51 Sleepless Nights

by Tobias Wade

  He opened room 604 and closed the door behind him. I was still too shocked to move. I lifted the phone to my ear, but the call had ended. I tried calling Jason again, but it didn’t go through. I leaned against the wall and slid to the ground, unable to process what was going on. Was this some kind of parallel dimension? I know Ramfield collected some crazy stuff, but I’m pretty sure someone would have mentioned a trans-dimensional elevator.

  Or maybe I had fallen out of the elevator and died. Then the real Jason would have seen it empty, and I really was a ghost. But that didn’t explain where the second Jason came from. I tried calling a dozen more times while I waited in the hall, but nothing went through. Then room 604 opened again, and it was too late.

  Jason came back, followed by a fat man in a suit. They were both smiling. The fat man shook my hand and congratulated me. He was saying something else about how Jason was going to excel in this environment. I can’t say I was fully paying attention. It all seemed a bit like a dream. I just kept staring at the smirk on Jason’s face. I couldn’t be sure, but somehow I knew that he knew something wasn’t right.

  “Ready to go home, Dad?” Jason asked after the fat man had left. What else could I do? I couldn’t go home to Emily and tell her I lost her son. I had to bring him along. And besides, he’d aced his interview. He was calling me Dad. Isn’t this what I wanted?

  But all the way home, I couldn’t even look at him. What if Emily wasn’t the same either? How could I even tell? Or did it matter if they treated me the same? Maybe I was just imagining all of this because I had a panic attack in the elevator. Maybe everything was going to be –

  “I know you’re not my real Dad,” Jason said. I jumped so bad I practically swerved off the road. “But my real Dad didn’t treat me or Mom right, and you’ve been good to us. I wish you were there from the beginning.”

  I let out a long breath. He was just talking about me being his step-father. I forced a smile, but I couldn’t answer him. Not yet. It would still take some time to wrap my head around what happened. I turned on the radio.

  “Ow what the Hell, man?” Jason’s voice from the radio.

  “It’s what you deserve for messing around in the interview.” My voice from the radio.

  “Get away from me. What’s gotten into you? Let go!”

  “You haven’t seen anything yet. Wait until we get home and I’ll teach you to disrespect me like that.”

  A dull pummeling sounded through the radio, and then a scream. I shut it off. I glanced at Jason, and he was smiling from ear to ear.

  “Did those voices sound familiar to you?” I asked him. My throat felt choked. If I had gone here, had another version of me gone back to my world?

  “Sounds like someone doesn’t have it as good as I do,” he said. “I love you, Dad.” Jason leaned his head against my shoulder. I fought the urge to shrug him off. I felt like I was going to be sick.

  Bzzz. Bzzz. Bzzz.

  My cell started vibrating in my pocket during dinner. Mashed potatoes, filet steaks, spinach soufflé – Emily had gone all out to celebrate Jason’s acceptance into the Academy. I glanced at my phone. Emily – the real Emily – was calling.

  “Ooh that must be the pie ready,” the other Emily got up to check the kitchen. I clutched the phone in my lap.

  “Are you going to answer it, Dad?” Jason asked. He was grinning again. What I wouldn’t give to see the old Jason’s sour expression just once.

  “Everyone I want to talk to is already here,” I grunted. “Just going to use the bathroom.”

  I raced to the bathroom, still gripping my phone like a lifeline. I was too late to answer by the time I got there, but there was a voicemail.

  “Where are you?” It was my wife. My real wife. “What happened to Jason? His arm is broken and he won’t stop crying. You better have a good explanation. Meet us at the Good Samaritan Hospital as soon as you get this.”

  I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to flush the phone and forget that world even existed. I wanted to just live here where everything was perfect. Couldn’t I just pretend? Why should I be responsible for what the other-me did? I stared at myself in the mirror and gritted my teeth.

  “What am I supposed to do? Huh? Huh?” I asked.

  “Are you okay in there honey?”

