I still remember what it was like. Before I first met Leo. The waking nightmare. It started with me waking up in the middle of the night. My body had started to feel very cold, and I woke up to find more blankets and comforters to warm me up. It’s then that I realized what was going on. Why I was cold. The apartment I had fallen asleep in no longer had walls, or a ceiling. Or, indeed, most of an apartment building around it. The destruction was inexplicable, not fire, not explosive. No, it was as though half of the building had been torn apart. Ripped to shreds like paper. I got dressed in sweats and got out of that place as quick as I could. It wasn’t stable anymore. Police came by and asked us about it. The few who were awake at the time and survived spoke nonsense. Demons and monsters crawling through the walls. I would have thought that ridiculous, except for one small detail. That story matched the markings I saw. The ripping and tearing through the walls. But I also knew, wholeheartedly, that demons and monsters were things of stories, fictional. What wasn’t fictional was sleep paralysis induced hallucinations mixed with someone or something breaking through walls creating the idea of a demon or monster. That, at least made some semblance of sense.
The police asking the questions, however, didn’t know about the walls. The building collapsed before they could investigate it. They dismissed the hallucinations for what they likely were, and nothing more telling. I, too, dismissed them. For an entirely different reason. I dismissed them because I figured if anyone was breaking through the walls, they were after something. And seeing as they passed through my room, it clearly wasn’t me. That said, I had become homeless with teh apartment collapse. I’d have to find somewhere else to sleep the next day. The adrenaline, mixed with the half night sleep I’d already gotten, would be more than enough to hold me over until the following night.
I looked for a new apartment through the night, seeing a couple possibilities to check out over the weekend. Until then, I had to work. How else would I be able to afford any apartment. While in the office, I realized that on my meager salary, I couldn’t afford to stay in a hotel for the rest of the week. So, getting off work, I put a mattress on the bed of my truck, pulled into one of the overnight parking lots, and grabbed a bite to eat. After dinner, exhausted from lack of sleep, I went back to my car and fell asleep.
I woke up the next morning with a terrible pit in my stomach. Seeing the marks in the concrete, I had two thoughts. First, thank goodness no one else was here last night. And second, I, somehow, was behind the monsters that destroyed my apartment. Not that I was about to tell anyone. Acts of god might not be covered by my renters insurance, but I had no idea the liability involved with whatever the hell was going on with me. And as I could barely afford to live as is, I wasn’t about to test my luck by saying I had anything to do with what happened to my building. Especially not while I had no idea what happened to my building.
Instead, I came up with a plan. Whatever was going on seemed only to happen when I slept. So, I just needed to not sleep. Not until I figured it out, in any case. It started out easy enough. Coffee. For the rest of the week, I had coffee in my hand at all times. Five days straight, I sipped coffee and stayed awake. Even toured the apartments I was interested in. The drowsiness, and the weird feelings I was getting started to become too much. The next day, at my internship, I went into the psychiatrist’s office and swiped a few prescription sheets and wrote myself a prescription for narcolepsy medication. I figured that, while unethical, it was the most ethical of many unethical options. After all, I hardly could afford to accidentally fall asleep anywhere. That would be disastrous. Taking that regularly, along with the coffee and excessively exercising, I managed to finish my internship, moving into my new apartment. Never put a bed inside, instead making my would-be bedroom into a home gym, to keep my adrenaline levels up. To keep me awake. Having a bed around would just be a temptation that I couldn’t afford.
While I was going through my internship, to help me figure out what was going on with me, I did some genetic testing on my blood. I made sure to do it quietly, mostly so that no one questioned the high amount of stimulants in my system. Unfortunately, it came back corrupted. Why, I did not know. But that action, though seemingly insignificant, was critical to my life to come. I had been keeping a very good handle on things, and since I’d been taking prescription drugs that weren’t ever prescribed to me, I didn’t visit the hospital as a patient. Without sending that blood out for testing, Leo would likely never have even known to look for me.
I had my licensing exams to take, with my supervised internship completed. Which meant a lot of studying. The other psychologists-to-be started on the light version of my regimen, coffee through the night, and for the week before the EPPP, we studied night and day. They slept at times, and whenever they went to their homes to sleep, I went back to my apartment and worked out. Passing the first exam was one of the most stressful times of my life. By comparison, the legality exam was a breeze. Even if it hadn’t been open book. Together, we went out to celebrate. I, however, was not thinking clearly. I was about to be licensed fully. We had done it. And I drank that night.
The next morning, I woke up in a car on the side of the road. Before me, a dead body of someone I didn’t recognize. The sides of the car ripped to shreds, just like the dead man. And the office building streets around me faring no better. I was terrified.
Then, like from an eighties movie hero, a van pulled up. The door opened, and a young man smiled out of it at me. “Come on, let’s get you out of here safely.” I was too scared to move. The young man nodded to someone else in the van, and two women came out from the back. The first picked pulled me out from the car and carried me like a baby into the van. The second walked around the car and waited. Once I was in the van, I heard a terrible crackling sound.
“What on earth is going on?” I blurted out. Nothing made sense. Panic was setting in.
