51 Sleepless Nights

by Tobias Wade

  The hospital. Now. I slowly pulled out of the gas station, trying not to turn the wheel too fast for fear of agitating the beetle. It reacted to even small movements, biting and scratching in protest. I don’t care if they made me drink a whole bottle of bleach, I was getting this thing out of me.

  I pulled right up to the emergency room doors and left my car there. I practically had to crawl up to the desk to keep the beetle still. For every foot I made, it was wriggling a few centimeters closer to my heart. What would happen when it got there?

  “Somebody help me!” I shouted, lying down on the ground to keep it still. I stared at my reflection in the polished floor tiles, now damp with the cold sweat flowing down my face. Was I delirious? The face looking up at me couldn’t be my own. I was so… old. My hair was grey and patchy, my eyes sunken and hollow, and a network of lines mapped the journeys of an un-lived life. I tried to touch my skin, but the jerking movement caused the beetle to bite down hard on one of my lungs.

  I was coughing blood when the nurses lifted me into a stretcher. I slipped in and out of consciousness after that. The nurses later told me that I kept mumbling “I don’t want to die. I want to live forever”.

  “Any allergies?”

  “No.”

  “Medications?”

  “No.”

  “Please think hard. It’s rare for someone your age not to be on any medications.”

  I glared at the doctor who perched on the end of my hospital bed. I don’t know how long I’ve been here, but it was afternoon when I went to visit Mr. Jacobs, but now the morning sun was filling my room. I squinted against it, then back at my doctor. He looked bored and annoyed and… fuzzy. I squinted again.

  “I’m 19 years old,” I said. The events of the other day immediately came back to me, and I clutched at my chest. Ancient withered hands held loosely together by a mesh of bulbous veins gripped my hospital gown and pulled it open. I couldn’t feel any lump, but… was this really me? My skin sloughed into sagging pouches around my skeletal frame. I was more than old. I was what old could only dream about becoming when it grew up.

  “Do you remember what year it is?” the doctor asked. “Don’t worry if you can’t. It’s common with cases of delirium –“

  “It’s April 13th, 2017. I’m not delirious. I’m 19 years old, and was perfectly healthy yesterday. There’s something inside of me which is causing this…”

  “Causing what, exactly?”

  He was writing something down in his notepad, but he wasn’t really listening. He must deal with a dozen old people every day, each more blithering and nonsensical than the last. But if they could find the beetle and reverse this…

  “I want a full body scan –“

  “You’ve already been checked. It was probably nothing but heat exhaustion which caused you to feel dizzy. I’d like to keep you here through the afternoon and get you re-hydrated, and then you’ll be as good as ever. Is there anyone you’d like us to notify?”

  “My grandmother.”

  He raised a skeptical eyebrow.

  “Just give me the damn phone.”

  Grandmother Elis and I stared at each other. She recognized me the moment she walked in the door. She didn’t say a word – just pursed her lips and sat down. She opened her handbag and began fiddling with something inside.

  “I’m sorry…” I said. This was all my fault. I should have asked her before visiting Mr. Jacobs. I should never have gone through her stuff in the attic without permission, or pretend I was supposed to accept Mr. Jacob’s offer on her behalf.

  She took out a hand-mirror from her purse and held it up to me. I screwed my eyes shut tight.

  “Look at what you’ve become.”

  I forced myself to look. If I – the old me – had seen someone who looked like I did now, I would have made some cruel joke about old people ‘outliving their usefulness’. Now I felt like I wanted to cry, if these puffy old eyes could even do that anymore.

  “My Grandfather doesn’t know how to extend life,” Elis said. “He shifts it from one person to another. The only reason he has lasted this long is because he passes his years into a victim who must bear his burden in his stead.”

  “So the reason you never accepted his offer…”

  “Because I couldn’t do that to someone else. One lifetime is more than enough if used properly, and a thousand lives aren’t nearly enough when used as he has done.”

  “But I only want one life, I swear,” I said. “And I can get it back, right? All I have to do –”

  “No. You do not have the right to give your years to anyone.”

  “But I could give them back to Mr. Jacobs.”

  She shook her head. “You will not win. He has been doing this for over a hundred years. If you go back to him, he will only add to your years until you’ve been turned to dust.”

  “He told me not to return without you. If you accept his deal –”

  Grandmother Elis put her mirror away. I hated how much her hands were shaking.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t do it.”

  “Please don’t leave me like this…” I said.

  “There’s hardly anything left of you to leave,” and she was gone.

  I wanted to say more, but my words caught on a dry itching in my throat. I felt like I was suffocating, and if that had been the end, I would have accepted it. I’d rather die than live like this. But the itching turned into squirming, and the squirming into thrashing. I clutched at my throat, but I was helpless as the beetle crawled up my trachea and out of my mouth. It plopped down into my lap, and I held it in my hands.

  But these weren’t my years – this wasn’t my fault. If I could just pass them off to someone else, then…

  I’d rather die than live like this.

