I come up with a smile. “Atta girl.”
As I swim back to shore, my body ablaze with pain that won’t subside for days—maybe longer—I decide it’s time to pick up a ring. What’s the worst that could happen? She could say no, I think. But she won’t. I’m sure of it. She could have killed me. Twice. But she risked everything to save me—aimed for my shoulder instead of my head, and just now sped away fast enough to warm me.
Most guys would run the other way, change their names and pray to never see her again. Me? I suppose I’m like a male praying mantis—I know she could eat my head off, but I can’t resist her.
She’s worth the risk.
AFTERWORD
This is the only new short story in the bunch. I wrote this in Spring of 2010 when the ITW (International Thriller Writers) announced that their third short story collection, THRILLER 3, would be a series of romantic thrillers. I know, I know, forgive me. My first thought was, “Oh c’mon!” But, I slowly realized this was an interesting challenge. After all, the only difference between a thriller and a romantic thriller is that a romantic relationship is at the center of the story. Thinking back, THE DIDYMUS CONTINGENCY, RAISING THE PAST and without a doubt, KRONOS, hinge upon romantic relationships.
Now, I should mention that at the time of writing this afterword, the ITW has not yet announced the final stories to be included. So if STAR CROSSED KILLERS is accepted, I will be hastily removing it from this collection and whistling an innocent tune. But, with so many amazing, and bestselling authors submitting to the collection and so few spots available (I think just one or two), the odds of being selected are small.
My goal with this story, beyond inclusion in the ITW collection, was to come up with a concept that would 1.) Be considered a romantic thriller (which is the bestselling thriller genre, by the way) and 2.) Not make me feel dirty for writing it. I’m happy with the end result, and I only feel a little bit dirty...but sometimes that’s a good thing.
COUNTING SHEEP
One…
Two…
Three…
Once every second, sheep began to materialize in my mind. I could see their fluffy white bodies, black faces and ashen hooves trotting into my imaginary field of vision from the right. With broad, gravity-defying jumps, they leapt a gleaming white, picket fence—the kind you see in history books from the twenty-first century.
Of course, the fact that I even knew what sheep were, being a man of the twenty second century, was a bit of a miracle. My great grandfather had a collection of paper-bound encyclopedias in the basement of his home when he died. I was ten at the time and helped the family clean out the basement where I discovered the collection, from A-Z. It was a world unknown to me, and to the rest of the world.
All of Earth’s sheep had gone extinct in recent years. Sheep, it turns out, were cloned to extinction. The perfect sheep had been genetically bred and then cloned, ad infinitum, until all of the world’s sheep were identical. All was well and good until a virus that only attacked sheep with a certain genetic flaw sprung up in what was once China. Unfortunately, the original genetically created sheep had this flaw, meaning that all sheep on the planet had this flaw. The virus spread globally within three months, and the world’s sheep vanished.
I grew up in a world without lamb chops, wool or mutton. Of course I didn’t really miss those things. I never felt or tasted them to know what I was missing.
Thirty-eight…
Thirty-nine…
Forty…
During my childhood sheep research, I came across a passage about counting sheep and how people had actually prescribed the activity as a way to combat sleeplessness.
I was now in a situation to find out for myself.
But sleep wasn’t coming easy—even with the sheep.
Every night of my life, as far back as I can remember—pre encyclopedia—I have had a set routine of how to do things before and while I’m in bed. For starters, my teeth have to be brushed. My own bad breath at night, reflecting off a nearby pillow and back into my face, is enough to make me toss and turn. Then the holoshades are activated. None of this half tint other people use. I need one hundred-percent UV blockage. Then with the shades activated, I sit in bed for one hour and read, but not on a portoscreen or technodeck—the glow from the screens stings my eyes. I read paper books, and I have to pay a fortune to get them made up.
As soon as the hour of reading is up, I strip down to nothing, turn on my box-fan and stand in front of the strong breeze, chilling my body. When I can no longer stand the cold, I jump into bed, whip the blankets over my body and shuffle my feet together until I’m warm. And finally, I lie on my stomach, extend my left leg off the left side of the bed and kick it back and forth until I fall asleep, usually two hours later.
The worst of it is that at the beginning of this four hour ritual, I take a sleeping pill that’s supposed to knock me out in a half hour.
Ninety-one…
Ninety-two…
Ninety-three…
And now, when it matters most, when I’m being forced to fall asleep on command, I have none of those things.
Here’s what I do have.
A man, whom I’ve never met before in my life, is holding an elderly woman and her granddaughter hostage. His one demand; that I fall asleep within the next three minutes or he detonates a thermite grenade strapped to his waist. As I said, I don’t know this man, the old woman or the little girl. Having concluded my four day vacation to the moon, I was walking through the spaceport at MoonHab-3, preparing to depart for Earth. Without warning, the man, who had somehow made it through security, sprung from the side of a robotic cleaning unit, grabbed the woman and the girl and in a shrill voice, brought attention to his thermite grenade.
Stunned, my legs locked solid and my eyes remained fixated on the explosive device, which looked real enough. Thermite grenades, from what I knew, were used by the military as antitank weaponry, meaning the explosion it created would probably be strong enough to flatten a good portion of the terminal.
