?Every time the drawer opens and closes, a person in the world is killed.?

  — From The Drawer

  Dawn always frightened me as a child. I don't know why, perhaps because it marked the end of sleep, the moment one had to return to the world. Now dawn is the only thing I watch. The only thing that matters. But I'll come back to that.

  I always loved sleeping.

  I would await the hour of going to bed, tucking myself under the warm and comfortable covers, with something close to longing, already from mid-afternoon. I always considered the mattress one of the finest inventions of humanity. To be honest, I was probably abusing the bed. I slept at least ten hours a night, but it wasn't my fault: I was always tired.

  Everyone criticised me, but there was nothing I could do. I grew tired quickly, until I became foggy and had to return to the comfortable den of the bed.

  It had been this way since I was a child.

  This went on for twenty-five years. I found it very difficult to hold down a job.

  One day, shortly after turning twenty-five, I woke up and never fell asleep again. It seems strange, but it's the truth.

  From that day I no longer felt tiredness, nor any need to sleep. Not that I hadn't tried, quite the contrary. But there is nothing to be done: I simply cannot sleep anymore. The first day without tiredness I felt wonderful, as if I had slept for an entire month. I woke up full of energy and, as the hours passed, I noticed that strangely they weren't diminishing.

  By evening I was still as charged as when I'd first woken up, yet, as one does, at a certain hour one must go to sleep, so I lay down in bed waiting for sleep. It didn't come until morning, and I cursed myself, certain I'd spend the day like a zombie. Instead I got out of bed charged and full of energy.

  I was very surprised but didn't give it too much thought, assuming it was merely a lucky coincidence.

  I began to worry after five days without sleeping.

  It wasn't normal.

  Not that I was unwell, quite the opposite — I was in peak form, and even my colleagues at work said so — but it wasn't normal. In the evenings I kept lying down in bed, but the gesture was becoming pointless.

  After two weeks I decided I would no longer go to bed at all.

  At night I kept watching my favourite series, then in the morning I'd shower, have breakfast and head out full of energy and with a smile on my face. I no longer had lapses in concentration or moments when I needed to rest.

  I was very worried and decided to see a doctor to try to understand the cause of all this. I was afraid it might be some kind of brain tumour.

  The doctor found nothing abnormal, and neither did the tests he ordered.

  Everything was in order. And I couldn't complain because I had never felt so well. At that point the doctor suspected a psychological issue and sent me to a therapist, but she found nothing of note either.

  I decided then that I would only go back to the doctor if I actually felt ill.

  I began to change my routine: at night, instead of sleeping, I stopped watching series and started reading and studying.

  Part of me was worried about what was happening.

  I discovered a world I had never known. The city at night wore a different face — truer, more naked. I saw the baker lighting the ovens at three in the morning, always with the same weary yet precise gesture, almost a ritual. There was the homeless man sleeping at the bus shelter, covered in newspapers, and I would leave a few coins beside him without waking him.

  I observed the lit windows: a woman rocking a crying newborn, a boy studying until dawn with reddened eyes, a couple arguing in the kitchen. I had become the silent witness to the secret lives of the night, those that the day conceals.

  I felt like a ghost passing through the world without touching it — present but invisible, close but unreachable.

  As the weeks went on, however, that magic began to crumble.

  I began to feel different, cut off from everything and everyone. I watched people sleep through windows and felt a mixture of envy and contempt.

  They could switch off their minds, rest, forget for a few hours. I could not. I was always on, always present, always lucid.

  I started to notice how vulnerable they were in sleep, how unaware. I felt superior, and at the same time, terribly alone. Sometimes I would stop in front of my own building and look up at my dark window, wondering who I had become. Who was this woman who never slept? Was she still human?

  But after a few weeks I began to notice small peculiarities. Sometimes I found myself staring at a point without remembering how long I had been there. Other times, while reading, I had to re-read the same page because the words wouldn't sink in. One night I found myself in a neighbourhood I had no memory of reaching, with no recollection of how I had got there.

  I thought it was mere distraction, nothing to worry about. But deep inside me, a small voice was beginning to whisper that something was wrong.

