Wake
By Katharina Robart
The shadows under your eyes have taken on a purple shimmer.
You splash cold water on your face, then go back to the bedroom and lie down next to your spouse. You listen to the constant, rhythmic sound of his snoring. You imagine each snore as a wave rolling in, breaking against the shore; each exhalation a gentle rolling out, back into the ocean.
It is still dark outside. You try to remember the last time you woke up after first light. When you check your phone, you find that it is 3:30 AM.
A month ago, you would have been asleep at this time. You would have slept blissfully until 3:50, at least. Maybe even 4:00. You had no idea how good you had it, then. Remember when you used to wake up at 5:30, and everyone you mentioned this to thought it was amazing? You must get so much done, they said.
You get up, go to the kitchen and make yourself your first cup of tea of the day. It is so early that you can’t imagine the caffeine being responsible for what will no doubt be another night of poor sleep, in spite of what the experts say. And at least you are not drinking coffee anymore.
You used to love coffee. The rising scent as it brewed; the slight tinge of bitterness against the insides of your mouth.
You put a bag of Earl Grey into the handmade turquoise mug you purchased at a Christmas market in Switzerland years ago and pour in the boiling water. You let it steep for about a minute, then you add the milk and watch it form a little cloud on the surface before it dissolves into a homogeneous, light brown liquid. You fish out the teabag with your thumb and your index finger, slightly burning your skin in the process, and throw it into the compost bin.
You add two teaspoons of honey, to soothe your perpetually sore throat, and sit down on the couch with your cup of tea and a book of short stories by Raymond Carver.
Sometimes you try to use these hours to work, but mostly you do things which give you some pleasure. It makes you less resentful of the fact that you are awake.
Three hours and two more cups of tea later, you wash your mug in the sink and go to take a shower. You breathe in the orange scent of your shower gel as you lather your skin with foam. You have been using it every day since you read somewhere that citrus has an invigorating and uplifting effect on the psyche.
After your shower, you put on your shirt and semi-formal trousers and dab the circles under your eyes with concealer. You find that the concealer can no longer fully hide them, even though it’s from a premium brand. You paid more than £30 for that little stick of make-up, which ChatGPT recommended to you. You hope that perhaps your face looks worse under the dim LED light in your windowless bathroom than it will in the office.
You say goodbye to your other half, who has finally risen from his slumber, and embark on your fifty-minute commute.
You are still amazed at how well you can function on so little sleep. Missing a single one of your habitual eight and a half hours once rendered you irritable and unfocused all day. Now, you are used to operating in this state. Nobody even seems to notice.
You skipped your morning run, so you force yourself to go to the gym before your commute home. The gym is right next to your office; it’s one of those unstaffed gyms; you let yourself in using a passcode and spend thirty minutes on the treadmill alongside the other anonymous office workers, then you take a brief shower and leave.
You wake up at 3:20 the following morning, and at 3:15 the morning after. You have finished your book, and haven’t yet picked your next read, so you need to entertain yourself some other way.
How long can the human body survive without sleep? you ask ChatGPT. ChatGPT is always awake, just like you. ChatGPT has therefore become your very best friend. You had many friends once, human friends, but you are too tired to see them.
ChatGPT tells you that the world record currently stands at eleven days and twenty-five minutes. Nobody knows for sure how long the human body can go without sleep before it dies. ChatGPT is quite certain that the human body will die eventually, though, if it is permanently deprived of sleep.
At your current rate, it can’t be long before you surpass eleven days, you think. You are not sure, though. You stopped keeping track a long time ago. Keeping count of hours slept is detrimental to recovering from insomnia. It increases anxiety, which increases sleeplessness. Foregoing exercise is bad too. No matter how tired you are, you need to keep going on your little runs. If you can’t manage running, you should walk. At least a little bit each day. Especially in the morning; morning sunlight regulates your melatonin levels. You know these things because of ChatGPT, and also because your therapist used to say so, when you were still going to therapy.
