it wasn’t a murderer who wanted to gut me, but I kicked ass with adrenaline.
I still spend most of my time in the dark preparing for something horrible. When I’m sleeping alone, I lie in bed staring at the door I expect to creak open and expose the Babadook/Ring girl/Freddy Krueger. I don’t trust myself to be able to protect myself. I stare at the door and wait for something stronger, bigger, more evil to take me in the most brutal way. I stay up all night, unable to calm down until I get so exhausted from fear that I fall asleep for about two hours until it’s light out again. In the morning, I am baffled by how ridiculous I was the night before. It feels like I’m mad at someone else for keeping me awake. Matty! You crazy bitch! No one is going to kill you! No one cares enough to kill you!
When I’m spending the night at my boyfriend’s apartment, after we get wine drunk and watch a scary movie on his couch, we crawl into his bed with plenty of room to hide under just in case. I whisper over and over to him that I love him and that I’m with him because I love him. And I am. And I do. But I can’t go back to staying up all night and hating myself in the morning. I can’t go back to shallow breaths as I watch for any sign of movement at the end of my bed. I can’t go back to being afraid. Plus my student loan payment is due next week and that’s my scary thing for right now.