  Emily knocked on the bathroom door. I opened it and gave her my most convincing smile. “Just making some room for more of your amazing cooking. Come on, let’s eat.”

  I waited until she was asleep to sneak out of the house. I had to get out of here. I had to get back and save them. I hadn’t received anymore voicemails that evening, but I don’t know whether that was a good sign or not.

  I dressed in the dark and slipped out of our bedroom. I flipped on the switch in the living room and –

  “What the Hell?” I muffled my own shout with my arm. Jason had been sitting in the dark, fully dressed, waiting for me. He wasn’t smiling anymore.

  “I knew it,” he said, his voice laden with accusation. “You’re going to leave us. You want to switch places with him, but I’m not going to let you. I don’t want him to come back.”

  “That’s too bad,” I said, already moving from the door. Where were the keys? They were always on the hook – at least in my world they were. “I don’t belong here – this isn’t my home.”

  “No-one belongs anywhere. That doesn’t mean you have to leave,” he said.

  “They need me –”

  “And I don’t?” Jason said. He lifted his shirt, revealing a frail body which was covered with bruises and scars. “He may look like you, but I know him better than you do. He won’t handle the switch as well. I bet he’s already killed them both.”

  “All the more reason for me to hurry. Where are the keys?”

  “Stay here Dad. Please.” My breath caught in my throat again. I turned and looked at him, and he was holding the keys in his open palm. His eyes were brimming with tears. “Or if you do go, at least take me with you.”

  I gave a jerky nod. He seemed to know more about what was going on than I did anyway, so I might even need him to figure out how to get back.

  We drove in silence back to the Academy. The streets were empty – who else had somewhere to be at 1 am? I turned on the radio.

  Sobbing. Incoherent screaming. It sounded like Emily. I shut it off.

  “I told you,” Jason said. “You should just stay here.”

  “I’m already gone,” I replied.

  We entered the elevator together. The door had been unlocked, and there still weren’t any people around. He pushed the 6th floor right away, and I didn’t try to stop him.

  “How do you know about all this?” I asked. “What even is this place?”

  “It’s not the first time someone switched,” Jason said. “I was here on a field trip in school when my real Dad caught up with me. He was drunk and angry, and he was trying to punish me for forging his signature so I could go on the trip. I hid from him in the elevator, but he found me and somehow I managed to send him away. I just couldn’t figure out how to bring him back.”

  2…3… The needle was flipping through the numbers.

  “What’s going to happen when we get there?” I asked him. “Will the other me and other Jason come here?”

  4…

  “I think so,” he said. “But I think it only works if the other version is still alive. I think that’s why no-one switched with him before – his other self was already dead. I’ve thought about it a lot, and I think that’s why he wasn’t good to us from the beginning. I think we need to be balanced, and when our other-self dies, we turn bad.”

  5…

  “But if the other Jason is already dead…” I said, “What will happen to you?”

  5 1/2…

  The elevator buckled. The lights flared and the music died. The only remaining trickle of light seeping from above fell upon Jason’s smirk.

  “Who says it hasn’t already
happened?” Jason asked.

  Lurch. The elevator plummeted into the blackness and something hit me hard on my right temple.

  I woke up in the hospital. Everything felt like it was on fire. Four broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder, blunt force trauma to the head, but no-one could figure out how I got it.

  The elevator hadn’t fallen. I had gotten in alone at the bottom, it hadn’t made any stops, and when I came out on the 6th floor I was beaten to within an inch of my life. The Ramfield administrator had called an ambulance and I was sent directly here.

  Emily? She didn’t remember any of those tearful phone calls. She had been at home when the hospital called her.

  The interview? It had been rescheduled because of the emergency situation. He hadn’t been accepted or denied, and I don’t think either version has happened yet in this reality. I can’t even tell if I’m back in the same reality I started in.

  And Jason? He calls me Dad now. And maybe I should be thankful for that, but it doesn’t feel sincere when he’s smirking the whole time.

