Free Insomnia by Stephen King Page A

sight, then simply sat with his hands folded in his lap, gazing out on the silent neighborhood, where the orange hi-intensity lamps added to the illusion that Harris Avenue was nothing but a stage set standing deserted after the evening performance had ended and the actors had gone home; they shone down like spotlights in a perfect diminishing perspective that was surreal and hallucinatory.
    Ralph Roberts sat in the wing-chair where he had spent so many early-morning hours lately and waited for light and movement to invest the lifeless world below him. Finally the first human actor – Pete the paperboy – entered stage right, riding his Raleigh. He biked his way up the street, tossing rolled newspapers from the bag slung over his shoulder and hitting the porches he aimed at with a fair degree of accuracy.
    Ralph watched him awhile, then heaved a sigh which felt as if it had come all the way from the basement, and got up to make tea.
    ‘I don’t remember ever reading about this shit in my horoscope,’he said hollowly, and then turned on the kitchen tap and began to fill the kettle.
    5
    That long Thursday morning and even longer Thursday afternoon taught Ralph Roberts a valuable lesson: not to sneer at three or four hours’ sleep a night simply because he had spent his entire life under the mistaken impression that he had a right to at least six and usually seven. It also served as a hideous preview: if things didn’t improve, he could look forward to feeling like this most of the time. Hell, all of the time. He went into the bedroom at ten o’clock and again at one, hoping for a little nap – even a catnap would do, and half an hour would be a life-saver – but he could not so much as drowse. He was miserably tired but not in the least bit sleepy.
    Around three o’clock he decided to make himself a Lipton Cup-A-Soup. He filled the teakettle with fresh water, put it on to boil, and opened the cupboard over the counter where he kept condiments, spices, and various envelopes containing foods which only astronauts and old men actually seem to eat – powders to which the consumer need only add hot water.
    He pushed cans and bottles around in aimless fashion and then simply stared into the cupboard for awhile, as if expecting the box of soup packets to magically appear in the space he had made. When they didn’t, he repeated the process, only this time moving things back to their original positions before staring in again with the look of distant perplexity which was becoming (Ralph, mercifully, did not know this) his dominant expression.
    When the teakettle shrieked, he put it on one of the rear burners and went back to staring into the cupboard. It dawned on him – very, very slowly – that he must have drunk his last packet of Cup-A-Soup yesterday or the day before, although he could not for the life of him remember doing so.
    ‘That’s a surprise?’ he asked the boxes and bottles in the open cupboard. ‘I’m so tired I can’t remember my own name.’
    Yes, I can, he thought. It’s Leon Redbone. So there!
    It wasn’t much of a joke, but he felt a small smile – it felt as light as a feather – touch his lips. He stepped into the bathroom, combed his hair, and then went downstairs. Here’s Audie Murphy, heading out into enemy territory in search of supplies, he thought. Primary target: one box of Lipton Chicken and Rice Cup-A-Soup packets. If locating and securing this target should prove impossible, I’ll divert to my secondary: Noodles ’n Beef. I know this is a risky mission, but—
    ‘– but I work best alone,’ he finished as he came out on the porch.
    Old Mrs Perrine happened to be passing, and she favored Ralph with a sharp look but said nothing. He waited for her to get a little way up the sidewalk – he did not feel capable of conversation with anyone this afternoon, least of all Mrs Perrine, who at eighty-two could still have found stimulating and useful work among the Marines at Parris