Sleep Over

by H. G. Bells

  I put my foot between hers to see how she would react, and she stepped over it gracefully.

  “Interesting,” I said.

  I plucked the lantern from the floor and took Anna by the arm and led her out of that place of death without another glance at the man I’d shot. I had zero guilt about it. Even now, none. Some people gotta be put down, and I was the only one available there to do it that time.

  I walked out into the industrial street with her, stopping to listen. It was quiet, but then the rain started. The streetlights were harsh then, all the light burning my retinas until I had to squint and shield myself from it.

  At least we had the place to ourselves. And then she changed modes—instead of making coffee and sending up orders in her diner, she began dancing. Huge steps, waltzing in wide circles, footwork practiced and graceful as she went through her dream routine.

  “Burt, my love, let’s dance forever,” she said. There was such love, such warmth in her voice, that the sorrow of losing her hit me in the gut. She was still up and about, talking, walking, but she was gone. I steadied myself against the building, finally having to sit down. I watched her dance for a few minutes while I waited for my hands to stop shaking, my pulse to stop pounding in my neck, my eyes to stop gushing tears.

  It didn’t even matter to her that I had just saved her life. She wasn’t there anymore, what did it even matter?

  I walked her home. We made it to her front door and I let her dance while I buzzed Burt. There was no power, I don’t know what I was thinking; but then he was there anyway, tears welling up in his eyes. The fuck it didn’t even matter, of course it mattered. It mattered to him. It mattered to me.

  “Oh, thank god,” he said.

  “You must keep her inside; someone tried to hurt her,” I said. His eyes narrowed and he went to Anna, who was still dancing in the empty street. When she didn’t acknowledge him, all I could do was mutter a soft, “I’m sorry.”

  “Burt, my love, let’s dance forever,” she said.

  Burt maneuvered himself into her arms and fell into step with her.

  “Yes, let’s,” he answered.

  At last, the insomniacs’ time to shine! Eat it, conventional sleep cycle people!

  —Full page advert in the last issue of the

  Metro Daily Newspaper

  When I was littler, I used to think that kids didn’t need to sleep. Only when we grew up and our brains got big, they were too busy to get all the thinking done that we were used to. I thought it was a problem I’d face when I grew up, having to sleep.

  I did sleep, just not enough. Before we found the pills that would help, I had nights alone to myself for days on end. When everyone joined me I thought they would be happy. I had way more time to play than they did!

  At first everyone was upset. My mom and dad tried to hide it but I guess it got so bad that eventually I saw it. Never upset with each other. Only with other people. A woman at the supermarket tried to take something from my mom, and my mom hit her. Later, as she was checking my seatbelt in the car, she put her hands on my cheeks and looked me in the eye.

  “Honey, what mommy did was wrong,” she told me. “We don’t hit people. But that lady was trying to do something even more wrong, and that was to steal something that we needed. I’m sorry you had to see that. I’m just trying to make sure we get through this, baby,” she said. “We’re going to be okay.”

  I heard that a lot, from a lot of people. We’re going to be okay. Most of them didn’t believe it. Some of them died. But I believed it. I knew I could go a long time without sleep, because I already had.

  Early Onset Chronic Insomnia. They used to think it was pretty impressive that I could say that. Now of course it doesn’t matter what I say, people look at me with this weird awed expression. Like everything out of my mouth is a big word from a toddler. Being an orphan isn’t so rare, I don’t know why I get the special treatment.

  At first everyone was upset. They were finally getting a taste of what it felt like to be so tired that it felt like fingernails on your face, that everyone’s voices sounded like shouting, and that the light sometimes stabbed right into their brain like a knife, bright and sharp and painful. Once they understood, maybe it was better for me, but it was so much worse for them. If only they could have slept.

  During the upset times, there was shouting and fire and once someone laying in the street, outside my bedroom window, with blood around them. That night, my dad came in from work and his hands had blood on them and my mom helped him wash them in the sink. He came to see me afterwards and touched my cheek very softly and said, “Daddy’s not going to let anything happen to you, honey. Don’t open the door for anyone.”

  The next day they told me that things were dangerous, and that there would be some bad people that might ask me to go with them, but that I shouldn’t go. Even if they said that mommy and daddy said it was okay, I shouldn’t go. We picked a password, just in case they really did need to have someone come get me. We repeated it three times, and said that it was secret-secret, and we couldn’t tell anyone else about it ever. So I can’t tell you, even though they’re dead now—I told them I would never tell.

  We never had to use the password. People did try to get me though, twice.

  Once was an old man with scary eyes. He was like a shadow man, with grey and black over his face, except his eyes, which had yellow where they should have been white, and cloudy grey over the parts were he was looking out of. My parents went into a gas station after we packed up and drove away from home. The old man with the scary eyes opened my car door and said I should unbuckle my seatbelt, because my mommy and daddy and I were going to be riding in his truck the rest of the way.

  I asked him for the password. Even though I knew he was lying.

  He told me to unbuckle my seatbelt.

  I screamed. He ran. He got into his truck and drove away.