  He only visited me in the hospital for a short while before leaving, but I can’t shake the feeling that he’s the one who did this to me. I don’t know who came back with me from that place, but it isn’t the Jason I know. I don’t know who he is or what he’s capable of, but then again, the same could be said of myself. I feel so angry and helpless and trapped and alone and I just want to lash out and hurt the ones who have hurt me, but that only begs another question. What if the other version of me is dead?

  What if I’m the bad one?

  The Party that Changed my Life

  Josh: Hey man, thanks for staying to help cleanup last night. Hope you had a good time.

  Me: Your party was a blast. How’d it go with Casey?

  Josh: No go bro. She had to take her wasted friend home.

  I slid the phone back in my pocket. I was only asking to be polite. I couldn’t care less about Josh or his parties. I wouldn’t have gone at all if Kimberly, a girl from my physics class, hadn’t mentioned she was going too. She only knew my serious, studious side, but there’s nothing like a party to show how suave and charming I could be, right?

  Just my luck that she didn’t show and I had to endure an evening of beer like piss, screaming idiots, and that damn UNCE UNCE UNCE music which I know is going to haunt me all day. That and this pounding hangover.

  Josh: My poor turtle had to put its head back in the shell. You know what I mean?

  Why is he still texting me? How do I even reply to that? I hope he doesn’t think we’re friends now. I didn’t even know his frat house was hosting the stupid party. Maybe if I don’t reply he’ll just –

  Josh: The flight was ready for landing, but the runway was blocked by a fat cow. The dive was scheduled, but there were a bunch of needy sharks in the water. It was time for my pizza, but the meatloaf wasn’t having any fun so I guess that means ALL the food had to get sent back.

  Me: That makes absolutely no sense, but I get it.

  Now will HE get it? Of course not. If he got it, he wouldn’t still be texting me.

  Josh: BTW bro. Do you know who Kimberly is?

  Me: Yeah. Was she there last night?

  No. Josh couldn’t have. Please God, don’t let that disgusting frat boy anywhere near –

  Josh: Some dipshit wrote “Kimberly is dead. Stop wasting time on her” with a marker on my wall. Good thing for renter’s insurance, lol.

  The chair in front of me was empty in physics today. The long golden braid which usually fell about my desk was gone. I hadn’t realized how long this class was when I had to stare at the whiteboard instead. To make matters worse, the stream of texts from Josh didn’t stop.

  Josh: Dude I found another message. This one was written in my bathroom: “Her head took the longest to remove. The vertebra kept snapping, and her neck must have stretched four feet before it finally popped free.” WTF?

  Josh: Here’s one written on my closet: “Her breasts looked much bigger when they were still attached. Such a fake girl, no-one will miss her.”

  Josh: There’s another on the side of my fridge. “I’m saving some for later.”

  I excused myself to leave. I still had biology after this, but I felt like I was going to be sick. This had to be a twisted prank. Maybe he thought I wanted to join his frat or something, and this is what they did to haze people. But then why wasn’t Kimberly in class?

  I couldn’t let this get to my head. All I had to do was check her Facebook, right? Okay, no updates since the day before last. But I could send her a message.

  … Hello Kimberly? We’ve never really talked, but I just wanted to make sure you haven’t been butchered. Hope we can go out sometime.

  Yeah that isn’t the suave first impression I was hoping to make. Think. Think! I was freaking out. Of course I didn’t have to mention the butchery. If she replied at all, then she was okay, right? Do you think you’re nervous texting a girl for the first time? Try it when all you can think about is her dismembered corpse scattered across some frat house.

  Me: Hey Kimberly. Did you go to Josh’s party last night?

  DELETED

  I couldn’t send that, because then I’d just be admitting to eavesdropping on her plans. How about…

  Me: Hey Kimberly. Saw you missed physics today, so I wanted to remind you about the quiz on Friday.

