Miniature bears infesting the trees
Matchstick pronghorns racing over tabletops
THE DREAM OF THE JELLYFISH ATTACK
MOST VIRULENT STRAIN
Meteor Shower of Jellyfish Stingers
NIGHTMARE CLUSTERS REPORTED IN FL, GA, IL, NC, OH, SC, VA
LESS COMMON STRAINS
Wedding tents with writhing white tentacles
Baseball playoffs canceled for inclement weather; Wrigley Field covered in livid bubbles
Caribbean cruise-goers watching stingers sizzle onto the Lido Deck
Screaming children carried off by jellyfish balloons
ALERT LEVEL 2—
PRACTICE ENHANCED PRECAUTIONS
As the etiology and transmission dynamics of these nightmares have yet to be determined, the Slumber Corps recommends a cautious approach to all symptomatic dreamers
THE DREAM OF NO ESCAPE
Airport where the departures board and the arrivals board are identical, i.e., Cedar Rapids–Cedar Rapids
Motorcycle handlebars replaced by snakes
Gas pumps covered in black hoods
Boxes of hundreds of rusting doorknobs
Elevator suspended between worlds
Scorpions curled around boot soles
Windows hardening into mirrors
Nursery furniture adrift on a melting glacier
THE UNRIPENING DREAM
Ripe oranges slowly turning green again
Old-growth forests shrinking into acorns
Alligators filing backward into their eggs
Ink leaking out of encyclopedias into clear puddles
Renaissance portraits devolving into ultrasounds
THE NIGHTMARE OF THE WATERFALL OF CHILDREN’S TEETH
Deep woods, red moon
Hard glint of something that is not water
Horror, horror, horror
THE NIGHTMARE OF THE HAUNTED JUKEBOX
Whiskey glasses sparkling at each empty barstool
Obituary photos on the album covers
Voices of your cremated relations drifting through speakers
Scratchy recording of a herd of extinct mammoths trumpeting
Blue sparks around the unplugged electrical cord
THE NIGHTMARE OF THE FINAL EXAM
Grade-school class holding conch shells to their ears
No. 2 pencils gripped in pudgy fists, transcribing a roaring
Substitute teacher in antique diving suit, clapping erasers
Black water lapping at the school windows
Ancient dial tone of the primordial ocean
THE DREAM WHERE YOU ARE THE CONTAMINATED DONOR
Pandora’s box emptied by pneumatic tubes
Leprous bats hanging from your shoe tree
Spiderwebs bridging your eyelids
Your worst secret exhaled into the dream tanks
Sick children murmuring your name
HELP US TO STOP A NIGHTMARE CONTAGION BEFORE IT BEGINS
PLEASE NOTE ALL RELEVANT SYMPTOMS IN YOUR DREAM JOURNALS AND IMMEDIATELY CALL THE NATIONAL NOTIFIABLE DREAM SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM
LET YOUR DOCTOR KNOW WITHOUT DELAY—
1. If you see one or more of the following colors in your dreams:
Coma white
Tarantula hair violet
Rabbit’s eye pink
Molar yellow
Buick LeSabre on fire blue
Smoker’s Lung black
Corn maze green
Hyena’s laughter silver
Preschool fishbowl blue
Mortician’s lipstick red
Ghost rainbow
Stampeding gray
Wolf’s gumline purple
Famine brown
Spat blood maroon
Venusian orange
2. If you see these numbers in your dreams: 44, 1.618, 666, 1,492, −13, 4,141,912, 000,000,000,000.
3. If your dream features one or more of these sensations: wiggling a very loose tooth; tasting red clouds as you plummet earthward; growing a thin, forked tail from your coccyx bone; choking on seawater; kissing your best friend’s long-dead mother.
4. If you engage in one or more of the following activities in a dream: falling in love with a postage stamp; eating a bucket of sour cherries; opening the small, green vault of a barrel cactus; milking a reptile; gonging a clapperless bell; driving an empty school bus; drawing winged bison on a cave wall; winning a lottery that you do not recall entering; biting down on a stranger’s wedding band; riding a land tortoise; manning a lighthouse; house-sitting for twin witches; instigating an orgy under a Christmas tree; forgiving your murderer; floating up into the early moon.
5. If you frequent one of these establishments in a dream:
Red Suds Laundromat
Lucky Devil Strip Club
Lady Feathers’ Fried Chick-N
Uncle Bump’s Go-Karts
Mount Nowhere
Samarra
Daytona
The Grand Cauldron
The Bowl-a-Bed Hotel
6. If you hear one or more of the following sounds in a dream:
baritone chuckling; a buzz saw biting into a tree; giraffes humping; an infant reciting Dante; choirs of owls; bad guitar solos; the ultrasonic howling of a falling star; a finger bone snapping; a widow spider’s footfalls; the scream of brakes failing; a child blowing out a thousand candles; a music too beautiful for words
7. If you have a dream, even seemingly benign, that recurs more than twice in a 72-hour period.
8. If you have any dream in which you observe yourself sleeping, on a bed that is identical to your own, in a world that is indistinguishable from this one, and you watch yourself beginning to wake up.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This novella was originally published as a digital-only ebook in 2014 by the now-shuttered Atavist Books. It was a bold experiment and I am honored to have been a part of it. Thank you to the wonderful Frances Coady and the Atavist Books team.
I’m so happy that Sleep Donation is now available in this gorgeously designed and illustrated edition from Vintage Books. My enormous gratitude to Denise Shannon, Jordan Pavlin, Gail Gaynin, Kayla Overbey, Linda Huang, Christopher Zucker and Debbie Glasserman, Andy Hughes, Barbara Richard, Robin Witkin, Rima Weinberg, Kathy Strickman, Angie Venezia, and Laura Chamberlain.
Thank you, Anna Kaufman, for giving this book its second life. I’m so grateful for your keen editorial eye and for the serious consideration you gave to even the wildest material.
Thanks to Stephen King, for his early and continued support.
Thank you to Ale + Ale, for your nightmarish and hauntingly beautiful artwork.
Thanks to my children, Oscar and Ada, for the free home lessons in the horrors of sleep deprivation.
And thank you all for reading it.
ALSO BY
KAREN RUSSELL
ORANGE WORLD AND OTHER STORIES
Karen Russell’s comedic genius and mesmerizing talent for creating outlandish predicaments that uncannily mirror our inner lives is on full display in these eight exuberant, arrestingly vivid, unforgettable stories. In “Bog Girl,” a young man falls in love with a two-thousand-year-old girl that he’s extracted from a mass of peat in a Northern European bog. In “The Prospectors,” two opportunistic young women fleeing the Great Depression strike out for new territory and find themselves fighting for their lives. And in the brilliant, hilarious title story, a new mother desperate to ensure her infant’s safety strikes a diabolical deal, agreeing to breastfeed the devil in exchange for his protection. The landscape in which these stories unfold is a feral, slippery, purgatorial
space, bracketed by the void—yet within it Russell captures the exquisite beauty and tenderness of ordinary life. Orange World is a miracle of storytelling from a true modern master.
Fiction
ALSO AVAILABLE
St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves
Swamplandia!
Vampires in the Lemon Grove
VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES
Available wherever books are sold.
www.vintagebooks.com
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