The newest installment of Next-Door Neighbor, SMITH’s biweekly series of true stories from today’s best writers and artists, comes from Michel Fiffe. Fiffe, is a Brooklyn-based writer and artist and member of the comics collective, ACT-I-VATE, where a preview of his graphic novel/memoir, Cuba, can be found.

Fiffe puts us right in his head with these words in his haunting first panel “Wykoff.”: “I try to get some sleep but the chest pains are stronger than usual and the ghosts of suicide mom and her molested child are stronger than usual. It is 2am.” His story takes us through the next intense five and a half hours of his sleepless night. It’s pure six-panel poetry, in late-night black and white.

Catch up on more than a dozen other true stories from the best minds of our comic generation in the NDN archives, including our recent story from Harvey Pekar and Rick Veitch.