  By now I had grown accustomed and I liked going out at night to walk, immersed in the silence and stillness of the town wrapped in its common sleep. At first it was almost magical: I walked for hours without ever feeling the need to stop, watching the dawn colour the sky while everyone still slept. The dawn.

  Every morning I watched it arrive like an old friend. Pink, then orange, then gold. It was mine, mine alone. The dawn and I, alone in the world. In those moments I felt immortal, as if I had discovered a secret no one else knew: the world before it wakes, the moment when everything is still possible.

  One morning while getting ready for work, a mild dizziness came over me and for a few minutes I felt tired, but I didn't give much weight to the episode because it lasted only a few minutes, then my good mood and energy returned.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  I noticed, however, that these dizzy spells kept recurring at intervals of a few days. At first as many as two weeks would pass between one and the next, but slowly the gap shortened.

  I began to feel less at ease.

  “There, I knew it, something is wrong with me, I'm paying for not sleeping”

  I thought. And in some way it seemed fair, because it wasn't normal or possible never to sleep the way I was doing. The dizzy spells became daily, every morning around eight o'clock.

  They lasted no more than two or three minutes at most, but in those minutes I felt a paralysing exhaustion inside me and everything became confused. I considered going back to the doctor but decided I would wait a little longer; if things got worse I would get to the bottom of it, whatever number of tests it took.

  After a few months the crisis arrived.

  I cannot describe what it means to be trapped inside your own body. The weight. My body had become lead; every limb weighed tons. I wanted to lift an arm and the arm wouldn't move, as if it belonged to someone else, to a corpse. My mind screamed, commanded, pleaded, but my body did not respond.

  The sounds around me were muffled, as if I were underwater. The sunlight coming through the window seemed too bright, it pierced my eyes, but I could not close them.

  I could do nothing. Time had stopped. Every second lasted an eternity. I counted my breaths to keep from losing my mind. One. Two. Three. Each breath was a mountain to climb, a challenge against nothing.

  One morning the dizziness and exhaustion lasted four hours instead of a few minutes.

  I spent four hours trapped by exhaustion and in a confused state, sitting in the kitchen.

  I couldn't even get up from the chair, couldn't reach the phone with my arm. When that episode passed I was terrified. It was like being locked inside one's own body.

  I decided to call the doctor and made an appointment for the following morning, but I couldn't go because the next morning the episode returned and lasted another four hours.

  I'm not ashamed to say I panicked.

  I took the car as soon as the episode passed and rushed to the doctor, who however found nothing unusual and booked me in for tests the following week. I wanted to cry. By now, from eight in the morning until noon, I was immobilised by the episodes.

  I began to lie down in bed to try to fall asleep during the episodes, but I couldn't. I felt a crushing exhaustion but could not sleep. It was torture. I finally had the tests done, but, as I feared, they found nothing. Inside me a deep anger at this whole situation was growing. It didn't seem fair.

  Then, for three days, something seemed like a miracle. The episodes grew shorter. They lasted only an hour, then half an hour.

  The third day just twenty minutes. I remember I wept with joy. Perhaps I was healing. Perhaps my body had found a balance. I called my mother to tell her things were improving; I heard her voice tremble with relief on the phone.

  That night I almost slept — a light half-sleep, but it was something. It was something. I woke up full of hope.

  The fourth day the episode lasted eight hours. Then ten. Then twelve. It was as if my body had played a trick on me, as if it had shown me an exit only to slam the door in my face. That false hope was worse than everything else. Worse than the pain, worse than the fear. Because for a moment I had believed I could return to living.

  My mother came every day. At first.

  Then once every two days.

  Then once a week. I don't blame her. What could she do? She would sit beside the bed, hold my hand, and I couldn't even squeeze hers back. I saw the pain in her eyes, the helplessness that consumed her. Sometimes she cried. Sometimes she spoke to me about ordinary things — the cat, the garden — as if I were a child who doesn't understand.

  As if we were still safe.

  Then one day she stopped coming with the same frequency. I think she couldn't bear to see me like this. I think it was easier for her to know I was ill in hospital than to witness it with her own eyes. To see her daughter transformed into a breathing statue.

