Selected Stories

by Nate Southard

  Tommy awoke to pain. He squeezed his eyes shut, afraid to open them, and the simple motion sent white hot lances of agony through his muscles, his bones. He almost screamed, but he trapped the cry in his lungs. He feared the pain such an exclamation might bring. It would probably kill him.

  Maybe he was dead already.

  No. Couldn’t be. No corpse could be in this much misery. Lying on his back, he took stock of his injuries. He found nine bolts of pain that were probably broken bones. Five were ribs. His left arm featured two, and his left hand felt like it had been crushed. His right leg completed the collection. How on earth had he wound up like this?

  The memories passed behind his eyelids in flashes, melting together with the bursting colors of torture. He saw the squat, dismal town and the pile at its edge. He remembered killing the sentry and walking into town, speaking with the constable. No, sheriff. Sheriff Potter. Potter had said he could stay, but he had to—

  The bricks. They flooded his memory like a tidal wave of rust and ash. They’d stoned him, and if he survived he could stay. He could build a home and bury Sabrina.

  “Sabrina!” The word broke loose from his throat like a tree snapped off at the base by storm winds. A scream followed it, a racking cough full of blood and phlegm right on its heels. His eyes jangled open, and the dying light of dusk filled his vision like vengeance.

  “That her name?”

  Potter. Tommy took his time turning to look at the man. His neck creaked and sent traces of torment into his skull, but he knew he’d have to start moving eventually. If he didn’t try to get up soon, he might never move again.

  “Yeah,” he said in a whisper. He found the sheriff crouched in the dirt ten feet to his left. Sabrina lay a few feet behind the man, still wrapped in a blanket. This was a different cover, though. It was dry, if not clean.

  “I figured she was special to you, so I had her put in a dry one,” Potter said.

  He answered the sheriff with a glare.

  “Her clothes stayed on, Tommy. Don’t you worry about that.”

  He tried to swallow and failed. His throat sent him a warning not to try again.

  “How…long?”

  “About a day, if you’re asking how long you were out. You took that beating like a man. I won’t deny that, no sir. They really make you sweepers that tough, or were you just lucky?”

  “Build my own luck,” Tommy said. His voice died a little with each syllable. Now, it was barely more than a dry rasp—grit on the breeze. He didn’t know how much longer he could keep this up without water.

  “We treated your wounds best we could. Wrapped your ribs up. Got a splint on your leg and the closest we could manage to a cast on your hand. Might make working the shovel difficult, but I figure you’re determined enough to make do.”

  The sheriff pointed past him, and Tommy followed the finger, turning to find a shovel sticking out of the dirt a few yards away. Sparta lay maybe a hundred feet past it, and a load of bricks had been dumped between the two.

  “I guess you’ll want to bury Sabrina yourself,” Potter said. “You more than earned that right. As for your house, I wheeled out your first batch of bricks myself. There’s plenty more from the buildings that collapsed. Don’t suppose you’ll be up to construction anytime soon, so you can stay at what serves as our police station until then.”

  “No need,” Tommy said. “I’ll stay near her.”

  “Suit yourself.” Potter stood to his full height and dusted the ash off his knees with hands that were just as dirty. “I’ll bring some water out for you. Some blankets, too.”

  “Thanks.” It was the last word he could manage.

  The sheriff walked past him, and Tommy listened to the retreating footsteps before trying to sit. The movement hurt like the worst of Hell, but he fought through until he could turn over and crawl to where Sabrina lay.

  The dry blanket was blue and not nearly as dirty with ash as he’d expected. Somebody must have beaten as much of the sediment out as possible. Tommy ran the fingertips of his left hand—all that stuck out from the blob of dried plaster and mud that was supposed to be a cast—over the fabric and found he liked the people of Sparta. He hoped he could get his start with them, and he prayed he could behave himself.

  With his good hand, he unwrapped the blanket from around Sabrina’s face. She was beautiful, her face peaceful and pale. Bodies didn’t really decompose anymore because of the weapons they’d used in the conflict, but it didn’t make the dead anything other than corpses—reminders of what had once been.