  But I’d rather live forever than either.

  The Psychopath in my house

  There’s a psychopath in my house.

  No he didn’t break in. He sleeps in the same room as me. It’s not my brother’s fault; this is just who he is.

  If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s my parents. My Mom left when I was six and my little brother was four. She never wanted us, or at least that’s what my Dad said, because I don’t remember her very well.

  Dad said she used to be a perfect student with big dreams, then she got knocked up and had to drop out of college to take care of us. He reminds us all the time that it was our fault she left, and how happy he was before we were born.

  That’s the nice version of what he said anyway. Lots of stuff about her being an ungrateful slut who will burn in Hell, but I don’t think of her that way. If I was married to someone like my Dad, I would have run away too.

  My Dad needed “medicine” to cope with her leaving. Every time he took it, he would be gone for a few days. It would be just me and my little brother in the house, and I took care of him the best I could. My Dad wouldn’t usually leave us with any money, but I got pretty good at hiding things under my dress at the grocery store.

  I thought things would change when I was 12 and found a paper bag with 1,000 dollars in our backyard. I thought Mom had sent it – that she’d heard about how hard things were and mailed us some money.

  I could usually find food when I needed it badly enough, so I didn’t want to waste it on things like that. It was my brother’s 10th birthday coming up, and that seemed like a big deal. I hired a van and brought him and seven kids from his class to spend the whole day at Sea World.

  It was so much fun I thought about never going back. My brother didn’t want to run away though, and I couldn’t leave him. Besides, the van driver was keeping an eye on us and said he had to bring us home or he might get fired.

  We should have run away though. The money hadn’t come from my Mom – she’d forgotten about us. That’s when I found out my Dad’s “medicine” was meth, and that he’d been selling some to his friends when he dropped the money by mistake. I tried to tell him that
it was my fault, but since it got spent on my brother’s birthday, he got the worst of it.

  My brother didn’t walk again for two years after that. He needed even more help now that he was in a wheelchair. There were more bills that weren’t being paid – the electricity, the gas, even the rent sometimes. I had to be out a lot trying to find money, sometimes for days at a time when I was staking out a house to steal from.

  I couldn’t leave my brother alone too long though. My Dad would just ignore him, and if I didn’t check in at least twice a day then I’d find my brother sitting in his own piss and shit. I think he could have made it to the toilet by himself if he really tried, but he just gave up caring about everything.

  There is one thing my brother started doing to pass the time though, although this I wish he hadn’t. I noticed his growing collection of small animal skulls for awhile, but I assumed they were just plastic until I saw how he was catching them.

  I watched him put bird seed in a 2L soda bottle with the opening cut wider. Once a squirrel crawled in, he would pull a string which slid the bottle down to cover the opening with a piece of cardboard. It would struggle frantically to get out, but when it was near the opening, its own weight would hold the bottle into place against the board.

  I would have congratulated him on his contraption except for what happened next. He picked up the bottle – cardboard still covering the opening – and slipped a couple razor blades inside. Then he SHOOK the whole thing until it looked like the inside of a blender, the squirrel SCREAMING the whole time.

  I took it away from him, but he just kept building little things like that. It wasn’t just squirrels either – mice, small birds, even a raccoon once. After he’d killed them, he’d BITE the head straight off and then spit it into a bowl of water to clean the organic matter off the skull.

  “Please stop. God didn’t make those animals just so you could torture them,” I said to him.

  “Then why did he make it so much fun?”

  It’s not just animals anymore. I found a big cardboard box out on the sidewalk near the bus-stop. Inside was a bag of M&Ms, a couple comic books, and his old Gameboy Color. There was a rope tied to little hooks inside the box which led toward my house.

  If someone were to pull that rope, the box would close and the whole thing would be dragged down the sidewalk. I don’t think he’d be strong enough to pull anyone bigger than a six year old, but the school bus stopped here.

  I ripped the box into pieces and ran to confront him. I found him sitting on his bed – he was out of the wheelchair now – waiting with a knife in his hands.

  What the Hell are you trying to do?”

  “Set a trap.”

  “It’s not going to work,” I said.

  “Don’t worry. It’ll work.”

  “I destroyed it. Why are you trying to trap some kid?”

  “I’m not. I’m trying to trap you.”

  That’s when I noticed that the TV was suspended with ropes above me. He cut the cord, and it landed right on top of my head.

  He must have counted on that knocking me out because he was already coming at me with the knife. I was dizzy, but I managed to scramble out of the way and slam the door in his face.

  After that, I was too scared to go back inside the house. I called Child Protective Services and reported the meth deals my Dad was doing in the home. I didn’t mention what my brother has been doing, because I thought once he was out of here he’d have a chance at a fresh start. I didn’t want his life to be over before it had even begun.

  We were both put into separate foster homes, and it’s been two years since I’ve heard anything from him. That was until last night.

