Now i lay me down to sleep

I found Charlie through a friend of an old roommate that I didn’t even care for. Lisa, even her name annoyed me, I remember when she moved out that I was so grateful to never have to smell her perfume again lingering in the hallway of my apartment as she would skip off to one of her five jobs. She used the apartment to keep her stuff, I was Lisa’s unfriendly landlord of her storage facility. Lisa was never home because she was always so busy working day in and day out, some people did that, they worked the entire time. I worked a lot too but at least I had a bed for decorative purposes and came home occasionally to just I don’t know, think.

When I was 8, I remember scientists being all over the television on the new breakthrough. The ability to stay lucid without the need for sleep. It wasn’t a drug, it was a “procedure” they called it. A simple procedure in the brain that not only made us not need sleep, but unable to sleep. It was going to change the whole world they said, infrastructure, cost of living, relationships, everything. Without the need for sleep, we were all going to finally have more time to do all the things our ancestors had missed out on for lack of time. Everyone was on board. Practically the whole world was sold on the idea of having double the time to accomplish things. Now children could learn more, lovers could love more, everything was going to encompass more.

Soon after, the procedure became second nature for people, the equivalent of obtaining a driver’s license. Scientists at first refused to work on children younger than 16, but later began performing procedures on children as young as 5. I got my procedure done at 16, I hadn’t been born late enough to benefit from the law that later allowed 5-year old’s to get the procedure done.  The first night of my surgery I watched six classic films throughout the night, the sounds of actors and music filling the night and sitting on my mind and enriching me with cultures of the past. It was amazing, I learned 3 languages in a month, I studied the history of my family, I learned the constellations. I felt superhuman in those first few years of being “awake.”

There was a caveat to it all of course, no sleep meant that subtleties were lost. I would never wake up and notice a wrinkle, it was just there. We still aged, we just no longer had any surprises. It became a normal passage to see the skin growing thinner. No one ever awoke to a gray hair with surprise because no one ever slept.

People would only close their eyes when they died or while holding their hands over their eyes before a surprise.

Dreams and nightmares were a thing of the past too. No sleep meant no dreaming, no night terrors, no interpretations of the things we saw in our sleep because there was no sleep. I hated that part of it. I hated it so much that I wanted to be done with it.

And here I was waiting outside in the cold winter air of The Wakeful Cup coffee shop for Charlie, Charlie who was going to fix it all. I suppose it felt mildly ironic that we were meeting at a coffee shop considering I was seeking a remedy to find sleep. Charlie was “paranoid” though, Lisa said. What Charlie was doing was illegal. Charlie had been a doctor in the old world when sleep had still existed. Charlie was undoing the procedure for people that had changed their minds, people like me.

He smelled like coffee as he walked up to me, funny how nobody smelled like coffee anymore. I had forgotten how much I missed the smell.

              He held his hand out to meet mine, “Lacey I presume?”

“Lala, people call me Lala.” I saw a smile come over Charlie as he quickly lowered his face towards his shoes to hide his amusement.

             “What? What’s so funny?”

Charlie reached into his pants pocket pulling out an antique pocket watch, the chain dangling out the side.

“Lala means sleep in Swahili,” he said matter of factly.

I pressed my lips together tightly while contemplating the irony of that statement. My father had given me my nickname but had never given me a reason for it. My father also hated the procedure, couldn’t wait to die as a result of it. He fell into a depression those last few years of his life and when he finally passed I had remembered him telling me, “never stop chasing your dreams Lala.”

Charlie interrupted me in my thinking bubble. “I assume Lisa has informed you of everything. My fee, the process, the discretion and most importantly the fact that what I am offering is irreversible?”

“Yes yes of course. Believe me sir, this is what I want.”

If I was being honest with myself I wasn’t entirely sure it was what I wanted.

I pulled out the notecard that Charlie had requested I have ready for him when we met in person. My name, address, family names, job location, social security card, bank number were all handwritten onto the card. Charlie required collateral ‘to destroy a person’s life’ in the event that his secrets were ever spilled. He did not look like a person who would ever use any of these tools and it seemed to be more of a method of instilling fear in clients so as not to ever disclose the events that were about to unfold.

He pulled the card delicately from my hand as I felt the paper slipping from the touch of my fingers and realizing in that moment that this was it.

              “May I ask you a question,” he paused, “Lala?”

