Die Before You Sleep

You ever wonder what happens to you when you die? Well, I have a little idea of it. People die at all ages, and of all types of causes. Sometimes it's by injury, sometimes it's by disease. But sometimes, old men and women just die in their sleep. People who are perfectly healthy, just old. There really is no explanation for why they die, but they do.

There was a little test done in the 1950s to see if this could be explained. They took ten subjects who were at least eighty years old and asked them if they would stay in a facility until they died. These people were particularly aged; you could tell they didn't have long left.

As each one died, something peculiar happened. Just before their hearts stopped, their brain readings became incredibly erratic. But they still matched a certain pattern - that of a person having a nightmare, the worst nightmare anyone had ever seen. Their faces stayed perfectly calm, along with their bodies... but they were not calm.

One of the test subjects survived. He seemed like a very resilient man. He had the brain readings, same as the others, but his heart did not stop. Instead, he awoke with a scream and jerked up violently. The scientists rushed to him and asked what had happened in his mind. He said it was the most terrifying thing anyone could ever see, that it was the reason people die in their sleep. He said that dying in your sleep was not peaceful; it was the worst experience you could ever have. And as he was about to tell them what had happened... his eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed onto the bed. He had died from exhaustion. His heart failed completely.

The scientists were baffled. The project was stopped there - they refused to put any more people through this experience. The results were locked away, hidden from the eyes of the world. It was lost in the government machine, for the public never to see. But one of the scientists was not satisfied with this. Many years later, he was of the age where he could die in his sleep. He remembered the project from years ago, and decided to find out what the old man was about to tell them. He spent quite some time preparing his old heart for anything that could come at it. He wanted to make sure he stayed alive.

One night, he went to sleep, same as always. But his dream was different. He was in the dark, with a small light emanating from what seemed to be a bathroom. He couldn't stop himself from walking towards it. He opened the door; there was one small flickering light, a dirty looking mirror, a broken-down toilet, and a shower, which seemed to be in the same condition. The floor was cold concrete, and there was a sink. It seemed perfectly normal.

He felt himself being forced to wash his face. He looked up from the sink into the mirror and saw himself. He looked perfectly normal as well. He wiped his face off, reopened his eyes, and saw his reflection again. But it was much, much different this time.

The person in the reflection seemed to be him... but they were different. It was as if someone had taken him out of the grave around six months later. The figure was decayed, but still retained some resemblance to him. The scientist was paralyzed with fear, but not paralyzed enough to stop himself from fulfilling an incredible urge to reach out towards it. He slowly moved his hand towards the mirror. Instead of having his hand stopped by cold glass, it kept going towards the figure. He whipped his hand back with incredible shock and fear. The figure slowly started to speak. He said in a raspy, degraded version of the scientist's voice, "E-everyone h-h-has their time. Y-y-you were lucky enough to last this long. B-but your time has come... prepare y-yourself." The figure then moved towards him.

He looked for any escape whatsoever. But the door had disappeared. He was trapped in that room. His fear completely froze him from any movement, and the figure suddenly rushed at him, screaming a more terrifying scream than you could ever imagine in your entire lifetime. As soon as it made contact with him, he woke up. He sat up violently, heaving massive breaths.

The scientist realized immediately what he had just experienced. He quickly grabbed a piece of blank paper that was sitting on the desk next to him. He had prepared this beforehand, just in case. He scribbled out the words as quickly as he could, for he knew that his heart was about to collapse. The paper said, "DIE BEFORE YOU SLEEP". He then threw the paper and pencil down, and expected to die right then. But he didn't. He looked over to the exit from his room - standing there was the figure from his nightmare.

The figure whispered, "Y-you didn't think you c-could get away that e-e-easily did you?" The scientist's eyes widened with terrible fear. He managed to whisper, "What... what are you?"

The figure rushed towards the side of his bed and whispered in his ear, "I am God." And with those words, the scientist died.

The scientist was a lonely man. All of his family were dead, and he had but one friend. Nobody found the body for months. But one day, his friend came to visit. He went to his house and knocked on the door. No answer. After a few seconds, he smelled an incredibly horrid stench coming from the house. He walked around to the back and looked in the bedroom window. Inside, it was dark, but he could make out the decaying figure of his friend, who had been in there, dead for months. The figure almost exactly matched the one that had caused him to die.

He called the cops and they picked up his body. The cause of death was simply declared, "old age". But they found the paper next to his bed. It was filed away in evidence, and there were a few local newspaper stories about it. And so everyone kept on believing that dying of old age was natural, and dying in your sleep was the most painless method to go by.

Well, good for them.