7 Sins Saga: Sloth

Sloth
May 2, 2007

She forgot to turn the lights out.

He struggled out with his hand. No way. The switch was a good 2 feet from his grasp. He slumped back down into bed, too lazy to attempt getting up. Warm, snuggly blankets pushed back against his body.

The pillow felt cool under his head, and the springy mattress was worn down to his preferred shape. Leaving the bed was so hard to do, not just during the mornings. Most of the time, sleep was the only escape from his mother's cries for chores, and his 'responsibilities'.

He tucked himself deeper into the quilt. Hopefully, his mom would come in and turn off the light... until then, he pulled the blanket over his head.

Then, suddenly, the lights blew out with a sharp 'snap!'.

He rolled over to check the doorway. No sign of his mother. The broken lightbulb fizzed over his head, then sputtered out. He flipped back, grumbling complaints, unwilling to haul himself out of bed to get a new bulb.

Something sharp poked him in the side. He reached down, feeling something hard and pointed in his side. Pulling it up from under the quilts, he looked at it carefully. Some sort of white bone-like object. Odd.

He reached under the blankets. Something else was there, something cold... really cold! The lights sputtered and blared to life in a shower of sparks, lighting the room in sharp flashes. He shrieked as the sudden, frosty grip of something hidden under the sheets grabbed him. In horror, he looked down. A pair of skeletal hands reached from the tangles of the blankets, wrapping tightly around his armpits.

"Oh, and here I was hoping that you'd pass." A skull-face laid its cold chin on his shoulder. Leaning into his ear, it whispered to him through his screams. "Too bad."

Through the blank sparking of the lights above, he struggled against the apparation. A wayward spark fell gently, almost as if in slow motion, down, down towards his bunched up sheets. As it touched, the bedspread burst into a fiery conflagration.

He screamed as the flames licked his toes. The skeletal figure pressed his cheek to its, crooning softly. "Now, dear. For eternal slumber."