FICTION // Sleepless in San Verada

Hot night. Cold sweat.

All out of rum and pills and cigarettes; no sleep tonight, same as last night, and the zombie sway is taking hold. Staggering, stumbling, banging legs and swearing.

Black ooze in the refrigerator. Lizards commune on the porch and a car rumbles past, rattling and shaking like a bag of tin cans. Fix your engine, old man. Don’t want to have an accident. Tonight’s no night to die.

And yet somewhere somebody is being murdered and suddenly there’s a chill slicing like a callous blade down my spine. Shake your head. Sit down. Focus again.

Turn on the TV, flick through static. Body is tired but mind is racing. Swig some water, hold a cool flannel to burning sweat. Hair is wild. Skin is looking pale, paler than usual. Rash on hand breeds scary thoughts. Cancer? No, no. Don’t be stupid.

Only one thing for it; sit at the table, open the notebook. The old pen lies nearby, leaking black ink onto grey wood.

Start writing. Arcane symbols, words of distraction. I’m alone as an island, and I can write whatever I want. Will anyone else ever read this? If they do, will they care?

Who cares. Not me. I don’t care if they don’t.

Ha. Ha ha.

Laughing now. The lamp looks weird. Eggs are queasily hilarious.

Suddenly there’s a moment of intense piercing clarity and I understand what’s going on.

Got to get some sleep… but how?

Blue light filters through the blinds and bathes naked flesh. Everything is dirty and the walls drip and the cat next door yowls and there’s music coming from the horizon but no point of origin. Just an endless thud-thud-thud, carried in the wind; some raucous din like a rich-kid party.

Breathe. Ignore the heat.

Calm descends.

Words form, and collect, and thoughts reveal themselves. Write about the absurdity of being alive. Write about war, reality TV, old comic books, horror films that kept you scared after they’d finished. Write about that Summer spent in a stoned haze listening to carefree guitars; about that time on holiday when you caught her eye and said nothing, and then you went separate ways and got on different planes and never got to find out about each other. Write about nightmares and death and who shot first; about where you expected to be as a kid versus where you are.

Mum and dad and rock stars are just people, but God wears a cape, and he’s flying through the city towards the burning train. Children are screaming and crying but God will save them. They’re scared but they don’t know how lucky they are.

Somewhere somebody is being murdered. Shake your head. Listen to something slow. Drink some water.

Sleep it off.

(Originally published for The Student Review http://thestudentreview.co.uk/2013/02/sleepless-in-san-verada/)