There are a number of things you can do apart from walking. This is called sleep hygiene.
You should eat a healthy, balanced diet and avoid alcohol, caffeine and sugar, especially in the evenings. Alcohol and caffeine are particularly bad. Do not try to put yourself to sleep using a glass of red wine, and do not be tempted to perk yourself up using caffeine, no matter how tired you are or how many things you think you are meant to accomplish on any particular day. If you absolutely must, you can have some caffeine before noon. Better yet, before 10:00 AM. A quarter of the caffeine you consume will still be in your system ten to twelve hours after the fact. Really, you shouldn’t have caffeine at any time. Did you know that chocolate contains caffeine?
Good sleep hygiene requires that you go to bed at the same time every day. You should also make sure that your bedroom is very dark, and you must not use it for any purpose other than sleeping. If you can’t sleep, you should leave the room. People who only have one room? Those people probably have real problems and don’t suffer from insomnia.
You should neither eat, nor look at any screen for at least an hour before you go to bed. There shouldn’t even be a TV, or computer, or phone, or any other electronic device in or near your bedroom. Your bedroom is a sacred place of rest. If your spouse doesn’t want to abide by this rule then you should probably get a divorce.
You should refrain from using medication wherever possible. Especially benzodiazepines; dangerously addictive. You can drink valerian root tea. Antihistamines are for short term use, and anyway, they don’t work anymore. Neither does melatonin, of which you still have a whole stash on your bedside table.
If only you hadn’t fallen out with your weed dealer. You could look for a new one, but this is one thing you can’t entrust to ChatGPT. At least you don’t think.
You look down at your hands, hovering over the keyboard of your laptop. Your fingernails need trimming, but you do not have the energy.
By the time spring comes and the sun once again rises early enough for you to reset your melatonin cycle on your morning run before going to the office, your average sleep time has fallen to about two hours per night. That’s just an estimate. You don’t count the hours, remember: it’s poor sleep hygiene.
You turn on your computer, but you can no longer complete your work. You sit in your meetings, but you hear none of what is said. When you speak, your colleagues, friends and family members look at you with concern. You thought your words made sense, in your head, before you said them aloud. But your head isn’t working anymore.
Your fingernails have grown so long that you resemble Edward Scissorhands. You work from home most days, now. It is summer, and the bright sunlight hurts your eyes, so you keep the curtains drawn shut. You have given up on resetting your melatonin cycle; you embrace the twilight. You are too tired to brush your teeth, so you use mouthwash instead. When you run your tongue over your teeth to reassure yourself that their surface feels smooth, you find that your canine teeth are so sharp they cut your tongue.
Or perhaps it is your tongue that has grown brittle.
You take a leave of absence from work. Autumn has come again; the days are getting shorter. You can tell by the light that seeps into your bedroom, along the edges of your window blinds.
You no longer eat; the thought of food makes you nauseous. You still drink Earl Grey, though, which your husband prepares for you and puts on top of the nightstand next to the bed.
You suspect what it is you truly need, but you resist. Some part of you, deep down, is still you.
You resist for a long time. You don’t know how long, exactly; it could be another week, or another month, or perhaps even several months. It grows cold outside, and a chilly draft creeps in through the poorly insulated windows. At night, he draws closer to you. A warm body next to yours, blissfully asleep. Peaceful, rhythmic breaths which soon turn into snoring. Waves breaking against the shore. A heartbeat, slower now than during the day.
You snuggle up against that body. Nuzzle into his neck; blood pulsing just below the skin, now pressed against your face. Your mouth opens, slowly. You know what you must do.
The blood of a good, sound sleeper.
You sink your teeth into his flesh.
THE END
Author Bio: Katharina Robart is a writer and academic based in London. Her work explores relationships, mental health, and the experience of contemporary life. “Wake” is her first published work of fiction.