  A big man with tattoos came out of the gas station with my dad, and they asked me what happened. I told them, and the man with tattoos was upset. He wasn’t yelling, but I could see that he was angry. But also something on his face I didn’t understand, like he had to do something he didn’t want to do. He got on a motorcycle. He went away really fast, following the truck.

  The other time it was a lady. She was really nice. She had a white dress with red polka dots on it, and a really shiny red purse that looked like lips. She walked with short steps that made it easy for me to keep up with her. I didn’t know what was going on at first, because she was so nice. I started to help her find her lost glove. She showed me the one she still had, and showed me the bushes where she thought she lost it. It wasn’t far from the car, so I helped look. She was really nice. But then there was a man, and his hands were strong. And she helped him and they tried to put me in a different car. I screamed and screamed and bit the lady’s hand.

  There was a loud bang and the man let go and the lady was screaming as my mom picked me up. My dad said some things softly to my mom and she took me to our car. I couldn’t see the lady, but she was screaming up until there was another bang.

  I was pretty protected, from all of it. I mean, now I know what actually happened, that my dad shot some people, so that they wouldn’t try and steal other children. That the tattooed man on the motorcycle went and chased after the old man and probably killed him so he wouldn’t do that too. But then it was just confusing and scary. Seeing my dad’s eyes: they’d changed, and he was like a different person then. He smelled smoky, but it was only the gun in his belt.

  We drove to my auntie Donna’s in the country, and stayed in a room upstairs. It smelled like carrots and there were a lot of new books for me to read.

  They asked me what I did on those nights when I couldn’t sleep—before I mean, when I was awake and they were in bed and asleep. I actually kind of liked it, that I was an expert, I mean. They all listened to me as I told them my secrets. I told them that sometimes I would draw, or read my books, or play with my toys.
Sometimes I watched them sleep, watching as their flower-patterned comforter went up and down slowly as they breathed while they slept.

  When I was scared I would watch them.

  I used to think that kids didn’t sleep, and that when we grew up, that our brains got too big to be awake all the time so we had to sleep. I used to think that when we were kids, we had magic, and as we grew up we forgot it, and forgot how to stay awake.

  And then I found out none of the other kids in my class were awake as much as me, and they found out that I didn’t sleep like they did. They asked a lot of questions and it was mostly about what I did with so much extra time.

  Then this happened, and they all got to invent their own answers.

  After the upset time, everyone got scared. And smelly. I don’t know why, but everyone smelled bad. They had showers and baths, it wasn’t like they smelled bad because they were sweaty and gross. Some people did—smell because they didn’t have a bath, that is—but everyone else smelled bad a different way. It was something else, and not everyone seemed to be able to smell it. But to me, most people smelled bad. Aunt Donna smelled the worst. I think she knew it too, because she had more showers to try and not smell so bad. And she used this perfume that smelled like acid and bee stings, but I think it was supposed to smell like flowers. It didn’t to me, though.

  She turned into one of the staring ones. Mom and dad tried to take care of her, and I helped. But after the scaredness turned into the stupid times, it was harder to. They made all sorts of mistakes. I got mad at them a few times, because they were doing dumb things like burning our food and it was running out. And also they tripped a lot. Like going up the stairs had to be done on their hands and knees, like a doggy.

  I didn’t realize that they weren’t eating enough and that they were getting weaker and weaker. I could tell that something was wrong though; their faces were wrong. Like after my dad had shot his gun. They looked like different people. It was scary.

  I don’t remember if they were still there when it happened. By then we were with some neighbors and I had all these stuffed animals all around me to make a bed. People kept touching my face, which was annoying, but it seemed to make them feel better so I stopped fighting it.

  Then I was in another living room, in another house.

  Oh, I messed up before, when I said we never had to use the password. But then when my parents weren’t there, I screamed. I screamed and screamed for them, and one of the neighbors, a nice man who was with us at the end, had to shout at me, and he shouted the password over and over, until he was crying as he was shouting it. I didn’t understand at first, but my parents had decided that someone should take care of me if they weren’t around, for whatever reason.

  I didn’t talk for a long time after that.

  Maybe there’s more kids somewhere, like me, who had sleeping problems in the Before. If so, could you please get them to write to me? It would be nice if we could meet and talk. So far there’s no one even close to my age here and it’s lonely.

  There was a big weird thing a while ago, where I met an old lady, and they got us to shake hands and people took a gazillion pictures of us. No one tells me anything, but I’ve learned that she was the oldest person to survive. They didn’t tell me, but I’ve figured it out by now, that I’m the youngest. But that means there’s others. I don’t mind being the little kid at the table, just so long as I’m at the kid’s table again, please. I’m so lonely.

  KEEP OUT! TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT

  —Painted on the drawn drawbridge at Malbork Castle, Poland

  I am dying.

  I’m the only one here. Here. I wasn’t even supposed to be here. Once things started to go all Pete Tong, I booked a flight home. Home is Bristol, the UK. Please don’t let my family read this. Just tell them I tried. Daddy tried.

  My flight had a stopover in Frankfurt; it was the only one I could find. It was just after we landed that the shit went down over at Bangkok. After that, the skies were clear. Clear of commercial travel. Well of course there were flights, private flights, and I spent three days at Frankfurt trying to secure one.

