User blog comment:Witnessme/Creepypasta Short Story Contest/@comment-24390414-20151012055954

The Long Sleep of Harold Brown

Harold Brown couldn’t sleep. He could never sleep. Some said Harold was a genius, the greatest engineer to ever live. All he wanted was one night of uninterrupted slumber. To slip down his head and drift off in peace like a normal man.

One night he made a decision. If sleep would not come by will of nature alone he would make it come. One full year he spent researching the intricacies of sleep and its mechanisms. Finally he began to build. The machine took shape slowly. It was a ghastly thing, all wires and circuits, silicon, and metal. When complete it fit about his head like a helmet, a single wire ran from the attachment point near the temporal lobe to the power source. All he had to do was put it over his head, flip the switch and sleep would occur instantly. The machine could be programmed to initiate sleep at any given time and grant wakefulness at any other.

A year passed and it was the greatest of his life. Slowly though things began to change, life began to lose its color. Eventually he could no longer perceive color at all. Everything turned black and white. Soon even black and white began to fade. As he lost his sight other changes were occurring. He would touch an object and it seemed that the solidness of the material was gone. His hearing too was fading. The blaring of car horn to him sounded as a dull thud. Then, sound was gone completely. Sight was gone soon after. Then to his horror he could no longer feel.

In the room at Harold’s apartment a rat slowly chewed through the power cord of his sleep machine. One wire at a time was lost and so too was Harold Brown.