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4:00 AM.
The clock is a taunt, as each second ticks by, the second hand jerking, stopping, jerking, stopping, jerking, stopping in an endless loop. The ticks echo in Yuugo’s brain, the walls inch closer with every tick, tick, tick of the clock. Like a broken wind-up toy, it won’t stop its onward tick, tick, ticking sometime into the future, sometime away from everything.
4:01 AM.
If the clock is moving forward, it’s him that’s somehow stuck in the center of that pristine glass face as the hours, minutes, and seconds dance alongside him in an awkward three-legged waltz. Tick, tick, ticking away in time with music he can’t seem to feel or hear, yet it must be an orchestra for the people who aren’t drowning in quicksand, tangled by vines, washed ashore by the blood of their friends and family and enemies.
4:02 AM.
He lays in the darkness, not unlike before. Before, when his sleep was broken by hallucinations of those he lost, those he couldn’t save. They dance in front of him now. He itches to grab something. A sharp something, in particular. He doesn’t know whether he’ll attack the wall or himself. Both are possible. It would be a comfort, to see a river of blood running from somewhere on his body. It’s never the same, never poised or practiced. It’s a practice done in pitch blackness on a cold bathroom floor, sketching names into the ceramic tiles, white bathtub walls, or his arms. Hopeless words, just like all those years ago, when he was scraping a hard, pointed rock into a metal wall, counting up days, months, years.
4:03 AM.
Tick, tick, tick goes the clock and with every tick, he yearns, breathes, feels the phantom of a shrapnel of a broken piece of glass. The number of mirrors he’s broken is an unmentionable thing in their household. When the kids see another one in the trash, they don’t even mention it anymore. They all have habits left over. Dark habits, nightmarish habits. He can deal with the kids’. The screaming and crying and quietly sneaking on tip-toes into a king-sized bed. No one mentions it in the morning. He barely wakes up when they slip into his bedroom anymore.
4:04 AM.
They don’t keep guns in the house. Not that they’re legally allowed to have one, but they also just can’t . Yuugo’s seen the kids point umbrellas and canes and newspapers at a window, a flash of light, or the cat Zazie begged for them to get at that fair a few years ago. It always takes too long to stop mid-action and realize their weapon doesn’t have a trigger nor any fire within it.
4:05 AM.
They try to talk about it, sometimes. He’s paid hundreds of therapy bills, some of them his own. Soft, gentle words from someone who had never been through what they have, could never comprehend the idea of living thirteen years in total isolation with only the ghosts of your family by your side. He knew how to survive then, how to focus, his mind a castle built upon sand. When the thought of survival was no longer a thing, the castle crumbled. You can’t build a castle on a mountain made of sand.
4:06 AM.
He’s zoned out. He knows this. He breathes to bring himself back, but he’s drowning. His fingers twitch, only slightly. He doesn’t know if he should sink or swim.
4:07 AM.
He focuses on the sound of breathing. Not his own. Is he even breathing?
4:08 AM.
He hears the little tick as the clock turns another minute. He hears steady breathing, feels Lucas moving beside him, fast asleep. Tonight, no kids have come in to seek their comfort. A good night’s sleep was once a luxury, but now it’s getting more and more common as the years go on. The youngest kids scarcely remember that place. The oldest ones have moved on, or at least out.
Sometimes Yuugo thinks he’s the only one who remembers.
4:09 AM.
This marks the total of two hours awake.
4:10 AM.
He gets up and slips quietly out the room. It’s dark tonight, an overcast sky. He’d have preferred if he could see the moon.
4:11 AM.
The only thing he sees in the hallway (which is always neat. It’s how Anna is, how he is. You have to be neat. It helps to be neat.) is the light flooding out of a bedroom. A nightlight, belonging to Chris, Rossi, and Dominic. None sleep well without being able to see.
4:12 AM.
He makes it undetected into the kitchen. Even here, he can see. There’s a night-light in here, right by the front door, and a fish tank that the kids take care of by the window. It bubbles, the sound of the filter mixing with the sound of the rain against the window.
It only registers to Yuugo now that it’s raining.
4:13 AM.
It registers that there’s someone else out here too.
4:14 AM.
Yuugo approaches the kid, who’s seated at the table. Kid is a bit of a stretch for any of them anymore, though. The youngest, Carol, is already ten.
It’s been seven years since the new Promise.
4:15 AM.
It’s not one of the bunker kids out here tonight. It’s not one of the Lambda ones either. Zazie is the only Lambda one here now, and even that’s debatable considering all the sleepovers he has with Norman and the other Lambda kids.
Yuugo takes a seat across from the Grace Field kid―no, teenager. How are they all getting so old?
4:16 AM.
One thing always spirals into the next and suddenly it hits him that he’s thirty-six.
He should be over this.
4:17 AM.
The teen looks up a moment later, then smiles. “Oh. Hi, Yuugo.”
It’s Phil. Phil doesn’t usually call anyone by anything else than their names. Yuugo remembers when he started school, and had an issue with the teachers because of that.
Phil doesn’t like growing attached to anyone anymore.
4:18 AM.
“Hey, Sunshine,” Yuugo says.
