Sleep Talkin' Man by Karen Slavick-Lennard Read Free Book Online

arms and enough ears for each one of your fucking suggestions.
    Where’d you put the pelican food? Where’d you put the pelican food?! They’re gonna be really cross if we don’t get the pelican food. Shit. I found the toys for the toucans, but I need the pelican food. If you don’t find their food, I’ll find a reason to punch you in the face. I’m not going out there without the pelican food. Fuck it, you can go out there.
You explain it to them. They’re all beaky and flappy. Once they get excited, they just cause a mess. There’s no reasoning with them, either. Nope. Unreasonable beaky twats. Big mouth fuckers. Find their food!
    We should stand up for the downtrodden and ugly. Let them taste freedom for a moment … and then nuke the cunts.
    I can see your future.
And—oh. You just had the best bit.
    Talk once more, and I will sue you for ear abuse. Shame on you.
Shame! Auraphile.
    The noodles are coming!
Stand by your chopsticks.
Steady the miso … Steady …
Don’t do anything until you see the whites of their strands.
    It’ll suck to be a moose.
You just can’t play Pong.
    I’m sorry,
I can’t come to the phone right now.
But if you’re not my mother, you can leave a message. Beeeep.
    You didn’t leave me any ice cream.
Why didn’t you leave me any ice cream? You shit-head mother fuckers, you never give me any ice cream. Well happy fucking birthday. You’re fucks, the lot of you.
    I only wanted some ice cream. With chocolate sauce. And Oreo. And marshmallow. And some chocolate sprinkles. Yeah, that’s all I wanted. AND A SPARKLER.
Couldn’t even do that for me.
I hate you all.
FUCK BAGS!
    Damn those tortoises.
They outnumber us fifty to one, and we’re not allowed to carry stun guns! Oh!
    Milkshake time! Everyone grab your cow!
    BLECH!
You can’t give me that cottage cheese shit. It’s like albino diarrhea.
    No puppy! Bad puppy!
Make you into puppy slippers.
    One of the fun unexpected side effects of STM going public is that we’ve heard from and met some of the most extreme sleep talkers and walkers in the world. Compared to some of them, Sleep Talkin’ Man seems downright subdued! Once, on a talk show, we met a woman whose antics were truly impressive. On the mild end were the long bouts of sleepwalking where she’d pace angrily around the house wielding kitchen knives, or methodically wash all of her panties in the cat’s water bowl. On the extreme end was a story she told about the night that she went into her grandmother’s room, dragged granny out of bed, forced her into the bathroom, and tried to give her a bath.
    So many people have written in to share their sleep talking and sleepwalking stories with us. It seems almost everyone has a tale about the bizarre things their bedmate, sibling, parent, or college roommate has done in the late-night hours, and, yowza, there are some shockers! An entirely unfettered subconscious can prompt some astonishing behavior, including breaking into your neighbor’s and crawling into bed withthem, and (ew!) drinking the oil off the top of a jar of natural peanut butter.
    I’ve sprinkled our favorite fan stories that we’ve received throughout this book as “Letters to Sleep Talkin’ Man.” I love this stuff. To me, the best thing about these anecdotes and the others we’ve heard is that (usually) no one is hurt by anyone’s sleeping antics and, in the end, everyone’s got a great story to share.
Letter to Sleep Talkin’ Man
One night I was having this dream, but it was the kind of dream where it feels like you’re actually awake. So as far as I knew I was awake, but I was actually sleepwalking. I went into the bathroom and saw the toothpaste lying on the counter, missing its cap. I don’t know why but for some reason this was the WORST possible thing that could EVER happen and if I didn’t find the cap IMMEDIATELY, the world was going to END!! So I looked everywhere—on the floor, under the cabinet, everywhere. No cap.