(CW: Thoughts of death, Insomnia, self-loathing, excessive drinking)
There are only a scant few people in the park and yet everyone is staring at Jon. Everything is staring at him. A million eyes gaze upon him, their irises so hot they bore holes through his flesh and cauterize the wounds. Static scraps against his skull like a rusty scalpel and his stomach, though full, feels empty. So sickeningly empty. Out of an abandoned habit, he reaches into his pocket for a cigarette. There’s nothing there.
Jon feels himself start to sweat. The Ceaseless Watcher screams at him that every single person he walks past knows exactly what he is and they hate him for it. As they rightfully should. He is a monster. And no matter how many times he throws himself into the fire and tries to save others, Jonathan Sims will always be a monster. He isn’t even sure why he came here. He doesn’t want to be here. He shouldn’t be here. He is an ant under a magnifying glass and he is burning. He needs to leave, he needs to run, he needs to-
His eyes lock onto a man. He’s of average build, early thirties, with well-groomed brown hair. His oversized brown suit hangs over his body as he stands next to an empty bench. Despite how dressed he is, the man’s face seems to be in a permanent state of restlessness and exhaustion. The pale-skinned man stares forward, but whether he is staring at something is unclear. Large headphones cling to his head, blaring rock music so loud it can be heard meters away. The man does not sit. He stands, stares off into nothingness, and listens to his music. He intermittently stretches and moves random parts of his body. But his chest does not rise or fall once. His glassy eyes do not blink even once.
The static whispers something. End. The Archivist approaches the man and touches his shoulder. Pulling off his headphones and turning down his music, the man meets the Archivist’s hungry gaze. The man’s voice is unbothered, yet listless. “What is it?”
The Archivist smiles. He feels the millions of eyes, the magnifying glass, move its focus to a new target. He says his well-rehearsed lines, no longer able to tell if the words or simply routine or if he is dutifully praying over a graciously gifted meal. “Hello. I’m Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute. I would like you to give me your statement.”
“...Okay.” The man says after a pause. He shows much less apprehension than most do in his situation. “Do you mind if I listen to music while I do, because-”
“I would like you to give me your statement.”
The tired man finds himself stepping in front of the bench and taking a seat. His eyes widen and begin to frantically dart around. The ant looks for an exit while the Archivist calmly sits down right next to him, never breaking eye contact. “I- I don’t- Do we really need to sit? I-”
The Archivist grins wide. His teeth are eyes. His mouth is eyes. His face is eyes. He is eyes and now the roaring static is so blissfully quiet because its claws are scratching at someone else’s brain. “Statement of Landen Mond regarding his insomnia. Statement begins.”
“I’ve never been able to sleep consistently. Not in bed, anyway. When I was a kid and my mum would take me somewhere in her car, I would be out like a light. Even if it was just a short drive to school, if she looked in the backseat, she would see me napping. I couldn’t stand the idea of just sitting and waiting. Not even staring out the windows and watching the sprawling cities and hearing the roaring traffic was any relief. I could not stand it. So, I slept. I would lean against the car door, shut my eyes, and drift off so I could be woken up at whatever destination. Then I would rush out the car as fast as possible.
You would think being able to nod off in a moving vehicle would make it very easy to lie down in a bed and rest, but you would not be more wrong. I would always have some reason to push my bedtime further back. Homework, a book I just had to finish the next chapter of, my belly aching for a snack. Anything and everything was enough. It just always felt like there was more I wanted to do- had to do- and if I dared lie down for even a moment, I would miss it. And I know you’re supposed to allow your body to relax to sleep, get rid of all distractions- I knew even then, I would look up how to sleep better- but I simply couldn’t. Some nights I would rather just stand in my room aimlessly walking in circles than simply lie down and stop moving. As you can imagine, my parents were not thrilled. Got punished for it a lot. Pathetic as it is, I can’t get this one thing out of my head: It was my last year of primary school. I had gotten in trouble a few times that year for being unable to stay awake in class. Believe me, I would have liked to, but my body had other plans. Still, things didn’t get… too bad. But then there was the last day. I had been staying up the night before, so of course karma came and I overslept last night. My mum, at her wits end, decided it just simply wasn’t worth taking me to school that day. I had friends in primary. Best friends I had ever made in my life even. Again, pathetic, I know. Point is, I never even got to say goodbye to them.