  Sabrina would be his reminder.

  He unwrapped her shroud further and saw the collar of her jacket was still buttoned up to her chin. Good. He guessed Potter had told the truth about her clothes staying on. He probably wouldn’t be alive otherwise. After all, the sheriff still believed he’d been a sweeper.

  A sweeper. Not bad for a lie. If nothing else, it left him with a clear conscience.

  Slowly, he unbuttoned her collar. One silver button, two, and then he could see the ragged, gaping wound that stretched across her throat. He’d cut the fatal slice into her only three nights before, but it already felt like the distant past.

  “I’m sorry, Sabrina,” he whispered. He didn’t know her real name, but he liked the sound of the one he’d given her. And he did feel sorry. She’d done nothing to him. She’d only been nearby when the murder feeling in his stomach grabbed hold. He’d bled her dry so the rumbling in his torso would quiet.

  Maybe if he buried her instead of burning her like the rest. Maybe that would make the rumbling stop.

  He had his doubts, but no other options. He needed to survive, so he needed community. A man couldn’t survive without others anymore. Just like the conflict had made everybody equal, it had made them all dependent on one another.

  Even bastards like Tommy.

  He eyed the shovel, then buttoned Sabrina’s collar and covered her face once more. He would bury her and end his cycle. He could belong in Sparta, could help. He’d build a home, build some luck. Maybe if he built enough, he’d never feel the rumblings that made him do such terrible things.

  Maybe he’d get his start.

  INSOMNIA IS MY ONLY FRIEND

  I’ve heard you can start hallucinating after only twenty-four hours without sleep, but I’d gone three days with nothing to show for it. I’d spent almost the entire space of time in the small waiting room outside the ICU, sitting in the cramped chair that seemed to only fit children or fashion models. I twiddled my thumbs and drummed my fingertips across my kneecaps. I paced the same ten feet of floor over and over again. I watched that awful thing they call daytime TV: soap operas and celebrity talk shows and the million and one courtroom reality series that seem to populate network television between one and five. I hoped the idiotic programming would dull my thoughts, but it failed.

  I tried to sleep a few times, stretching out on the tile floor that smelled of antiseptic and shoe rubber. I’d close my eyes and slow my breathing and try like hell to fall asleep, but anytime I came close I’d see the paramedics pull Katy out of the car. My eyes would snap open, and I’d end up turning on the TV again, watching that pretty boy who used to be on MTV or the awful infomercials that followed. I watched every mind-numbing second, trying to forget the way blood had matted my wife’s hair or how long it had taken the paramedics to cut her out of the car in the first place. Jesus, it had seemed like forever.

  The drunk who’d crossed three occupied lanes to crunch into us had died on impact, something you don’t see happen to drunks very often. The bastard was lucky. If he’d survived, I’d have killed him in the most painful way I could imagine. I’d have made sure he was good and sober when I did it, too.

  But that’s neither here nor there, really. I’m trying to get this out before I start to look like a raving lunatic as well as sound like one. At least now there’s a slim chance somebody might actually believe me. I know it’s far from a sure thing, but I figure it’s worth a s
hot. And fuck it; a shot’s better than nothing at all.

  So, it had been three days, thirty-six hours of waiting. The doctors had told me to go home, there was nothing I could do to help at the hospital, but I’d told them as politely as I could to shove it up their assholes. They didn’t keep me updated on Katy’s condition so much after that, but they didn’t try to stop me when I went in to visit her for five minutes every other hour.

  It was on my way back from one of those visits, pushing the ICU doors open as I tried to shove the image of Katy hooked up to a collection of machines out of my mind, when I saw the first one. It was a glimmer, a white, hazy figure at the end of the hall, and it was so faint that at first I thought I might be imagining things. It was easy to tell myself I’d been awake too long, that I was under too much stress and my mind had decided to go on a little break, but the glimmer was moving toward me, a walking pillar of smoke, and as it drew closer my denial fluttered away. I wish I still had that sense of doubt. Right about now, I’m pretty sure I’d kill for it.

