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Sisyphean Attempts at Self-Improvement #1100471 added October 30, 2025 at 4:16pm
Restrictions: None
Awake
Nurse Patricia had worked the pediatric ward for fifteen years, but she'd never seen anything like this.
It started with the Brennan boy. Seven years old, admitted for appendicitis. Routine surgery, smooth recovery.
Then on his second night, he started talking in his sleep.
Not words. Numbers.
"Forty-seven. Forty-six. Forty-five."
A countdown.
Patricia woke him gently. The boy gasped, eyes wild with terror.
"Don't let me sleep," he begged. "Please. It gets closer when I sleep."
She gave him juice, checked his vitals. Everything normal. An hour later, his eyes drooped despite his desperate attempts to stay awake.
"Twenty-three. Twenty-two. Twenty-one."
By morning, he'd reached single digits. Patricia was about to wake him when Dr. Morrison stopped her.
"Let's observe. Document everything."
"Three. Two. One."
The boy's eyes snapped open. For a moment, relief flooded his face. Then his expression went blank. When he spoke, his voice was different. Older. Emptier.
"This one's done."
He closed his eyes and didn't wake up again. Still breathing, heart still beating, but gone somewhere machines couldn't measure.
The next night, three more children started counting.
"It's spreading," Patricia told Dr. Morrison. "We need to keep them awake."
"That's dangerous. Sleep deprivation in children can—"
"Whatever's happening when they sleep is worse."
She was right. The Martinez girl reached zero at 3 AM. Same blank stare, same empty voice: "This one's done."
Then nothing.
By the third night, seven children were counting. Patricia did everything she could—cartoons, games, enough sugar to wire a horse. But children need sleep. Their bodies demand it.
Little Amy Carrillo made it to 4 AM before exhaustion won.
"Fifteen. Fourteen. Thirteen."
Patricia shook her. "Amy, sweetie, wake up!"
Amy's eyes opened briefly. "It's inside the sleep," she whispered. "It lives there. Waiting. Each time we sleep, it pulls us deeper."
"What does it want?"
"To trade places."
Patricia's blood went cold. "What do you mean?"
But Amy was already unconscious again.
"Seven. Six. Five."
That's when Patricia noticed something else. The children who'd reached zero, their monitors showed REM sleep. Constant REM. Their eyes moving rapidly beneath closed lids, watching something no one else could see.
She checked the security footage from their rooms. At exactly the moment each child had said "This one's done," something had changed. The shadows had moved wrong. Just for a frame. Like something had stepped out of them.
Patricia ran back to Amy's room.
"Two. One."
Amy's eyes opened. That terrible blank stare.
"This one's done."
But this time, Patricia saw it. A shape, tall and thin, walking out of the room. It looked like Amy, moved like Amy. But wrong. Like someone had tried to build a child from memory.
The thing that looked like Amy turned to Patricia.
"Whatever you do," it said in Amy's voice, "don't fall asleep. We're already in yours."
Patricia hasn't slept in four days. She can feel them waiting in the darkness behind her eyelids. Counting.
Starting at one hundred.
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494 words
PROMPT: “Whatever you do, don’t fall asleep.” — from A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Written for ""13" (2025 Ed) - CLOSED"  |
© Copyright 2025 Jeff (UN: jeff at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
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