The Price Of Sleep- Chapter 1

I walked into the room, head held high, feeling quite proud of myself for finally taking one step closer to my dream. Buying this house- with this room- had been an essential part of that dream. 1

It was a spare room in my house, with no furnishings, plastered in a peeling white eggshell paint. With a sigh of deep satisfaction, I stood in the center of the room with my hands in my pockets, imagining. In this room, my darkest fantasies would come to life.2

I was 25 and had just moved out of my parents house after graduating from the local college. My major was in graphic design, and I now had a part-time job at a store. This house, located in a rural country area, had immediately caught my attention. There were no houses nearby, and was surrounded for acres by untamed forest. 3

For years now, I had wanted to commit a murder. There was no dancing around it; I wanted to, more than anything. As a child, after Mike, I had killed several other animals. From a hampster, to a kitten next door. From that pink, hairless kitten, a dog. It was a stray, whom I would feed scraps of my mother's cooking. My parents knew nothing of these exploits- I wasn't that stupid, but they became suspicious after that damn dog went missing. After that, they watched me closely. 4

Luckily, my morbid urges were satiated for a few years with the help of biology. I couldn't have imagined that I would ever be told to actually cut open a once living creature. Sure there was no blood, but the thrill of ripping out organs and even dicing those entrails was enough for me.5

Following biology and dissection, I confined myself to horror movies for years, and had planned to forever, until I saw that house.6

Since I had been so good, I reasoned, still fantasizing in the paint-peeling room, I would treat myself. Just once. How different would it be to kill something that could speak? 7

I didn't doubt that I would be able to commit the crime.