When the shock subsided, I scanned the terminal with my eyes and found that every living soul had vacated the area. Just the four of us were left. Then, without warning, and from my perspective, without any goal in mind, he made his demands to me.
“You be asleep,” he said in a thick accent I couldn’t place. “In three minute. You be asleep!”
“Okay! Okay!” I shouted, terrified that if I didn’t comply, he would blow us all up early. When I lay down on the floor, I knew it would be impossible for me to reach slumber.
One hundred forty…
One hundred forty one…
One hundred forty two…
The floor was hard and cold. I had no blankets, no bed to kick my leg off of, no electric hum of the box fan, which I now missed like it was my best friend. There was no book and no time to read if I had access to one. My sleeping pills were packed away in my luggage, and my breath smelled of the sausage and sauerkraut I had for lunch. Worst of all, I was lying beneath a fifty-foot window on the bright side of the moon. All I had was the sheep, and as I reached one hundred sixty, I realized that they were useless.
I’m glad they’re extinct!
A thought screeched into my cortex and my eyes opened wide. His demand, “In three minute, you fall asleep,” no longer sounded like a demand, but more of a statement. He wasn’t telling me what to do. He was telling me what would happen!
Three minutes!
One hundred seventy five…
One hundred seventy six…
One hundred seventy seven…
I knew now that whether or not I fell asleep had no bearing on what this man was going to do. The only change slumber could bring would be that I wouldn’t feel so nervous. I looked at the man and watched as his finger depressed a button on the grenade. It blinked once.
I miss my box fan.
One hundred seventy eight…
Twice…
I don’t want to sleep.
/>
One hundred seventy nine…
Three times…
Useless sheep.
One hundred eighty—
AFTERWORD
Back to insomnia. I wrote this story late at night after failing to fall asleep, and I think my frustration over not sleeping comes through pretty clearly. Perhaps most interesting is that the main character’s four-hour sleep routine is mine. While I don’t stand in front of a fan and chill myself every night, I have. And my real routine actually involves more steps, and more often than not, fails to achieve the goal of falling asleep before 2am, without resorting to taking a drug.
For the record, I’ve tried counting sheep. It's incredibly difficult to do, because my imagination is hard to control, but I have tried visualizing the sheep while counting them jumping over a fence. It worked. Once. The fan is a must, even with Ambien. The white noise blocks out most others that would normally set off my sensory disorder, which can, and has (during power outages) defeated the sleep inducing pharmaceutical.
You might be wondering why I don’t take Ambien every night. Well, for a month, I did. But like all drugs, Ambien has side effects. Some of them are frightening, especially for people taking the drug nightly as I had been. My doctor failed to mention this to me. While I was sleeping well for the first time in my life, I started feeling this strange energy in my muscles. No matter how much physical activity I did, my body felt like it needed to run. I was constantly stretching, and moving, and feeling manic. One day, when this feeling was particularly intense, I went outside to shoot some hoops. I didn’t miss. I normally shoot about 60% on the inside and 30% from three point range. Not great, but hey, I’m a writer, and soccer is my game. But on this day I was 100% from everywhere. I started taking shots from three point range. Hit them all. I moved further back and hit everything. While this was very cool, it also freaked me out. About fifteen minutes into this, my wife appeared in a window and asked a question. I told her about my strange shooting ability, saw that she doubted me (she’s a better shot than I am) and I said, “watch.” Without glancing back at the hoop, which was well beyond three point range, I tossed the ball over my head. Swish.
I went off of Ambien that night and hallucinated. Over the next month, I weaned myself off of the drug and now only take it in times of desperation. My basketball skills have returned to normal. As has my sleep, or lack thereof. But I’d rather not sleep than have my mind and body altered by a drug that, had I continued taking it, could have screwed me up in a much less, “I could be a super hero!” kind of way.
*One final note! When I wrote this story, there was no such thing as e-ink, so my vision of the future’s e-readers included glaring screens. Alas, I was so short-sighted.
HEARING AID
2067 was the year that dreams came true. It also happened to be my sixty-seventh birthday, and I received a gift—an unbelievable gift of mercy. It took ten years to schedule, clear the red tape and find the right doctors, but I believed it was worth every minute, every dollar Heidi and I dumped into what she called my “Hearing Fund.”
I was the second baby born in the new millennium and unlike the first, I came out of the womb stone deaf. They explained to me that when I came out of the womb, I screamed louder than any baby they’d seen before. Of course it wasn’t until later that they realized I couldn’t hear the sound of my own voice, so I hollered like a person wearing headphones, not that I know what that’s like.
But I would.
The treatment I underwent was new and like the day I was born, I was second in line. The first to try it turned out to be less healthy than the first millennium baby, though. Doctors said he had some kind of disorder, something wrong in his mind that the operation triggered. They told me that what happened to him was an accident; that it had nothing to do with the procedure. I believed them, but I’ve never heard of suicide referred to as an accident.
