Can I Get Some Sleep?
By Robert Tabb

Henry Hermaph was a postal worker, and not a very good one. He would sit
in the mail room, where he was supposed to sort mail, and fall
asleep. Henry suffered from acute insomnia, when he was anywhere but
work. When it was time to go to sleep at home, he couldn't do it. He
tried sleeping in different positions, and different places for
three years before finally giving up. In five years, the only sleep
that Henry Hermaph had gotten was at work.

As one might imagine, Henry had many problems. He was extremely
anti-social, and suffered massive anxiety attacks when in crowded
public places. Five years ago, his wife tried to kill him. She
escaped prison by sleeping with the judge and eight of the jurors, men
and women alike. Her method was apparently effective, it worked. Now
she lived in New York city, with her new fianc�, in a high rise
apartment. All of this made Henry sick to his stomach.

It was Monday and Henry was arriving at work at 6:00am as usual.
He entered the mail room after he clocked in, and went to work. It
wasn't an hour before he was lying asleep. Henry's boss, Mr.
Fellatio, had never had the heart to fire Henry. He knew of Henry's
problems and felt quite sorry for him. A week earlier, Mr. Fellatio
had died from choking on a hot dog at a baseball game. There was now
a new boss, a boss who wouldn't understand, Mr. Fascist. Mr. Fascist
didn't tolerate apathetic people who wouldn't work. This
automatically gave Henry Hermaph a black mark. Henry was apathetic
and almost never worked.

Just as Henry knew would happen, Mr. Fascist, came in while he was
sleeping and woke him up. "Wake the fuck up! What the hell is
the matter with you? Do you even know the meaning of the
word ?work'? You are scum Mr. Hermaph, and if you don't get to work
then I will have you hanged and put on display in the lobby! Do you
understand me?"

Henry nodded apathetically. Of course the death threat was just
made to scare him. People were never put to death for not working, the
only people executed were the ones who stole and sold office products
to England

Mr. Fascist stormed out of the office fuming. Henry began working
at once. He might not be executed but he couldn't afford to lose his
job. Without a job he would be getting absolutely no sleep, and that
would indeed be an undesirable outcome. Within ten minutes Henry was
lying, asleep, at his desk.

The next day Henry received a notice in his box that he was being
fired. He was eligible to receive unemployment for twelve years. By
then he must have a new job. Henry was not worried about the money,
money served almost nothing for him. Sleep, on the other hand, meant
everything and now he was really screwed.

That night Henry walked down to the corner and bought some grade-A
sleeping pills. Sleeping pills were made illegal seven years earlier
but were still widely used by insomniacs and others who felt they
needed them. Henry went back up to his apartment, took his pills, and
smoked some opium. He somehow managed to fall asleep. He was
dreaming. . .

There was a gun shop on the corner and Henry was approaching it.
He didn't know why, he just felt compelled to go inside it. When
he got there he found himself purchasing a fully automatic Uzi
from the late 1990's. ?What am I going to do with this? I don't need
a gun.' He walked out of the shop and the streets were crowded with a
throng of moving, pulsing people. This situation was too much to
bear. Henry felt an overwhelming urge to use the Uzi he just
purchased. Suddenly he found himself pulling out the gun and spraying
the crowd with death dealing bullets. When the smoke
cleared, everyone was dead. As Henry walked through the masses of
bodies, he came across the corpse of Mr. Swine Fascist. He was deader
than the others. His body was decaying and smelled of maggot
infested flesh. Instead of being disgusted, as he should have, Henry
felt thrilled. He took the body to the post office, hung it up in the
lobby, and proclaimed himself the new boss.

Awake. Sweat was beading all over Henry's forehead. Wow, what a
dream! It seemed so realistic. He couldn't go back to sleep, so
instead, he got dressed and headed down to a local bar. He ordered a
bottle of Bicardi 151. The whole bottle was gone in twenty
minutes. Feeling quite inebriated, he headed down to the corner of
52nd and Third. There were always cheap hookers on that corner,
Henry had shopped it on countless occasions. Henry found the perfect
whore, she was wearing nothing and had no visible boils, that was a
plus, not a necessity, but a plus indeed.

After a night of crazy anal sex, Henry didn't know what to do with
himself. The sun had come up and he was dead tired. He thought
about the dream he had the night before, and of the anal sex. The
latter had cheered him up somewhat, but strangely, the dream sort of
had too.

At 11:00am Henry headed downtown to blow his credit cards. What
else was there to do? He came across a corner that looked eerily
familiar. There was a gun shop. He went inside. After he purchased
the Uzi, he came back out to find a whole mass of people, writhing to
and fro through their lives. None of them really seemed to have any
direction. Everyone was just walking aimlessly up and down the
streets. The whole realization made Henry want to scream, like the
painting by Edvard Munch. The Uzi was tight in his hand. Henry
pointed it and squeezed the trigger. The gun wasn't loaded.