  My adoptive parents – wonderful Asian couple who couldn’t have kids of their own – sat down with me at the kitchen table. They told me they had some good news: they were going to adopt my brother as well.

  I guess the family that took him in suffered an unfortunate accident. They didn’t tell me what happened, but by the look they gave each other, it must have been gruesome.

  I hope he’s changed. Telling people what he did will stop him from being adopted and ruin his life forever. I can’t say anything until I’ve seen him again. If he hasn’t though…

  Well that’s why I’m writing this. If he hasn’t changed, then at least someone will know what happened, and have a shot at stopping it from happening again.

  How to Start your own Cult

  Let me preface this by stating I am a firm atheist. There is no life after death, although I will go to great lengths extolling its beauty to my subjects. We do not grow older because the Reaper is always siphoning our life energy. I was not born from a dying star, and I am no prophet of the Divine Cosmic Order.

  I am a nihilist – I do not believe in anything. And as much as I do not believe in the supernatural, I believe even less in mankind and their ability to govern their own lives.

  Do you really need proof of that? Fanatic mobs begging for their religious oppression to be protected by the government, junkies in the street surrendering their will to anything they can boil into their veins, a narcissistic idiot elected president of the United States – you get the idea.

  The church-states, the cartels, the two-faced corporations – none of them will hesitate to manipulate the population for their own selfish purposes. The vast majority of people will always be susceptible to being manipulated, because it is so much safer and easier to be told what to think than to think for yourself.

  My reasoning dictates:

  1)People will always be susceptible to manipulation. If you aren’t manipulating them, then someone else will.

  2)The manipulator will always profit at the expense of the people. That is the purpose for their influence.

  3)The only way to protect people from a selfish manipulator is to become a benevolent manipulator yourself.

  For these reasons, in my senior year of college, I decided to start my own cult.

  Step One: Identify your targets.

  People will not run to you unless they are already running away from something else. Now, where could I find the most fearful students?

  I formed three support clubs and put up fliers around campus. One for the socially anxious, one for those needing financial assistance, and a third for victims of sexual assault.

  Step Two: Amplify their fear

  Ever wonder why priests scream about Hell while politicians rant about terrorists and economic collapse? There is nothing like fear to get someone’s attention and follow you for relief.

  To the socially anxious, I forced them to give speeches. I asked them embarrassing questions, put them in awkward situations, and generally ridiculed them, all in the guise of helping them gain confidence.

  To the financially stressed, I gave lectures about how student loans haunt people for the rest of their life. I told them how the job market is over-saturated with college degrees, and how slim their chance of employment was. I told horror stories about homeless drug addicts who graduated college but couldn’t make anything of their lives.

  The sexual assault group was the most fun for me. No I didn’t rape them – I needed them all to trust me. I did however convince them that I was the only one looking out for them – that there was a rapist in every party, and down every dark alley.

  Step Three: Offer a Solution

  Three months into the semester, I had finished establishing sufficient trust. That’s when I let them in on a little secret –the reason why I’m not afraid.

  Wouldn’t it be great if there was safe place to go where no one would make you feel bad about being socially inept? A band of brothers who helped each other find jobs, share rooms, and reach financial success? Sisters who would hold your hand and keep you safe from all the predatory monsters in the world?

  I had enough people now that I was able to register my flock as a co-ed professional fraternity. I did some fundraising with the groups and managed to rai
se enough money to renovate an abandoned motel into my headquarters. Now that I had them all together, the fun could really begin.

  Step Four: Make yourself special.

  It’s not enough for your people to need your insight. They need to need you. Now it was time to explain what made me unique.

  Don’t force it down their throats. People don’t want to be part of an organization that needs them. They want to be part of something exclusive, something that recognizes how special they know they are inside.

  I began by offering private counseling sessions to everyone having difficulty. To each of them, I confessed the truth about why I was helping them.

  You see, I wasn’t human at all. I was an alien who was born in the Andromeda galaxy. My people are empaths, allowing us to sense the suffering of other sentient beings. I felt how troubled Earth was, and I came here to save humanity from themselves.

  They were all skeptical at first, but here’s what really convinced them. I told each person in confidence that the rest of the fraternity was already indoctrinated. No-one wants to be the only one left out, especially when they finally found a home which unequivocally accepts and shelters them.

  Step Five: Make them special

  Each new member makes it that much easier to add the next, because it adds credibility and makes people more afraid of being left out. Adding the first few is the hardest part, so here is what I did.

  The first person I convinced was a scared freshman girl who was raped during a house party. She was ready to give anything just to feel safe. I gave her the chance to witness the ceremony, and didn’t force her to commit to anything.

  I laid rows of candles in the basement and lined the walls with mannequins. I concealed the mannequins with thick robes, so it would appear as though most of the fraternity was already present. I used a surround sound system and a layered chanting soundtrack to make it seem like everyone was participating.

  By the time I was through with the ceremony, she was so afraid of being left out that she swore the oath of loyalty right on the spot.