Was that a wake up call in any way? Did I get myself together? No. I would try and try but sleep felt simply impossible. My health was absolutely awful. My sleep schedule would almost invert itself every week. I would force myself under my covers, trying to get it back on track. I would tell myself to just calm down and breathe. But then I would overfocus on every single tiny breath I took. I had no idea how to make my body start breathing on its own again, so I would just keep forcing myself out of fear of what would happen if I stopped. When you don’t sleep, every sense cranks itself up to the edge. There’s this dull headache in the back of your skull and you think your brain is failing you. You can’t help but check your heartbeat to make sure it's still there. And even when it is, you can’t help but think that it’s too fast, that its too slow, that you’re going to die, that you are dying. All of the thoughts you have about mortality, about the fact you’ll one day simply cease… There’s no protection from it. You just have to sit in it, let it all swarm you, and hope your body finally sleeps. It’s a nightmare. Worse than any one I’ve ever had. Not that I’ve ever had a nightmare. Or a dream. My sleep is just… nothing.
Before the last few months, I was managing four hours on average. Best I’ve ever done in my whole life. It’s a miracle I don’t fall asleep at work. I just throw myself at it while running on fumes the whole time and it somehow works out… I don’t think I even know how to not just run on fumes. My sleep is always broken. One night, I fall asleep at 2 in the morning and wake up at 6. Other nights, I mercifully manage to turn in at 10 pm, but then I just find myself waking up at 1 or 2 or 3, some treacherous time that blurs between night and morning, and no matter what I do, I can’t get back to sleep. At some point, I just decided I would give in and call it an early day whenever that happens. Some days I take naps in the middle of them. Some days I don’t. Some weekends I completely collapse. Some weekends I don’t. I could not for the life of me find any rule or solution. But at least it was normal.
It stopped being normal six months ago. It was night and I was doing my usual routine of not sleeping. I had at least managed to will myself to lay in the bed without staring at my phone. Instead, I stared up at the ceiling fan above me. I watched the blades spin at maximum speed. I researched urban legends a lot in my youth, especially as a means of escaping sleep. So while I lied there, I couldn’t help but think of the myth of Fan Death: If you don’t know about it, it’s a Korean rumor that if you sleep in a closed room with a running fan, the fan will suck up your oxygen and you’ll die of carbon dioxide poisoning. Technically, it’s about electric fans, not ceiling fans, but that didn’t matter in my tired, racing mind. And then my thoughts began to drift towards another way that ceiling fan could kill me. At any time, a screw could go loose and the whole entire thing could fall on me and crush me. I tried to reason with myself. I was clearly getting worked up over nothing.
Then I felt it. The horrible stillness. I felt it in my arms. This tingling numbness. It felt like the flesh inside my arms was being pressed and squeezed so tight that there would be nothing but my bones. It didn’t even hurt. It was just so uncomfortable and my arms felt so stiff and hard to move. I didn’t know if I was having a panic attack or sleep paralysis but whatever it was, I couldn’t handle it. I almost jumped out of bed. The feeling quickly left my arms but I didn’t feel any comfort in that fact. I decided that sleeping for now was a bust. I fled to my living room.
My mind was too exhausted for television, but I just needed to do something. Anything to take my mind off of the thoughts. I thought some nighttime gardening would do the trick. I wouldn’t have been the first time. Taking care of my plants has always been therapeutic, in a way. I sometimes joke that they have a more healthy lifestyle than I do. But when I turned towards my snake plants and aloe veras, they were all drooping. Wilting from neglect, even though I had just watered them yesterday. Worse, they were covered in fine layers of dust. It looked like they hadn’t been touched in years. The flowers I keep vased were even worse. Petals were strewn across the floor and the stem was just a black, rotted stick. I stared down at it and felt the dust in my throat. Then I felt the stillness again. In my legs.
I forced myself out the front door. I started wandering the streets. It was a cold night. One where the chill of the wind isn’t completely unbearable, but it still bites at your skin and compels you to keep walking. That’s my favorite temperature. By all means, it should have been a wonderful night for me to simply walk in, but I could not shake off the feeling that something was deeply wrong. Everything was so quiet. None of my neighbors had a single light on in their house, not that I could see. As I walked, I came across a street light in the neighborhood that has always blinked and flickered throughout all the years I’ve lived here. But that night, the light remained completely still, the same as all the others. I don’t know why, but seeing that was what made me shift from feeling uneasy to feeling afraid.
