At the Omni

My good madam, I can sense the anger beneath your professional mien. You’re upset that I’ve trashed my suite, and you’re quite right to be. The damage, as you’ve seen, is substantial. I’ve broken things. Chairs, upholstery, drawers from the vanity. A wall sconce. The mini bar door is ripped clean off. I understand there will be a charge, and I leave it to you to set a fair price.

Madam, the truth is that I have terrible parasomnia.

Sleep Terrors.

I project my dreams into the physical space. Asleep but with eyes open, I dream into the room like a hologram. I can move, react to these dreams. There’s a fifteen-minute period where I’m especially suggestible—here’s a card—to whatever I’m imagining.

Last night, I had a nightmare. I dreamt a band of hulking apes were approaching, a war party marching victorious after the annihilation of another tribe of chimps. They’d eaten them alive, taken the women—the ape women. This was all in my dream, based on an educational nature documentary I observed last evening.

The apes grew suspicious I was not one of their own. I realized that my very survival depended on convincing them that I, too, was a waring ape. The battle had energized them, and a carnal celebration commenced. I needed to blend in.

When I woke and laid my eyes across the room, I felt unbelievable remorse. Why would someone take paintings from the wall and defecate on them? I hope you understand that, from my perspective, during an ordeal I thought was 100% real at the time, I did what I felt I needed to do to survive. These apes, they have the strength of ten men. One of them could rip off my unmentionables and shove them down my throat with the mere suggestion of their strength. So, when I defecated on the beautiful Charles Wysocki print, luckily encased in glass, which sadly broke when I smashed it against the nightstand, I meant no disrespect whatsoever to the Omni Hotel or its staff.

Rest assured that my medical team has tried everything: meditation, medication, both over the counter and prescription, illegal drugs, massage, cupping, intercourse, CBT, prolonged exposure, insomnia, eye-tracking, dogs, stomach sleeping. I count among my only blessings the possession of funds large enough to meet whatever damages I have caused.

I’m hoping we can be discreet, and there may be money in it for you and your beleaguered staff. You can understand what a source of embarrassment my ongoing struggle with sleep terrors is, the word ‘sleep’ being quite misleading, as you now know. The true nightmare is the one I am living now, that each night when I slumber, I might become some beast, or might think it best to open the balcony and go out for a fly, and the more I ruminate on a horror, the more likely it is to appear in my dreams.

What happens now is that my personal assistant, Alan Thing, will take over. He is authorized to make financial decisions on my behalf up to a certain amount, which I doubt we will exceed, unless you are to have me purchase this entire Omni location. Alan Thing will help account not only for the physical damage, but labor, mental harm, and an additional sum representing our sincerest desire to keep this incident private. In return, we’ll ask that everyone sign an NDA in the hopes that not only will photographs of the room not be shared, but that rumors of this event, spread already throughout the staff no doubt, won’t make it into the bar or onto a social media page. We have no legal standing to command signatures, but we hope the financial sum will be motivating for you and your staff, should you decide to split that portion of the contribution, which for tax reasons will be left as a tip in cash, to do with what you please.

Madam, I do travel with a bespoke contraption that straps me to the bed and can only be opened by voice command. Unfortunately, it seems that my sleeping self now knows this, too, and one of the first things I did upon encountering the apes was free myself from the device without waking from my dream, nay, nightmare. You can imagine what a setback this is for my personal health journey.

If I had a partner, they could help, but I am alone. With incidents like this, I will continue to be alone, for despite my substantial financial resources, I am not an attractive partner. These incidents steal my poise and make me poor at conversation with women. I am anxious, unconfident. I do not have a disarming presence. My upper lip wets and my eyes dart rapidly. I listen to audiobooks at 3x speed, and the cadence of my speech has begun to match it, as perhaps you are noticing now, speaking as I have been quickly for quite some time now on account of my mortal embarrassment and the additional fact that I can say with absolute certainty that you are one of the most striking women I have seen in my lifetime. I apologize. This interaction is a microcosm of my life: knowing what horrors befall me each evening, I have no chance of ever appearing in your good graces.

Rest assured that my financial situation was inherited, not earned. I am an inconsequential individual. Were I a man of little means, I would likely be long dead. I am grateful to Alan Thing and others for being loyal employees, and they are paid handsomely for their continued assistance in these matters. Dear me, I am sweating an awful lot. I now give way to Alan Thing, who as you can see has been waiting behind my left shoulder this entire time. I bid thee farewell, and may God have mercy on my soul.