  The shimmering thing wore a lab coat, one that would have been a crisp white if it wasn’t smeared with some strange form of filth that clung to the fabric in streaks the color of nicotine stains. The coat seemed to glow, to illuminate the hallway like a searchlight underwater. I rubbed at my eyes, trying to bring them back into focus, but then I realized that the lab coat was the only thing that looked that way. The rest of the hospital stood in sharp focus, as if I hadn’t been awake for the past three days. As if I was just a normal Joe without a dying wife.

  I tried to look at the thing’s face (I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman or even human), but there was nothing there, only a swirling shadow in the shape of a human head. I tried to get a better look, but the shadow and the coat seemed to dissipate, to fall apart and scatter into the air like smoke in a breeze.

  I stood in the hallway for a long moment, staring at the spot where the thing had been, before deciding that, yes, I really did need to get some sleep. I stepped into the waiting room, where a young couple that had arrived maybe two hours before sat holding each other, and squeezed myself into a chair. I shut my eyes and tried to drift off, but the hurried voices of the paramedics as they gave Katy CPR rang in my ears, and I settled on heading to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee instead.

  I liked the hospital’s coffee. It burned my throat and tasted bitter on my tongue, like hot tar with cream. It kept me awake, too. Two sips and it felt like somebody had hooked a car battery up to the base of my brain stem. I’d been averaging a cup every hour or so, and it hadn’t let me down yet.

  I was working on my cup, grimacing after every swallow, when I caught something out of the corner of my eye. I turned, and near the cafeteria door I saw another one of those apparitions. In fact, I saw two. They stood side by side, each marked with faded yellow stains like the previous one. They seemed a bit more in focus this time, a little sharper around the edges, and I could tell that, yes, they appeared to be human, or at least human-sized. One appeared to be male, and the other female. Their heads were still cocooned in shadow, but they seemed a bit more real now, a bit more there. They looked like lab technicians. Okay lab technicians who worked in hell, but technicians all the same.

  I looked around. I was alone in the cafeteria. No one worked the line. I checked my watch and saw it was just after ten-thirty. It had been almost two hours since I’d seen the first one. Why could I see these two more clearly than I had seen the other? Was my lack of sleep causing hallucinations? If so, were they just getting more vivid? I looked back to the door, and found no one there. Whoever had been there had gone. I was alone.

  A hand gripped my shoulder.

  I jumped, crying out, and the hand tightened its grip. I looked up and found the two spectral technicians standing over me. Their shadowed heads swirled like storm clouds, and I was struck by the thought that they were angry. Hell, looking back on it, I figure they were downright pissed.

  Go to sleep.

  The words appeared in my mind, but the voice wasn’t one I recognized. It sounded alien and far away, and the rasping note of evil within it couldn’t be ignored. My entire body seemed to chill as the words echoed in my brain. I stared up into those shadows and I felt my jaw fall open. Slowly, a moan escaped my throat, one that contained all the terror I felt at that moment. Those horrible people seemed to enjoy it, because they leaned in closer, letting me get a real good look at their storm cloud faces. Only I couldn’t get a good look. They were still hazy in my vision, and if it weren’t for the pressure of cold fingers on my shoulder I might have believed I’d finally fallen asleep, that this was just a terrible nightmare. As I thought about the hand on me, it tightened, and a single word boomed deep inside my brain.

  SLEEP!

  I shut my eyes, shaking my head back and forth as icy pain arced through my entire system. It seemed to take forever before the agony went away, and when I could finally stand to open my eyes again, the two apparitions were gone. As I sat there, trying to keep my hands from shaking, I realized why I’d been able to see them. It was my lack of sleep. That’s why they demanded that I rest. It had to be my exhaustion that made them visible to me.

  So now, after days of trying to sleep, I no longer wanted to.

  I made my way back to the waiting room, and I must have seen half a dozen of the filthy specters on my way back. They stood at the edges of my vision, watching me. Their words tickled my brain. From far corners of my mind I heard them coaxing me to sleep. I tried to ignore them, and the words grew louder. They really didn’t like the fact that I could see them.