I kept walking until I was in the city. I’ve been in the city late at night. It’s never quiet. It’s always bright and loud and alive. But the only lights that were on were the streetlights that oppressively shined upon the pavement. None of the buildings were open. The buildings weren’t even places. They were just… buildings. I don’t know how to describe it. There were no stores or apartment buildings or houses or libraries or movie theatres, there were just buildings, just monuments of concrete and wood that were impossible to associate with any sign of human life. Cars filled the street, but they didn’t run. They weren’t on. I dared to peak inside a few. Every time, I saw a person sitting in the driver’s seat. But they were asleep. At least, that’s what I hoped they were. I didn’t want to consider the other option. I banged on windows, but no one ever responded. I didn’t even hear the sound of my own fists punching the glass. Everything was dead silent.
I kept walking until I saw a building that was a place. A sign out front with a faint orange glow, like the neon lights were just about to give out. “The Last Stop” were the words, next to an image of a beer bottle. “Open all hours”. I’m not much of a drinker, but at that point I would do anything to not be in that lifeless city. I stepped inside and glanced around. The bar seemed old and run-down, yet the people were all dressed very formally. Tuxedos and suits and dresses. Faint green lighting came down from the ceiling and I couldn’t help but compare the hospital lights. The bar was just as cold inside as the city was outside, and it was just as quiet. The people moved, but they never made a sound. They didn’t speak to each other. They just sat there, staring down at their drinks and occasionally drank, almost with a rhythm. The entire place smelled of what I thought at the time was vinegar. Now, I think it was formaldehyde.
“Welcome, friend”, the bartender said to me in a voice completely devoid of passion. His skin was so pale, like he had never seen the sun. He looked just as formal and the other bargoers, but it looked like a vacuum bag had been poured on top of him. He was covered in dust. Not wanting to be rude and feeling underdressed for whatever this bar was, I decided not to mention it. “What will you be having?” he asked me. I told him I didn’t care. So I sat at the bar and with slow, deliberate motions, he poured me a drink. It looked like normal liquor. It smelled like normal liquor, outside of the pickle-scent that permeated everything in the building. When I drank it, it went down like mud and it tasted even worse. I don’t know why I kept drinking when he offered more cups. Maybe I was just too scared to go back out. So I sat at the bar. He asked me questions. About my aspirations, my career goals, everything I wanted to do in life. And after every question, he would pass me another bottle of that horrible, thick brown liquid, and I would take it and drink it.
At some point, I lost count of how many I had had. My brain was buzzing. My lips felt numb and all my words were slurred, but I just kept answering questions. Then I tried to drink another, but couldn’t. My arm wouldn’t move. I tried to let go of the cup, but my hand was firmly gripped onto it like the cup was part of my body. I tried to stand up and all the bones in my leg were stone. I was paralyzed. No matter how much I commanded my limbs to move, nothing worked. My vision was blurry. All my thoughts were coated in layers of thick mud and alcohol but it didn’t nothing to dull the terror. All it did was put everything in slow motion. Seconds expanded into multiple minutes. I watched the bartending slowly lean over to me and look at my face, frozen in fright. “It looks like you need some help getting home.”
I tried to scream, but my jaw was wired shut. All I could do was watch as the bartender took ages to get closer to me. My arms and legs were completely numb and I couldn’t even breathe. My muscles were just gone. He put his hand on my shoulder and patted it. “You should sleep this off”, he said. And then he pushed. It took what felt like an hour to hit the ground. An hour of being completely petrified as I felt my body drop to the ground. When I thought I would finally hit the floor behind me, I just kept falling. There was a pit in the ground that hadn’t been there before, and I was landing right into it. With each second it took me to fall, I took notice of just how the hole was dug. The sides of the wall just barely touched me. It was exactly my size.
When my back hit the ground, my body jolted to life. I was instantly sober and my ability to move came back. I ran. I ran until I couldn’t see the bar anymore. Even though the city was now awake and all the other buildings had people going in and out of them and cars were blaring across the road, I kept running. And when I finally got home, I did not stop moving. I did not sit down and I did not dare touch my bed. I’ve been wrong ever since. I don’t get tired any more. Or maybe I’m just always at the same level of exhaustion. My plants don’t bring me comfort anymore. Nothing does. Nothing I do can muster me to feel… anything really. I’ve tried buffets, any movie, video games, music so loud it should rupture my eardrums, beaches, even skydiving, and I can’t muster up anything. Nothing feels new, or different, or good. Even thinking of things I’ve done in the past doesn’t offer any nostalgia or joy. There’s just nothing inside me. Nothing at all. But the worst of it is whenever the stillness comes back. When my hands won’t let go of something or my foot refuses to move and I start worrying that I might never move again. That my body will collapse and I’ll be a motionless nothing for eternity. That’s why I need to keep moving. That’s why I haven’t slept in six months. Why I haven’t even blinked in six months. Because if I close my eyes one more time, they won’t ever open again.”