Henry walked back towards his home depressed. Half way there he
had an idea. He changed course and headed for the post office. On
the way he loaded the Uzi. He entered the post office with the intent
of killing everyone inside. How typical, he thought. The
old "Disgruntled Postal Worker" routine. Oh well, it's too late to
argue over such trivialities, he had a job to do and he was determined
to complete it. Wait a moment! A job? Henry was once again
working. Suddenly he felt tired. He found a nice wall and fell
asleep against it. He slept there for five hours before Mr. Fascist
had him escorted out.

Night came, Henry didn't have the money for any drugs or hookers.
This night would most surely suck. He went down to the bar
again for a drink. He was bored. Life suddenly seemed so empty and
pointless. He decided to walk further down town and found a bar he
had never seen before. ? Hmm, how strange,' he thought. He swore the
bar hadn't been there earlier that day. He went inside.

Unlike the bars Henry usually visited, this one looked very nice
on the inside and was very crowded. Evidently it was a popular
place. He was still baffled as to why he had never heard of it
before. Oh well, he was going to try to enjoy himself despite his
problems. Maybe he could pick up a slutty girl or some free drugs.
He was feeling a strange since that he had never experienced before,
optimism. It took some time to figure it out since he had
never felt it before, but Henry Hermaph was quite positive that he was
feeling optimism, How strange.

There was a gorgeous girl of about twenty sitting on the stool
next to Henry. She had Blue hair, trimmed at her beautiful jaw line.
She was medium height and had very nice curves. Her eyes were
a beautiful, deep brown. She was smiling at him. Henry felt very
joyous. He had never considered himself an ugly man but to have the
interest of such a beauty was unheard of for him.

The blue haired woman leaned over and whispered into Henry's
ear, "Meet me in the alley out back in ten minutes." Then she got up
and walked away. Her voice had been that of an angel. Henry knew it
was so. He had heard the exact same voice in a dream when he was a
little child. Henry was so excited. Too excited. He went to the
bathroom and rented a stall. He spent five minutes masturbating to
avoid a premature ejaculation later. Henry grabbed a drink before
heading outside to meet his good fortune.

The night was cold and the alley was dark. The whole atmosphere
was a little frightening. Henry's worries were vanished when he
spotted the blue haired goddess standing by the wall. He approached
her wondering what to say first. "So, my place or yours?" he said
matter of factly.

"Mine," she said.

"Before we go, what's your name?"

"My name is Belantiakhterisktilan, but on your planet I go by the
name, Belan."

"My planet? What? You can't be serious. The League of
Scientology disproved the possibility of extraterrestrial life almost
one hundred years ago."

"Government and religious propaganda seems to be very common on
your world. Shall we go? "

"Sure." This should be interesting he thought to himself."

"Yes, quite interesting," Belan replied.

Henry followed Belan to another alley about a mile away. There
she pulled out a hand held device and pushed some buttons. "Here we
go," she said.

A blue beam came down from the sky and zapped the two of them.
Henry felt a tingling sensation running all over his body. Spiders
were crawling in and out of every orifice on his body.

The next thing Henry remembered was standing in a prison cell on
board some space ship.

"What the fuck?" Henry said aloud. There was a guard standing
outside his cell. "Where am I?"

"You are on board the starship Firefly in a holding cell.:

"Why the fuck am I in a holding cell?"

"You are a prisoner of war."

"War? What war? I wasn't aware of any war and I assure you that
I keep well up to date on the state of affairs on this world."

"Who's to say that the media knows anything about this war?"

"Well, usually they do. How would they not know?"

"Well," said the guard, "It is a very secret war and only a few
people from the top governments know anything about it."

"Hmm, I suppose that you could be right."

"You are in a jail cell aren't you? You can't deny that unless
you are more disturbed than we thought. That's enough talking now. I
have work to do. You will get three meals a day and one hooker a
day. I hope this is satisfactory to you."

"What kind of prisoner am I that I get a hooker every day and you
want to know if it's satisfactory?"

"No more questions. It's time for your hooker, there will be ten
of them down here in a moment for you to choose from."

Sure enough, ten minutes later, ten hookers arrived. He chose one
that he thought would be the best. She wasn't the most beautiful,
she had a few puss filled boils, but she was far from the
ugliest. Henry had a knack for picking out the best hookers and they
were rarely the most beautiful.

An hour later Belan came to talk to Henry.

"Henry, this is a very important meeting. We need your help."

"If you need my help then why am I a prisoner?"

"If we don't get your help then we will torture you until you die
from the unbearable pain."

"Oh, I suppose that would make sense. Thank you for the whore by
the way."

"We find that by treating our prisoners kindly they feel less like
prisoners and are more likely to be cooperative."

"What a good idea, I'm surprised we haven't thought of that back
on Earth."

"Okay, Mr. Hermaph, let's get down to business so to speak. How
long did you work at the United Earth post office?"

"I worked there for twenty-seven years."

"Okay, and how old are you?"

"I am thirty-two years old."

"Okay, good. Do you have any good reasons to hate the people of
the post office?"

"Yeah, they fired me after all my years of loyal service."

"Would you be willing to help us infiltrate the post office by
giving us access codes?"

"Sure, but I don't see why you'd want them."

"There is a war being raged by us against Earth and we need to
gain control of the largest source of information possible. The
postal service handles most of the information on Earth and we need
access to it desperately."