The young man from earlier smiled down at me. “My name’s Stewart,” he said calmly, with a pleasant smile, “And we’re here to help you. To keep you safe.”
I shook my head at him. “You shouldn’t. It’s too dangerous. Just, leave me to die.”
Stewart looked legitimately confused by that. The second woman reentered and the van began to move. “Um, why?” Stewart mumbled out.
A middle aged man stepped into the back, switching places with the large woman who carried me in. He laid a hand on Stewart’s shoulder, in a way that was somewhere between pleasant and intimidating. “Let me talk to her,” he said, then, turning toward me, added, “Hello, dear. I’m Leopold Richardson. The few friends I have call me Leo.” He stretched forth a hand towards me.
I looked at him confused. “What are you doing? Why are you doing this?”
He nodded, calm and collected. “I’ll answer all your questions, of course. I just don’t waste time on conversations with people I do not know, and the blood you sent in was unnamed. Took us long enough to find an anomaly in this vicinity to match.”
“The blood? What are you talking about?” I asked again.
“A name,” he stated. He truly had a one track mind.
“Doctor Talita Carvalho,” I answered him. It was the only way to get any answers.
“See,” he rhetorically asked, “Was that so hard, doctor?” Then, clearing his throat, he added, “So, which question should I answer first?”
“Why me?” I asked him. It was the question most on my mind.
Leo shrugged at me. “Because you sent your blood into a lab that had one of mine in it, rather than one of his.”
“Who?” I ask.
“An old friend. I wonder, why did you wish to die?” he questioned.
I looked at him, shocked. “Because I just killed that guy,” I stated.
“Who was he to you?” he asked. He clearly was confused by my guilt. I wasn’t sure why, though.
“I have no idea,” I told him the truth, “I blacked out last night, and I woke up in the car with him dead. Never seen him before.”
He furrowed his brow as we drove up a ramp. The cabin grew dark as, outside, something large and mechanical moved. “So, how do you know you killed him?” he asked.
“Because I’m cursed,” I told him. He wouldn’t believe me, of course, but it was the only thing I could think of. The shock of the whole ordeal was still weighing on me. “When I sleep, bad things happen.”
He smiled. For the first time since he’d come into the back of the van, he smiled. It was simultaneously terrifying and comforting. “No, Talita. You’re not cursed,” he said. I knew he wouldn’t believe me. Then, he said something even stranger. “Your genetic code has been significantly altered.”
“What?” I spat out.
He nodded. “We are seeking a way to fix it, to help people who lack control, but that takes time. Until then, we have found a way to keep people from accessing their prodigious abilities. I will warn you, you likely will not like it.”
“You could make it stop?” I asked him. I had honestly thought I’d never sleep again in my life.
He smiled. “That is our goal. Though there is opposition to our noble cause.”
“I don’t care. I want to live my life, without fear that nodding off for a second might kill someone.” My voice didn’t waver as I spoke to him. “What is this method you say I wouldn’t like?”
“In my efforts to aid in control and to understand your kind’s condition, I developed nanotechnology which hold the individual in a sort of stasis. Similar to a medically induced coma, except your brain remains awake but without access to your body. From the people I’ve spoken to about the process it is quite unpleasant, however,” he was being remarkably honest with me.
“Why would you tell me that?” I asked him. It didn’t make any sense. From everything else I’d gathered, he was likely a narcissist, and incredibly manipulative. Why did he tell me something that would hinder his goals?
Rather than answer me, he asked, “You’re a psychologist, aren’t you?”
I chuckled. “Maybe not. You guys kidnapped me before the board sent my letter telling me that I’m fully licensed.”
Stewart and the second woman both chuckled along at that, though Leo didn’t. I was paying so little attention, I almost didn’t notice the acceleration. The altitude change. I furrowed my brow. “Where are we going?” I asked anyone.
The other two in the back both looked at Leo. He shrugged and answered. “We’re going to Portland. My house is there, that’s where my equipment mostly is.”
“Really?” I asked “Your house?”
He smiled again. “It is a rather large house.” The plane ride was otherwise uneventful, the drive up to his house was slow, but fine. Saying it was a rather large house was the understatement of the century, I thought as I looked at the sprawling complex through the front window. We parked in the garage. Leo said, “Alright, Blue team, head off. I’ll take the good doctor downstairs.”
“Downstairs?” I wondered. Rather than answer me, he led me into a massive room filled with people in tubes. “So, this is what you were talking about?” I asked.
He nodded. “For their own safety, the safety of anyone around them, and for the future’s sake, I’ve had to do this,” he told me.
I knew he was lying, but mostly to himself. I also knew that he was my only hope of sleeping again in my life. “Which one is mine?” I asked.
He opened up one of the empty tubes. I climbed in. He pressed a button and the tube began to fill up. A gas that felt as thick as water. Leo was right, of course. It was most unpleasant. Then, it was nothing. Blessed nothing.
As much as I want to go out, to live my life outside this small glass tube, I would rather be able to sleep. And while I cannot yet, the moment just before the nothingness, when he turns the machines back on, is the closest I’ve been able to get in ages. As he presses the button and walks away, in spite of the discomfort of the air thickening once again, I can’t help but smile.
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