He’d made sure to nickname all the new kids, too. Phil is Sunshine. Carol is Emma’s Twin. Zazie is Tiger. Funny, to see how they react to these names now. Carol always huffs and denies any resemblance to Emma. Zazie always beams.
Tonight, Phil lets out a half-hearted chuckle.
4:19 AM.
“Something eating you?” Yuugo asks.
Phil shrugs and stares off to the distance.
Another unspeakable thing.
4:20 AM.
And now for the crushing silence.
4:21 AM.
Somehow, someone is always found at the kitchen table at odd hours of the night. There’s something safe in the shadows that congregate in the apartment, clustering around the base of tables and the couches and chairs, how they stretch along the floor before melding into the darkness of the night. There’s something safe about the rough grooves of this table, about the old pencil marks from years passed and the divots made from knives and pens alike. It was Ray who always somehow managed to dent the table regardless if he was doing homework or cooking.
4:22 AM.
It’s not that Ray’s reckless, it’s that he’s intense. That intensity, like a soda bottle with a memento in it, boils over into strength. He’s not angry, not usually, but he’s still that full soda bottle ready to explode.
Aren’t they all that soda bottle, though?
4:23 AM.
Yuugo wets his lips, feels a need crawl up his throat, but he’d be a bad influence if he grabbed anything now. A razor, a shard of glass, a cigarette, or a bottle, it makes no difference.
He’s learned to cope on fingernails if he has to, if the need gets too strong.
4:24 AM.
“I dreamt that Emma didn’t make it in time.”
Phil says that.
I dreamt that I did.
Yuugo only thinks that.
Both hurt in equal measure.
4:25 AM.
What is existence, but life?
What is life, but a dream?
What is a dream, but a sweet nightmare?
4:26 AM.
“Oh,” Yuugo says dumbly.
He’s not the one to offer sweet words or condolences. That’s Lucas’ thing. Lucas is soft touches, gentle nudges, tender words, a welcoming lap, and a hummed lullaby. Yuugo is the nails to Lucas’ pillow, the urchin to Lucas’ sea, the bite to Lucas’ kiss.
“D’ya want to talk about it?”
4:27 AM.
Yuugo is nothing these kids need.
Yuugo isn’t sure he’s even what he, himself, needs.
4:28 AM.
Phil shrugs. “It made me sad…” He trails off. “The demons didn’t like kids like me, did they? The ones with things wrong…” He trails off again, pointing to his brain. “... up here.”
Yuugo wants to say there’s nothing wrong with Phil, really, but an illness is an illness, be it your kidney or your brain.
4:29 AM.
“No, I guess they probably wouldn’t,” Yuugo says.
4:30 AM.
Yet, Yuugo is somehow everything these kids want.
4:31 AM.
“But we’re not there anymore,” Yuugo adds. “The demons are…” Not gone. “Out of reach.”
“I know,” Phil says.
4:32 AM.
“Sometimes it feels like I’m still there, waiting for Emma to come back for me. That Mama, not Isabella but the other one I was with after the house burnt down, is always watching me. She realized something was wrong,” Phil says. “She made Andrew talk to me once, because I was sad when Simon left.” Phil’s eyes begin clouding over. “I wish we could have saved them too.”
4:33 AM.
Yuugo knows a thing or two about death.
The one most important thing he does know about it, though, is that it’s final.
Sometimes he wishes necromancy was a real thing.
Maybe there’s a reason he enjoys those sorts of fantasy materials.
4:34 AM.
“You can’t ever get them back,” Yuugo says. “The most you can do is remember them. Tell stories, look at photographs. If you like, I can take you to the memorial tomorrow.”
4:35 AM.
“I don’t know if I want to do anything anymore.”
There it is, Yuugo thinks.
4:36 AM.
Yuugo counts, mentally.
Phil’s taken ten days off this year already.
But Yuugo’s not a stinge, so he says, “okay.”
4:37 AM.
The silence stifles them again.
Before Yuugo can slip into thought, he says, “Want some tea?”
4:38 AM
He gets up, grabs the tea. He gets the biscuits too. Tell stories, look at photographs.
Remember.
4:39 AM.
As he turns on the stove, Yuugo says, “Tell me about Simon.”
And Phil does.
It’s been two hours and thirty minutes.
4:59 AM.
Phil chuckles, brokenly, now as he recalls Simon’s departure. The smile, the way he waved, the way his Mama took him out the door and away from the world forever with a smile on her face.
Yuugo holds Phil now. They’re on the couch. It’s scratchy and worn, but the amount of midnight talks and impromptu tea parties done on it make its sunken cushions and stains worth it. The couch is a memory too.
And then, breathing in deeply, Phil asks, “Can you tell me about your friends, too?”
5:00 AM.
Yuugo tells stories too.
It’s been three hours.
7:00 AM.
It’s been five hours.
An alarm goes off somewhere in the house.
7:04 AM.
When Lucas comes out of the hall, he is met with the sight of an open cookie tin, a dainty teacup, the brightly-colored mug Phil practically forced them to buy. It’s to the sight of two tall, lanky males sprawled against each other on the couch.
Lucas smiles softly and motions to the other kids to quiet down.
7:05 AM
Just another unmentionable sleepless night.