  Three of them watched me in the waiting room. They sat in a row, their backs as straight as boards. I watched them in return, unmoving, and the young couple that shared the room with me must have thought I’d gone insane. One of Katy’s nurses must have thought the same, because she entered the room after an hour and sat next to me.

  “I’m afraid it’s just a waiting game now. She’ll either come out of it or she won’t.”

  “I know that,” I said. I didn’t look at her. My eyes remained locked on the three figures that watched me.

  “You’ve been here over three days. Nobody’s seen you sleep the entire time.”

  “That’s because I haven’t.”

  “It’s not healthy,” she said. “You could wait at home. You’ll be more comfortable there. You could sleep in your own bed, and we can call you if there’s any change in your wife’s condition. Sitting here every night is only going to affect your own health.”

  “Good thing I’m in a hospital, then.”

  “At least let me get you something to help you sleep.”

  “No. Leave me alone.”

  She did, but I could tell she wasn’t happy about it. It seemed I was pissing everybody off.

  The couple watched me a little more closely after that. I think they were scared of me by that point. Between them and the three ghostly figures, I felt like an honest-to-God celebrity. I decided to ignore them all. I sat there, watching my infomercials like a good little insomniac and doing my best impersonation of a normal person. I eventually got used to the coaxing words that poked at my brain. I fought them off with thoughts of Katy’s smile, of her body pressed against mine, but even those thoughts turned sour as I saw her covered with blood, her back strapped to a board as paramedics placed her in the rear of an ambulance.

  The next morning, I went to the bathroom to wash my face. I was edging closer to four complete days without sleep. The world had taken on a strange, dreamlike quality. I had trouble grasping objects on the first try. Everything seemed to be a few inches away from where I thought it was.

  When I saw my face in the mirror I almost cried. Dark circles hung around my eyes, and my face looked like old cheese. The color had drained out of my lips, and my jaw wouldn’t quite close. My growing stubble was an unhealthy gray. I splashed cold water across my face, hoping it would help, but it only made me shiver. I stood up to dry my face, and I
screamed when I saw one of the apparitions standing behind me, watching. Eyeing him in the mirror, I was astonished by the level of detail I could make out. He was only the slightest bit blurry around the edges, and I could see the dark handprints on his coat where he had wiped some strange liquid or solid away. For a brief moment, the shadows around his face seemed to part, and I saw his onyx skin, his milky white eyes. I saw the strange apparatus, almost like a gas mask, where his mouth should have been. I started to scream again, and the shadows began to swirl once more, concealing the awful face.

  I turned around, but there was nothing there. The figure had disappeared.

  I went to the cafeteria and drank four cups of coffee.

  I saw them everywhere after that. They roamed the hospital’s hallways, darting between doctors and nurses. They toyed with patients, pulling back their blankets and tickling their ribs. I saw one write GO TO SLEEP on the wall in great, swooping letters of ash. I watched another choke a man in the cafeteria. Each time the thing’s hands wrapped around his throat, he’d burst into a round of body-racking coughs. The thing would pull his hands away and the man’s fit would stop. I could hear the thing giggling deep inside my brain.

  I tried to ignore them, but they just made it harder. One sat across from me in the waiting room, clapping its hands. With each clap, I felt a small pressure around my heart. In my mind I heard the thing chant Go to sleep before we kill you. Go to sleep before we kill you.

  But I refused. I had begun to feel that I had to stay awake, that I had to learn more about these creatures that seemed to toy with everything. Maybe if I learned enough, I could find out what they wanted, why they were here. I could learn just how dangerous they were, and I could find a way to stop them.

  I could tell from their reactions that they didn’t like that idea. One of them wrote YOU WILL PAY in large letters on the waiting room floor. Two of them pushed a doctor over in the cafeteria and kicked him as he writhed in agony on the floor. When an orderly helped him to his feet, the doctor said he’d cracked a few ribs in the fall.