When I entered the hospital, I felt a feeling of tranquility wash over me. I got the same feeling every time I entered the lobby. The sun’s rays streamed in through the large windows that lined the entrance way and the left side of the long hallway, warming my skin. The French vanilla air freshener tickled my nose set my mouth to salivating. It was fairly busy, I guess. Some people seemed to be in a hurry, but nothing urgent and we only waited in line ten minutes before getting to the desk. The woman behind the reception desk punched my name in the computer, read the information on the holographic projection and gave me a bright smile.
“Right this way,” she said, and then quickly looked embarrassed. “Sorry,” she signed. “I’m forgetful.”
“It’s okay,” I signed. “I can read lips.”
The woman nodded, looking relieved, and led me down a hallway while everyone else in the waiting room was left behind. Seemed patients for ear surgery got the royal treatment around this place.
A half hour later I found myself lying on a cold table, wearing some kind of fancy underwear and feeling like a half-naked old fool. Of course, I still thought the humiliation was worth it. I had tried every hearing aid in existence, but nothing worked. The doctors told me some technical jargon about why my ears didn’t work, but the plain and simple of it was actually just that: plain and simple. One thingy wasn’t connected to another thingy. Reconnect them and presto, I would hear. Of course, the doctors didn’t like my simplified explanation much, but it helped me understand what went on inside my cranium.
Then they explained the really hard part. Normally, in the past, when people who were born deaf or who went deaf regained their hearing, it took them years to understand what they were hearing, to differentiate a cow from a car and a word from a fart. Plus they had to learn language, how to use their own voice, all things usually done when they’re children and the brain is much more adaptive. Life expectancy wavered somewhere around one hundred twenty years those days so I still had almost another sixty to go, but I was old. I can admit that much. Learning new things no longer felt doable.
No problem, the doctors told me when I expressed my concern. The second part of the procedure took care of the learning aspect, too. Some science geniuses figured out what part of the brain controls and interprets sounds, language, yadda, yadda, and figured out how to transplant understanding into a mind that had none. I would wake up and not just understand the English language, but I would be able to speak it perfectly. I would be able to enjoy a symphony orchestra. Hell, they even gave me the option to understand and speak other languages. I chose Spanish. Those little Spanish lolitas still got me worked up. I may have been old, but I wasn’t dead.
The last thing I saw before passing out on the table was a smiling doctor signing to me, “Try to relax. Everything’s going to be fine.”
When I woke up, I felt a familiar cushion beneath my body—my bed, at home. And it was still quiet...not that I had any idea what hearing would sound like...
Or did I? A new sensation began to tickle my mind...something I couldn’t quite place. A hiss, I thought.
I reached up and felt my ears. Cotton wrappings tightly covered them. Before I could undo the wrapping, I saw a note on the bedside table. I read it quickly:
Peter,
Doctors say everything went fine. Sorry I couldn’t be there with you for the operation or when you wake up, but they have me working extra hours to cover the war. I left something playing for you on the holo-station, should be a real treat. Love you.
– Heidi.
I smiled. At twenty years my junior, I constantly felt amazed that Heidi could love me so deeply. She was a correspondent at one of the local channels and covered America’s latest war—the Australian’s had invaded Japan. Two of our favorite friends picked a fight with each other and we were forced to choose sides. Ironic we chose the nation that dealt us one of our worst defeats at Pearl Harbor way back when.
My mind returned to the note. Something was playing on the holo-station. I sat up on the side of the bed and got my bearings. Everything felt normal. I stood and still fe
lt fine. That’s when I unwrapped the headdress that covered my ears.
I did my best to ignore any sounds sneaking through as I unwrapped the headdress, but the light scraping sound of fabric on hair seemed loud in my ears. Even harder to ignore was the fact that I knew it was the sound that fabric made when it rubbed against hair. Amazing.
The fabric came away from my ears with a final whoosh of sound and then it struck me. The second sound I’d ever heard in my life wafted through the air like a beautiful melody. I knew right away that it was a bird...a chickadee. The sounds came from the holo-station. But I heard more...wind...rustling trees...leaves...nature.
I began to cry and let out a little sob. Then I gasped at the sound of my own voice. It was deep, powerful even. I walked to the mirror and spoke to myself, “Hello Peter. How’s it going? Fine. How about you? Hell! I can hear!”
I began to wonder what else there made noise. I walked to the holo-station and turned it off. Silence replaced the birds and wind. But I could hear something... A whistle. A repeating whistle that coincided with every breath I took. I realized that my stuffy nose created a whistle when air rushed past the blockage. Fascinating, but how many times had this happened in the past without my knowledge? The thought of my whistling nose entertaining the people around me became an embarrassing image, and I pushed it from my mind. I headed to the bathroom and blew my nose, which was extremely loud. I flushed the toilet, ran the water in the sink and in the tub and listened to the creak in the medicine cabinet’s hinges.
A boisterous, repeating gong rang out from the living room and I ran to investigate. I stopped in front of Heidi’s grandfather clock. I had no idea that thing made noise! Then I saw the time. Twelve noon. Heidi was on at noon! I’d watched her almost every day since the day we got married, and I read her lips with every newscast, but today I would hear her for the first time.
Insomnia and Seven More Short Stories Page 4