  I closed my eyes and hit send. I hope that doesn’t make me sound like all I cared about was physics. Maybe I should add a follow up to ask –

  BZZZ

  A reply! She’s okay! I mean of course she’s okay, but she replied! And so quickly too. You don’t reply that fast unless you really want to talk to someone –

  Josh: DUUUUDE LOOK WHAT’S IN MY FRIDGE

  Attached was a photo of a dismembered foot sitting on the shelf beside the cheese. He sent me a couple more texts, but I didn’t read them. I was running toward his place. Either something horrible has happened and I had to see for myself, or he was trolling me and was about to receive a beating of a lifetime. By the time I got over, I still hadn’t received a reply from Kimberly. That could mean anything though. If she wasn’t in class, it was because she was busy with something, so of course she couldn’t reply. So why did I feel like I was going to die?

  This place looked even worse in the daylight. The building had been trashed and stitched together so many times it might as well have been the Frankenstein’s monster of frat houses. I pounded on the door so hard that my hand went numb.

  “Josh! Get your ass out here!”

  The door opened and I almost hit him in the face. Then he started laughing, and I really did hit him. Right between the eyes. My fist stung like Hell, but it felt so good I would have done it a hundred more times. It had all been a prank! Kimberly was okay.

  “Shit dude, cool it. Can’t you take a joke?”

  “Who does that? How badly do you need attention that you would screw with me like that? Never talk to me again.”

  I’ve seen enough. I turned around and stomped my way across the yard.

  “Come on man, it’s not like that. I just found the photo online somewhere, but the messages were real.”

  “You’re messed up, man. Leave me alone,” I said.

  “Look! There’s another one on the fence!” he shouted after me.

  “So what? You probably wrote it, you twisted shit.”

  “I swear dude. I didn’t write any of it. The picture is the only thing that wasn’t real.”

  I didn’t want to look, but I couldn’t help myself. I glanced at the fence. Written in black marker, it said: “She was my third.”

  What is even worse than listening to him? Believing him. Because looking at those big blocky letters, I know Josh couldn’t have written that. I know because it was unmistakably my handwriting.

  The Solution to Prison Overcrowding

  There is no Devil, only man, and he does not buy souls. Not all at once anyway
. Man is far more insidious than that, for he grinds down his brother’s soul one layer at a time until the residual humanity begins to devour itself. It’s hard to believe, but it’s true. Begin to break a man, and he will finish the job on his own. That is because it is much easier to live as an animal than it is as half a man.

  I felt the first part of my humanity die when I was 12 years old. How do you explain a knotted garbage bag full drowned kittens to a child? I was young, but not too young to know that someone had done it on purpose, and that they had gotten away with it. Not too young to understand that evil wasn’t just a thing in cartoons and movies; not too young to realize that I too was capable of evil if I ever got my hands on this monster.

  Over the years, I felt more of myself slip away. Sometimes it would break off in big chunks like when my mother died, but more often my soul simply eroded from the steady tide of petty grievances, jealous greed, thoughtless anger, and the thousand other frustrations that make up the life of any “civilized” man trying to find his place in the world.

  My defense attorney wanted me to talk about how I regretted killing Edward. That it was a defining moment in my life, and that my mind had been blown wide with righteous rebirth and revelation. There wasn’t enough left of me to lie though. I don’t think my pulse even rose the night I took my neighbor’s life. Edward used to beat his wife, and now he doesn’t. That’s all that changed, because there wasn’t enough left of me to change. It almost makes me laugh now to think how far I still was from rock-bottom.

  I got 15 years for that. Could have been worse, but the judge and jury were sympathetic after hearing the widow tearfully thank me for saving her. I can’t even say I found jail any worse than the outside either. The only difference was my daily routine, and the blur of a different set of faces performing it with me.

  I gained a reputation as a loose cannon in jail. People said I’d go from deadpan silence to an incoherent rage in one second flat. I don’t think of it that way though. I think of myself more like a brilliant pianist: seeming ordinary until sitting down to play. The musical ability didn’t suddenly appear out of nowhere, it had been inside all along. It was the same with my anger: it was always there, but it was my choice whether to let it play.