I am not a creeper, that I can assure you. But I couldn’t help but watch him, as he lay there next to me, calm and unperturbed. We had been dating for five years and never had I seen him as calm as he was when he was asleep. His hand was delicately placed on the pillow next to my head and his fingers twitched as he smirked at his pleasant dream. I brought my hand up to his face and gently stroked his cheek with my fingertips, tracing his cheekbone and ending with his temple.
I began to hum. I was humming a song that I had known since I was a little girl: “Rainbow in the Sky”. My father taught me the song right before he was murdered. It was a happy little tune that always put me right to sleep, except tonight. I glanced over at my clock and it read 2:48 am. I hadn’t slept a wink in three nights. It wasn’t so bad though. Watching him sleep made me feel at peace. Then suddenly his hand reached up and grabbed a hold of mine. He then turned over on his side, dragging me along with him, making me press up against him and letting my body heat intertwine with his.
It was his smell that got to me. Oh gosh, his smell. It was heavenly. I didn’t know what it was or what it smelled like, but it was all mine. He was all mine. He turned on his back. His hand was still loosely gripped onto mine and was now placed on top of his beating heart. He was so close to me. Softly, I kissed his cheek and made myself a little niche in his neck. His breathing was slow and even and almost made me fall asleep, but every time I closed my eyes, something outside would wake me up: a bird chirping, a car passing by, yelling from some unhappy couple, or a shooting from far away. But none of it mattered. Lying there with him made time freeze and the flowers bloom. With him, nothing bad could happen to me. He was my guardian angel, my superhero, my soldier, and my everything.
I remember how we met. It was pretty weird actually yet kind of funny. It was at a bar and he was drunk. Very drunk. I was sitting at a table with my best girl friends and he walked up to me. I had forgotten that it was karaoke night and he began singing to me. He was so drunk, I had no idea what he was saying, but he chose me. Out of all the other girls in the bar, I was the one that he picked out. It didn’t matter that he was intoxicated; he knew what he was doing, even if he would never admit it. Since then, we’ve never left each other’s side.
But things have changed a lot since we met that day at the bar. He became a soldier and left me for a while. But when he returned, he was tougher, more intense, and easily angered. He claimed that it was the war that made him that way—always angry— but I never believed him, yet I never blamed him either. It was never his fault that he had a rough life: an always drunk father, a prostitute mother, drugged up siblings, I’m surprised that he never ran away from home. He stood strong, fearless, and brave. Just like a soldier should.
He’s never been cruel to me. Ever. Never has he slapped, hit, or punched me. He’s always been a perfect gentleman to me by opening doors, pulling my seat out for me and other various chivalrous things and that will probably never change. No matter what, I know that I can count on him to always be there for me through better or for worse, in sickness and in health, and until death do us part.
Slowly, I turned on my back and tried to get some more sleep. Although the clock read 4:36 am, I still wasn’t tired. No, there wasn’t anything on my mind or anything that I wanted to say to anyone, I just wasn’t tired. I know a lot of people can’t sleep during a full moon or in a different bed, but full moons do not last for three nights nor am I sleeping any different from I was four nights ago. Nothing’s changed. Nothing.

---

“So how have you been Miss Katherine? Are you feeling any better since or last visit a couple of days ago?” Dr. Taylor asked me the next morning as I lay on his couch and stared at the multiple ink blots on his wall.
Sighing, I responded, “I’ve been okay. I’m still having trouble sleeping, though. I think you need to bump my medicine up to a stronger dosage, it doesn’t seem to be doing the trick anymore.”
Dr. Taylor wrote some notes down on his notepad. “So you’ve remembered again, I take it,” he asked me. I nodded. “And how does that make you…feel?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know: sad, depressed, lonely, and a little grateful that my father’s dead.”
Dr. Taylor put his notes down and starred at me. “It seems to me, Miss Katherine, that you don’t know why you are here.”
I glanced at him and said, “What are you talking about? I’m here because my father died a very violent death when I was little and I was traumatized by it. Sam is the only person who’s been there for me all this time!”
“No, Katherine, that’s not why you’re here,” Dr. Taylor said, “You’re boyfriend, Sam, is dead. He died three years ago while he was fighting in the war. Ever since you heard news of his death, you have had strange visions of him everywhere you go. Miss Katherine, I’m sorry to tell you this, but you are schizophrenic.”