[ WP ] `` I do n't sleep . '' He/She said .

Times were tough in the 20's. I was an only child and my old man had left me and my mother to chase after some vixen who promised that she'd sing to him every night after blowing him. I think back to it now, the way he described her to me, and I honestly do n't blame him. My mother was n't a looker, and she was a hell of a nagger. 
 
 Me and my mom lived in the boonies outside of town in a pack of trees. Tall tuliptrees stretching so high that you had to crane your neck back to see the top of them. I had to walk about a mile through them to get to school, but I wo n't bore you with the whole `` back in my day'' business. 
 
 Having no father made life growing up hard, and things got even harder. It was a rainy day in April when I came home from elementary to find my mother dead in the living room. That's a lot to put on a 13 year old, ya know? 
 
 I'm no genius now, and I was even dumber then, but I knew from the marks on her throat that someone had strangled her. Well, something. I wish it was someone. 
 
 There was n't anyone to take me in; I had no family, see? Instead, after they took my poor old woman away to be roasted, I had to live in this goddamn house. 
 
 Angry at the house? No, I would n't say that, well maybe. I loved the house before my mother died. After my mother died, see, was when I noticed it following me around. Walking to school, I could hear the branches snapping. Not on the ground, but in the trees. 
 
 I'd look up into the canopy of branches of leaves, swearing on my dead mother that I heard something up there. But at first, I did n't ever see it. I'll tell you now, I'm not sure if I just did n't know what to look for, or if maybe it did n't want to be seen yet. 
 
 I'm normally not the skiddish type, but after weeks of feeling something watching you from the trees, you tend to become the type who always looks over their shoulder. It became a habit of mine, looking over my right shoulder. So much so that I even did it in school even if I did n't actually hear anything. 
 
 It was in high school that I finally saw it in the trees. It was for a brief second, but it was long enough to make me forget how to breathe for a few moments. 
 
 It was crouched on a thick tree branch. It's skin was black and its skin was mottled. Almost looked like scales. I did n't get a good look at it's face. I probably would've died on the spot if I did. I saw it, and I know it saw me. It stood on the branch. Jesus it was so tall and lanky, you would n't have guessed it if you had seen it crouching first like I did. 
 
 And then it leaped away through the branches like a bobcat. 
 
 I ran to the sheriff and told them what I had saw, and like anyone could've guessed, he claimed that it was probably just an animal, a cat maybe. Even after describing what I had saw, he just laughed it off and said he'd send an officer over to check it out. 
 
 No officer ever came. 
 
 Going through the woods after seeing the damn thing made life hell. I wanted to run on my way to school, but I got the feeling that if I ran, it would chase me down, finally attacking me. So I walked. I walked and on some days I would hear it following me, leaping branch to branch. I tried to look at it several more times after building the courage, but I almost always missed it. 
 
 It made me wonder if I was just imagining it, but on some days, I would catch a glimpse of it from the corner of my eye, and my stomach would turn because I knew then I was n't just going crazy. 
 
 Nowadays, it comes to the house. I can hear it crawling around on the roof at night. It knocks sometimes. I think it is trying to find a weak point. I do n't know why it does n't just come through the windows, maybe it's afraid of glass. 
 
 The other night, I heard my mother's voice from the roof, despite her being a pile of ashes sitting in a jar on the mantle. Then I heard knocking on the roof again. It knew how my mother spoke. And it knocks and knocks. 
 
 I do n't sleep. I know if I do, it'll crash through the roof and wrap its hands around my throat, and do to me what it did to my mother. I do n't sleep anymore at night. Instead I just listen to it knock. I listen to my mother calling my name. 
 

