Antonio's Uncomfortable Pet

He had adopted the pet as a gesture of kindness. He'd heard that it was good and sweet to own a pet. The particular variety he sought was supposedly of great benefit to its owners, but there were cases – as Antonio knew all too well – of these creatures turning foul.

Antonio completely loathed the pet, and everything it stood for.

It followed him around incessantly. This started as a blessing: Antonio knew he was a lonely man and could do with some company.

He thought (stupidly) at first how it would be touching to see a devotion which never died. When he was cooking his dinner, he thought it would be fantastic to have a friend beside him. Watching TV could be isolating, and he yearned for some interaction, which the pet warmly provided.

But it was not just these occasions when the pet would become involved, Antonio realised. There was no moment of freedom from the pet.

When he was trying to read, the pet climbed onto every page as it was turned. When Antonio went to the toilet, the pet followed him in. This included public toilets.

Antonio thought he might be able to learn to love these traits. By seeing only the good, Antonio thought the little annoyances might disappear.

The trouble was that the pet never disappeared. To overlook someone's faults, you need a moment away from them to assess.

Wherever Antonio went, the pet would follow. When he made it clear he wanted to be alone, the pet would understand and intentionally ignore. There was no time to escape from the pet's piercing review. It was every second of every day. Day or night. The company was always there, and always noticeable. The pet had no need for sleep.

When the pet didn't sleep, Antonio didn't sleep.

It was not the case that the pet couldn't sleep. The pet could sleep up to five hours a night. Or the pet could be awake for weeks at a time.

The pet made a conscious decision whether or not to be asleep. The reasons behind each decision were never clear.

But it was utterly unpredictable. Some nights the pet would be perfectly content to sleep. Other times, it would start awake all night and sleep through the day.

Both of these scenarios could be uncomfortable or pleasant depending upon the circumstances.

The worst times, however, were when the pet chose to stop sleeping. Some nights it would be patiently sat on the pillow next to Antonio's face. Some nights it would let out a single holler at, say, 6 am. Other nights, the pet would sit around, growling or screaming. Sometimes it was growling and screaming at once.

Antonio had no choice but to restrain the pet. He couldn't touch the pet, because it would slide out of his grip and slink away. He tried to lift it from below, but it stung more than he could have imagined.

He couldn't lock the pet up, since the deranged being would howl louder than a fox on fire until Antonio came home, and besides, it had learned how to undo the locks.

When Antonio returned home from work, it was unsurprising to find the pet absent. After all, the pet had spent most of the day following him around at work. What was surprising was finding the pet had arrived home first.

Antonio grew into the pattern of running home from work in the hope of avoiding the pet. He led himself into the (much needed) hope that running home would mean a moment of peaceful solitude.

This solved nothing. No matter how quickly Antonio ran, the pet would always be waiting for him when he opened the door.

Night was the worst. Then, each morning, where everybody else awoke to find the day before wiped away, Antonio had only the drag of an endless period of wakefulness. Antonio had long known that sleepless nights meant no refreshment in the morning besides the realisation of a wasted renewal.

Antonio knew that the pet was powerful. The pet could do more to cause stress than simply move and scream.

When Antonio looked into the dark of his room at night, sometimes it was pitch black and at other times it was shades of grey. Sometimes he could see dimly but distinctly. Other times he could see vague outlines. Often he could see nothing at all. This was controlled by the pet.

Sometimes the bed was hard. Sometimes it was soft. Sometimes it felt what Antonio imagined it would be like to sleep on a cloud. Those were the days the pet was being nice. Those days were common at first, but ended eventually.

When he got itchy, he knew it was because of the pet. It started as a small scratch, and he knew the pet was making it happen.

He itched and scratched more and more. There were new spots to be scratched all the time. New places needed the scrape of fingernails the second one area had been satisfied.

Numerous regions needed exploration concurrently. Armpits, bellybuttons, knees, thighs, scalps, earlobes, heels and palms. He had grown used to rubbing his toes together, but twisted toes digging into sweating soles was impractical to say the least.

His whole body was a nesting ground for invisible termites. It reached the point where Antonio pleaded to know if his body had been swarmed by a new virus. That would be a relief. Viruses could be cured.

Places he didn't know existed now popped up for pain in the middle of every other scratch attack. His lack of sleep was no longer an issue. For all Antonio knew, he could sleep with ease. The issue was that he would never have time to sleep amid all his itching work, even if he could.

His hands provided endless surface area for new problems. Long fingers meant large, round spaces for many textures of skin peeling.

The webs of Antonio's fingers would only be calm once they'd been slit. The back of his hands cracked, and skin needed scratching on both sides. His marrow itself was sometimes itchy.

It went on all through the night. At times, he knew he was trying to tear off his own skin. Each time, he would find himself glowing red. When he was a dirt track of fierce strikes of raw flesh, the itching would intensify and then evaporate.

The pet watched him scratch himself close to death and would make it stop only when the pain had already ended.

When the itching and scratching went away, he knew it wasn't really gone. The itching could return at any second. Antonio made a vow to bow down and do whatever the pet wanted.

Antonio begged the pet to let him succumb. Antonio even believed everything he cried out in the middle of the night. When he screeched that he would cut off each of his fingers if it meant a moment of peace or an hour's sleep on a half-soft bed, Antonio was speaking from the bottom of his heart.

The pet never gave its motives or desires. Antonio was powerless to act.

When days went by with little need to itch, he was elated. Those were bliss, even with the other problems caused by the pet.

He had long forgiven the pet its endless other nuisances.

When worst came to worst, Antonio knew it was impossible to go on living this way. He knew something had to be done.

This was not a simple case of adoption. Nobody else would take the pet, and it would sneak its way back to Antonio's bed anyway.

It would have to be a murder. Antonio always believed himself a deeply moral man. But when it came to three days without a drop of sleep, he really had no choice.

In reality, he didn't sleep at all. He had been counting how long he had stayed awake for. The current record was 55 hours. He would never encourage this sleeplessness, but was chastised regardless by anyone he told the impressive statistic.

As far as Antonio could see, the hour of sleep he got every night or two did nothing but stand in the way of a new record.

Since he could no longer do anything, day or night, anyway, he knew he had to make it into a game. He would gleefully count up the hours he hadn't slept for, and try to feel proud rather than ashamed. He had no control either way.

He found himself screaming down the phone to a doctor without any control over his actions. When he managed to get an appointment, the doctor was unenthusiastic about Antonio's general being.

Out the corner of his eye, Antonio could see the pet stood in the doorway, judging. He knew the second he spoke, the pet would start screaming again.

He eventually explained the problem to the doctor. He told the doctor how he could not sleep. He told how he could not act. He told how he could not move.

He told how he hated the pet. The doctor said the only way to control the pet was by confronting it. 

Antonio explained that this would never and could never happen. The doctor called him a liar and said he could learn to live with the pet perfectly well.

He left in a rage, followed by the pet, both growing faster at the same acceleration. This pace was untenable, but he ran for as far as he could see a path ahead of him.

When Antonio bent double, the pet clawed at his ankles, screeching at decibels he'd never previously encountered. At his wit's end, Antonio turned and looked at the pet.

It didn't cease its activities. Aware of Antonio's observation, it intensified. But he kept up, watching the pet as it attacked him without end, until, at least, he grew to understand the behaviour of this strange creature.

And just as it was understood, it stopped, and melted into nothing.