THE WAY IT WENT DOWN: GO AND SLEEP NO MORE

The world is lopsided when you don’t sleep. People and places slouch towards you, twisting, and its only later that you realize, in the soup that is your mind, that it was you moving under your own power then. My name is [name] and I haven’t slept in 19 days and there’s cookies on the table, please help yourself. It began with the fucker at the airport. There was a pursuit which I’m not at all certain really happened, or if it was something I watched on television one of these eternal nights. 

But anyway, I think we caught her, and she…did something.

Kathy, Ruben and myself saw it. Whatever it was. Even now, thinking about it, all I can see in my mind is a dancer, spinning, pulling cloth behind, a colorful blur of motion; or was that an American Express commercial? I don’t know. I don’t know. I know there wasn’t a dancer, but it felt like that. I know it doesn’t make fucking sense. I hope no one else saw it, whatever the fuck it was. I hope no one taped it. Some messed up security guard out there now, up for 400+ hours ready to do something crazy. 

It does that, you know. 

Kathy cashed out real fast. She was cold when I found her, spinning. I searched the apartment and wiped it down and chucked her broken phone down a sewer. I called it in to the group and they told me to come in, but I didn’t. That was day 6, you see, and I was still running on fumes. I could remember what sleep felt like. I could feel it, nearby, waiting for me like someone at home, it a warm bed, half-stirring, listening for my feet on the steps. 

Anyway, Kathy’s dead, write that part down.

Ruben is in the county lockup screaming about aliens from space and that one was a blessing. It was easy enough to turn him in. This was day 10, you see, and the world didn’t look like something seen through a rain coated window, undulating and curling at the edges. It was more like claymation. Running and roiling and warping. Yes [doctor] my friend has threatened to hurt himself and others. Yes [doctor] my friend is not himself. Yes [doctor] my friend is insane. All the while, trying not to laugh at the way the halls of the hospital, lit by supernova, appeared to wriggle and writhe like some undersea thing. All the while trying not to ask if they had two beds. 

After the hospital, I hit up Mike for the pills. Mike asked me if I had seen Kathy or Ruben, and I said no man. No. But you know who I’d like to see? The inside of my fucking eyelids Mike. I’d love to see them. I miss them. Anyway, I got the pills and then I said something and then in one of those fast-forward moments I was on Mike’s front porch, holding the torn off remnants of a screen door, screaming. 

I stopped then, goggling. I dropped the door with a clang, and for a moment the world swam in perfect clarity. Freezing cold night. Christmas lights. A locked red door in front of me, and Mike’s eyes through the slot, looking at me. 

“Get the fuck out of here Kev. Go. Now.” So I went. 

I had used the pills in Iraq, and man, did they take the edge off. For 3 days, I cruised, expecting sleep any moment, and I was even alert enough to see the two parked out front of my place. I almost certainly didn’t shoot them both, the memory is just too…cinematic. That couldn’t have happened. I don’t know. 

Anyway, while I still had it in me, I split. Bug out bag, back door, back roads. That’s a lot of b’s. What? Huh. Ok. 

That was day 6. Fuck. No. 12. 13. Day 13. 

Is it day 19? 20? What’s the name of this place? Who is that? That bullhorn is… I can’t think…

FUCK YOU. I’M NOT COMING OUT. FUCK YOU-

****

From the Detroit Free Trader, Oct 30, 2019

GUNMAN IDENTIFIED AS DECORATED ARMY ENGINEER

by Reginald King

The former Army engineer who allegedly killed five hostages, including a priest, during a nearly four-hour siege of a Mercatorville McDonald’s restaurant was a decorated U.S. army veteran with no known history of mental illness.

Suspected gunman Kevin Grahamn, 28, who died Wednesday in Polk County, served in Iraq from March 2012 to March 2014—