“Sure.” I tried to smile but felt one side of my mouth refusing to lift resulting in an apparent show of discomfort.

“Why?”

Was this a test? If I answered incorrectly was he not going to give me the serum we had discussed that would from this point forward allow me to sleep every single night for the rest of my life until I died? I searched my memory for an answer. Lisa never mentioned anything about a test, I was sure of it. And although there was a lot of information up there in my brain to sift through; Charlie’s appearance, Charlie’s notecard, the name of the coffee shop, the fee, all of the books I had read, memories I had stored and the abundant amount of details of all the information that I had packaged away in my brain from years of no sleep, there was nothing about a test. And so I answered as best as I could.

“I just, wanted to chase my dreams. Lack of need for sleep creates time doesn’t it, but it can’t create dreams and I just, I need them.”

Charlie had lit a cigarette that he had pulled out as I was talking, making time for me to think no doubt. He knew that I was searching for the right answer and I appreciated the patience that he gave me although I could see on his face the disinterest in my answer.

He took one slow inhale of his cigarette as he blew out the smoke to his left side while maintaining his eyes on mine.

Charlie whispered out, “How poetic.”

I stood there in front of him uneasy at the anticipation of what was to happen next. It was cold, I could see my breath expiring in the air and Charlie’s smoke being lifted and fading away into the cold. He already had my money, he could just leave me there in the cold if he had wanted to. I tried not to fidget but I felt as if he was waiting for more as he stood there smoking his cancer stick.    

“My dad died without being able to dream anymore. It was his ‘biggest regret in life’ he said until he allowed my mother to have the procedure done to me. When he died he said that he was finally going to be able to sleep and…” I searched my feet for courage and inhaled the cold air slowly through my nose before barely getting the last few words out, “and I didn’t want that to be me.”

Charlie’s eyes were locked on mine as he slowly inhaled a puff of cigarette before responding.  

“Now THAT, I do believe.”

He dropped his cigarette butt to the floor, crushing it with the heel of his shoe before walking towards me and embracing my hand as if we had been lovers and whispered in my ear.

“There is enough in this vial for you and only you. Tell no-one, take it at night and all will be back as it was. If people should ask you and, listen closely Lala because people WILL ask you, you don’t know what happened, something went wrong with your procedure and it is a happy fortunate accident that you sleep again. Do you understand?” 

I pulled the tiny vial from the palm of Charlies hands into mine and held it tight.

“I understand” I whispered back.

“Good. You can go now little bird. Never mention my name.”

Charlie placed a small kiss on my right cheek and let go of my hand as he quickly walked away from me leaving me there standing alone in front of that coffee shop.

I went home immediately, the tiny vial hugged into the palm of my hand that rested in my coat pocket. I sat in my bedroom on my queen bed holding the tiny bottle cradled in the palm of my hands. I had no idea what was inside of this bottle that I was about to ingest, it could kill me, I mean I hoped it didn’t but I knew the possibility that it could. I never knew Lisa to do anything to bring danger to me, she had always liked me a lot more than I had liked her, but how much did she really know this guy Charlie anyways?

I sat for a moment in the darkness of my bedroom looking at the pictures that had hung along my wall searching for answers. I had photos of me in front of different monuments and Countries far away with various boyfriends and friends of the past and present. In the middle of all of them hung an old picture of me as a child with my father in front of a swing set he had built for me on my birthday. I remembered dreaming about it the night before as my father stayed up throughout the night reading instructions and building with my mother. In the morning it looked just as it had in my dreams and my eyes lit up in amazement at the surprise of it. I had told them I wanted a swing set for days leading up to my birthday but until that moment I hadn’t known I was getting one, but I DID dream about it.  

I placed the vial gently towards my lips and closed my eyes.

“To dreams…” I threw back the cold blue liquid and could feel it coat along my throat and fall down down into my body. 

I immediately felt scared. The energy in me that I had felt for years had immediately began fading and I could feel the need for sleep. A calm had come over me and I could feel the serum working.

I laid down on my bed, thoughts filled my mind of whether or not I would wake up, I could feel my eyes growing heavier and heavier. I felt no pain, just exhaustion as I could feel my limbs getting heavier and sinking into the bed that I had never used until now. I finally took a deep breath preparing myself for whatever was to come and willingly closed my eyes and let it take me softly and then quickly, to sleep.