Henry wanted to explain to her that she was wrong. Most of the
information on Earth was kept in the World Wide Computer Network
(WWCN) and that most mail was sent via the WWCN also, but that would have
ruined everything and he would no longer be significant enough.
"Well, I suppose I could do that, but only under one condition."

"Name your price Mr. Hermaph."

"The boss at the Post office is called Swine Fascist and I would
like to watch him be tortured until he dies."

"That can easily be arranged. Now, can you give me the access
codes?"

"Actually, they are at my apartment, I'd have to go get them."

"Very well, I'll let you go to get them. We'll be back for you at
that bar you were at the other night tomorrow. Until then, don't
do anything stupid."

Before Henry could respond he was sitting in his recliner in his
apartment. "What the fuck? Was all that a dream? No, it wasn't
possible. It was too realistic." He rummaged through his desk
until he found what he was looking for. Then he thought of one
more request.

Not being able to sleep, Henry went down to a local coffee shop
and ordered a latte. He drank and drank coffee until he was so wired
that he thought he would snap. Downtown there was a big
festival going on. It was the battle of Washington celebration from
when the rest of the world burned down the capital of the old United
States of America. Henry decided to join the festivities.

He was at the festival for an hour before he noticed some
suspicious looking men following him. Henry decided to head back to
his apartment hoping that the men wouldn't follow. He was wrong. As
soon as he was alone they jumped him. They beat him senseless and
hand cuffed him with ultra high tech plasma cuffs. These handcuffs
were extremely rare and only used by top government agencies. Aside
from this one aspect, his abductors did not resemble government
agencies at all. They were dressed all raggedly and looked like
bums. Henry decided that it must be cover. Hell, if the commoners
spotted government agents they would lynch them.

Henry found himself in a less than hospitable holding cell
underground. Damn, no hookers or food. After a few hours a couple of
men came and got him. He was dragged to a small room with moderate
lighting.

"Okay Mr. Hermaph, we are going to make this as short as
possible. What do you know of the war and of extraterrestrials?"

"I don't know anything about any war. I thought we were in a
state of euphoric world peace."

For that sarcastic remark, Henry was pummeled in the face with a
titanium baseball bat. He knew his nose was broken. The guards did
nothing but stare him down until he had caught his breath to reply
with a suitable answer.

"I'm sorry, I don't know anything about a war, and I thought that
the possibility of extraterrestrial life was disproved by The League
of Scientology almost one hundred years ago."

"I don't believe you are telling the truth to me," said the burly
man. "Do you know what happens when you lie to the Dark Claw Elite
Force?"

"Um, no."

"Well, now you will find out."

Henry was immediately dragged away by a couple of guards into a
new cell. This cell had torturous devices lined on the walls. Henry
was strapped into one of them. The chair looked kind of like a
dentists chair except with strange looking instruments attached to
it. An arm began to move.

"It must be automated," Henry guessed correctly.

A device that looked like a large razor blade from the late
twentieth century was approaching his chest. It stopped short by
about a foot. Two arms came out and tore off all of his clothes. Now
Henry was naked. The razor blade was then lowered to his chest
and tore into his skin. It took the skin from his collar bone to his
navel off with a very slow motion. Henry was screaming in intolerable
agony. Thick needles were being slowly pushed underneath every
fingernail. A device reached out and took hold of Henry's penis. It
slid a curved piece of glass deep inside his urethra. Henry sat still
and waited for something to happen. A door opened up and a gorgeous
woman, wearing nothing stepped out. She came over and began licking
Henry's penis. "What kind of torture is this," Henry
wondered. All too soon he figured it out. As he got an erection the
curved strand of glass slowly broke into pieces within his penis. The
woman then left.

Another device that looked like a some sort of probe with razor
sharp claws was approaching. Just then six soldiers entered the room
and blasted the arm. They released Henry and took him quickly back to
his apartment. There they got the access codes that he needed and
they all teleported to the starship.

Henry was placed in a holding cell again. This time he refused
the hooker. His penis was getting infected and swollen, and as can be
imagined, hurt like hell. He layed there in pain for three days
before anyone came to see him. It was Belan.

"The access codes you gave us didn't work."

"What? They must have changed them, I'm sorry."

"It's okay. We nuked the post office and the five square miles
surrounding it. All the people you wanted dead are."

"Oh, that's right. I was going to make one more demand before I
gave you the codes but I never got a chance to. I wanted you to kill
my ex-wife in the most torturous way possible. I guess it's too late
now. During this war, if you ever get the chance, please nuke all of
New York City. You'll get her then."

"I'm sure we will eventually, but we won't be doing it for you.
You will be dead."

"What? How do you know that? Is your species psychic?"

"No, if we were psychic we would have known that you couldn't get
the real access codes and we wouldn't have wasted our time on you.
No, I am going to have you tortured to death for giving us the wrong
access codes,"

"What!? No, please don't. I thought we had some kind of
connection."

"I thought you had some kind of important connection but I was
wrong."

Henry was dragged away by a couple of guards. After two months of
horrific, unimaginable torture, Henry was dead. In the end, just like
everyone else, Henry got the sleep he was always looking for.