For the dark hours when you dare not close your eyes, it's the no sleep podcast featuring

stories from reddit.com's no sleep forum.

Join us as the sleepless hours tick pass.

Our first tale is entitled Cologne, written by Ali Brosh and read by Faith Sayers.

At first I was annoyed by the shitty dollar store knockoff fragrance that lingered in my

entryway.

I've never worn perfumes, especially not cheap Cologne.

I hate this stuff.

It smells like desperation and it irritates my skin.

As those two thoughts slowly juxtapose themselves, my annoyance turned to sickening apprehension.

I often fear that my house will be broken into.

The fear stems from an experience I had as a child where I awoke to find a man in

a cowboy hat and a trench coat staring at me from across the room.

He carried a bowie knife and a plastic garbage bag.

My parents wrote it off as a night terror, but it continued to haunt me well into my adult

life.

So I check everything, doors, windows, crawl space.

It's so routine that it's almost automated.

I even do it in a particular order to make sure I don't miss anything.

I mean, you don't want to spend your final seconds wishing that you would remember

to check the locks on your bedroom window.

I locked the front door behind me and quickly made the rounds, doors, windows, crawl space.

...