Landen’s chest rises. And falls. He breathes. Fast. He breathes and breathes, inhaling twice for each exhale. His hands desperately grip the bench he sits on, searching for any form of stability. Tears run down his face. The Archivist drinks it all in with equal disgust and fascination. It is wonderful. It is horrible. He is full and he is a monster. At least, he thinks, this one will not be haunted in his dreams. For the moment Landen dreams is the moment Landen Mond ends. “Statement ends.” The Archivist says, unable to wipe the satisfaction from his face. He gets up from the bench. His work here is done. He does not want to be here any longer. Jon does not want to be here when the guilt fully sets in. “Thank you.”
As Jon leaves, Landen tries to lift himself from the bench. He can’t. His legs are stuck. His arms are stuck. He is a corpse and corpses don’t move. But Landen keeps trying. He chokes on his own tears but he keeps trying to move. Until he manages to stand up, run up to Jon and put a cold dead hand on the man’s shoulder.
Jon slowly turns around. He looks at his victim Landen. The smoke of Landen’s terror wafts over Jon and makes his lungs feel like they're filled with the worst poison. The ash sticks in Jon’s mouth. He wants to throw up. He wants to throw back up each and every word he wrenched from Landen’s throat and ate. But he can’t. Landen’s grey eyes stare into him. “Do it again.”
Jon tries to back away, but Landen will not let go. “P- pardon?”
The desperation on Landen’s face grows. “I felt it. All of it. Not the quiet dread. The actual fear I felt in the moment. That was the first time I have felt anything in months. Do it again. Please.”
Why is he begging for this? Jon is a monster. Why did Jon want to do this in the first place? Jon is a monster. Why did he think he could feast on the horror of an already dead man and simply leave without consequence? Maybe because that’s what he’s always done as the Archivist. The Fears did not often leave meals unfinished, and many statement givers died after giving their statement.
Jon does not want to see this any more, despite his nature. “No.”
“You don’t understand!” Landen screams, not knowing that Jon knows far more than Landen ever will. Jon is always the one that knows while others get hurt. “I haven’t seen the sunrise since that night! I can check my phone to see it’s noon, but when I look at the sky? It’s night. It’s a big dark nothing with no stars, just a lifeless empty moon that reminds me that that night has never ended for me. Do you know what that does to a person? For your entire life to be stretched into a single, unescapable moment?”
Something Jon snaps. “You’re already dead”, he replies as though it were a simple fact. Because it is.
Landen’s feverish desperation melts into confusion. “What?”
“You- you died. At the age of twelve. There was a car accident. Your mother was the only survivor.”
“I- I don’t remember… No, I would remember a-”
“How many cups did you drink that night?”
“Twenty. H- How… But I don’t…”
While Landen contemplates his stolen life, Jon takes the opportunity to break free from Landen’s grip. Jon turns and he runs. He runs until Landen is out of his sight, even though the man will never truly leave his Sight after giving a statement. But Jon cannot face Landen in-person right now. He just can’t. He can’t even bare to think about it.
Jon does not think about Landen. Jon does not think about what he would do in Landen’s situation. Jon does not think about the fact he already knows the answer. Jon does not think about his coma. Jon does not think about the months he spent as nothing but an observer of nightmares. Jon does not think about how he would rather live than be a motionless repository for dread or motionless corpse. Jon does not think about how he chose to do something.
Jon does not think Georgie. Jon does not think about how it feels Georgie would have preferred Jon to stay dead rather than do something. Jon does not think about the way his friend seemed almost disappointed by the fact he woke up.
Jon is a monster. He needs fear to live. But as long as he lives, he will damn well do something about it. He will move. It doesn’t matter how many coffins Jon has to climb into, how many bullets he has to pull out of people, how many people grow to hate and despise him. It doesn’t even matter if Jon drops dead, really. As long as he can make the world a better place in the process. As long as he can save someone else. Besides, Jon is already dead, in a way.
Jon’s eyes will not shut. They truly can’t any more. And Jonathan Sims will not rest.