  There was a doctor, Dr Ferretti, who seemed to genuinely want to help me. He was young, perhaps thirty-five, and one could tell my case obsessed him. He came to see me even when it wasn't his shift; he talked to me, explained every attempt they wanted to make.

  It was he who proposed total anaesthesia.

  ?It's the last card we have?

  he said, and in his voice there was shame, as if he were apologising for not having better answers. They put me to sleep. Or at least they tried. They pumped into my body doses that would have knocked out an elephant. I stayed awake.

  I heard Dr Ferretti curse under his breath. When I opened my eyes and looked at him, I saw that he was crying.

  From that day he began to avoid me. I don't blame him: I was the living proof of his failure.

  There is a moment I will never forget. One morning, during an episode that had already lasted six hours, a nurse opened the curtains of my room. The light of dawn came in. Pink and golden, as always. The same dawn I had loved, had owned, that had made me feel immortal.

  But this time I could not turn away.

  I could not close my eyes.

  I could do nothing but watch. And for the first time I truly understood what was happening to me: I was condemned to watch the beauty of the world without being able to touch it. The dawn continued to rise, indifferent. I continued to watch it, motionless. The nurse left the room.

  The dawn and I, alone again. But this time I was the prisoner and she the jailer.

  Shortly after the tests, the episodes increased in duration and went from four to six hours. I was completely immobilised from eight in the morning until two in the afternoon. I had resigned from my job because I didn't know how to explain what was happening to me.

  I decided at that point to go to hospital to be admitted and have what was happening to me witnessed firsthand. I never imagined I would not leave again. Weeks passed in which I lost count of the tests and visits from various doctors. They even came from abroad to study my case, but no one with any results.

  They were all stunned and incredulous before me. It was discovered that, in addition to not sleeping, sleeping pills didn't work on me either. Not even morphine. They were all speechless; they had never seen anything like it. They couldn't put me to sleep with any substance or drug.

  In the meantime the episodes grew constantly longer. First they took over the whole day and left me free at night; then, slowly, they began to claim the night too.

  I was living in hell. When I was trapped by the episodes, time seemed to stop moving. Every minute was a month. Every hour a year. Every day an eternity. My mind was lucid — terribly lucid — but my body was a prison. I saw the dawn rise every morning through the window.

  It had once been my favourite moment.

  Now it was just another day beginning, another day I would spend immobilised. The dawn was no longer a friend but a judge reminding me: you are still here, still awake, and you will be, forever. The doctors tried various methods to make the time I spent immobilised more bearable.

  They tried a television, but after a few minutes I lost the thread. Images moved on the screen but made no sense; they were merely colours dancing in the void. They tried reading books to me, but the words became empty sounds, stripped of meaning. Music was worse: every note stretched, distorted, became an unbearable noise I could not ask them to turn off.

  The only thing I perceived perfectly was the absolute helplessness of movement and a terrible sense of claustrophobia. I felt crushed by my own treacherous body. Suffocated by my own flesh. I wanted to scream but not even a moan came out. Only silence. Always silence.

  I have wept a great deal and suffered a great deal. I don't know why this has happened to me, and the doctors have been unable to give me an answer either. I find it all absurd.

  The episodes now last all day; I have only a few seconds of clarity. It is in these very seconds that I have written these words, one sentence at a time, waiting for the fog to lift for an instant. I don't know how many days it has taken me.

  I want to put an end to this senseless suffering. Let me die, I beg you. I cannot describe the agony of being trapped inside one's own body, unable even to sleep or rest or find relief in medication. It is simply too much. I have written this page with enormous effort over the course of many, many days, stealing words from the few seconds of clarity that remain to me.

  Every sentence has cost hours. Every word is a miracle torn from the silence. Yesterday, or was it the day before? I saw the dawn once more. Pink and golden, as always. Beautiful and terrible, as always. If you are reading this, it means I am still here. Still trapped. Still awake.

  Watching the dawn rise, again and again and again.

  Always awake.

  Forever awake.

  Don't leave me here like this.

  Please.

  Put an end to this hell.

  Please.

  (The dawn is rising again.)