  North Americans don’t understand what Europeans think of as a long way. Nor can we fathom what it means to them. Frankfurt to Bristol was several hundred kilometers, really just a few hours’ drive, but to me it may as well have been the moon. Even before the Catastrophe, it would have been impossibly far. Where I had countries, North Americans had states or provinces. Ask a Canadian what it means to be that far from something, and they’ll probably laugh and say they’re driving that far to their Aunt’s for dinner next weekend.

  The small private flights were supremely dangerous. Not just that they were crashing with regularity—even getting off the ground at all was a feat. All us thousands of international travelers (and that’s just at Frankfurt—around the world it’s way more, millions. How many people are trying to travel right now, I wonder?) all trying to get home, were all in the same boat. Ugh, were that I had a boat!

  It’s a wonder any pilots even offered their services at all. They stopped trying at Frankfurt, certainly they stopped after we killed that one. He was flying to London, and he announced it over the goddamned PA of the whole airport. Said what gate he was at and everything. The idiot!

  I rushed right out with the hundreds of others.

  He had a four-seat plane, one of them being for himself.

  He had to fight to get to the crowd, shouting, “I’m the pilot! I’m the pilot, let me through!”

  He got to the plane and realized he had made a huge mistake. People were thrusting cash in his face. Someone was holding up a brick of bills, bound in cellophane like he had been waylaid from a major purchase of drugs.

  I’d like to say I fled, that I slipped away, left the crowd, and went somewhere safe. Not just to have the moral high ground, either; if I had managed to tear myself away, I might have found an opportunity to leave that the rabid mob wasn’t aware of. But I shook a fistful of money right alongside all the others. Desperation makes you do things—this is not a new revelation. But with that level of brain function, god, it was like I had blinders on. I saw a plane, I saw a pilot, and for some reason, the hundreds of others ahead of me all clamoring to get on didn’t factor into the equation.

  The pilot picked three people out and thrust them inside his cab and locked the doors.

  We tipped the plane over. We broke the windshield and pulled him out. We beat him to death. One of the passengers, too.

  I say we, even though I wasn’t at the front. I didn’t throw any of those savage kicks to his head. But I yelled. I cried. I was part of the mob. I imagine there will be a lot of “last words” like this that are full of excuses and denial. Not me. If it meant I could have seen my kids again, I would have beat that man to death myself.

  But I didn’t, but we did.

  And then it was back inside the terminal, like nothing had happened. Back to the terminal, where already invisible ways out were becoming increasingly scarce.

  I went to use the washroom, and as I was drying my hands in the air drier, I remembered how my daughter Kate had been scared of it the first time she’d seen one. A little cry of fright, and then, brave Kate, tentative steps forwards. When it shut off automatically, she triggered it to start, and, while she flinched at the noise, she ran her hands in figure eights under the whooshing air and then giggled.

  “Daddy, it’s just the wind!” she’d said.

  This simple memory came to me and destroyed me. I fell to my knees and was a sobbing mess. Kneeling on the floor of that washroom, gusts of air from the hand drier tugging at my dirty hair—that felt like the end. I couldn’t see a way out.

  “Someone waiting for you?” asked a man’s soft voice in a highland Scottish accent. I didn’t parse what was happening, so I only covered my face and nodded, fresh tears spilling out onto the cold bathroom tile below.

  “Who?” asked the voice.

  “My daughters. Kate and Becka,”
I managed. There was a pause. The air drier stopped.

  “You trying to get over the Channel?” he asked, voice even quieter than before. I nodded fervently, eyes still squeezed shut. “Are you alone?” I nodded again.

  I looked up at last and saw a tall, elderly man, who was looking fearfully at the bathroom entrance. He looked down at me and offered me a hand.

  “Come with me,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Hurry. I will take you, but you must say nothing,” he said. He waited for my acknowledgment of his terms, which I did with a serious nod and the stoic attention of waiting for further orders. He put a finger up to his lips to urge silence again, then led the way out of the bathroom.

  He took me across the terminal, past a fire exit, at which he pointed discretely from his hip for me to see. He led us around the nearest corner, where we stopped, away from prying eyes. He peeked back around the corner the way we’d come, and ducked back towards me. He held up his hand to signal me to stay put, and I did, as he looked back around the corner, waiting for the way to be clear. Then, head still peeked around and watching the way, his hand gave me a countdown—3, 2, 1, go-go-go, and we rushed back the way we’d come. He opened the fire escape and shut it behind us as quietly as he could.

  We followed a hallway to the behind-the-scenes of one of the conference ballrooms. There was a loading platform for catering, and he hopped off of it with surprising agility, beckoning me to follow him past several parked catering trucks. He came to a dumpster between two cube vans and looked around, behind me.

  “Help me move it,” he said in his soft Scottish drawl.

  I did. He took me between the two cube vans and opened a sliding garage door. It was loud and he winced at our cover being compromised. I stared up in wonder at the contents of the large loading bay: a bus.

  He beckoned me forward and he opened the door for me. I climbed the short steps and was met with an elderly woman pointing a gun at my chest.