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The Night and Day War by Alice Sola Kim
The new sickness. I stopped being able to sleep. Staying up all night wasn't as glamorous as I thought it would be. The cold reached its height and I thought it would crush me. I sat up wrapped in a down comforter and surfed the internet all night. The moonlight and the glow of the monitor were working an unknown alchemy on me. I felt that I turning into something blue and glass and ersatz.
And my parents were frightened of me. They were thinking of turning me over to the military, and the military would tell my parents that I would be cared for by scientists and possibly receive an ROTC scholarship to college, but in reality they would extract my brain juices and create a hyper-potent wakefulness serum, to be injected into top pilots and Navy SEALs and torturers who had just that much more to go before they could stop. If you don't finish torturing before going to bed for the night, doesn't that mean your work is undone come morning? The pain that must build itself on more pain. The lessening, then disappearance of hope. The blood that must not dry, the edges of skin that will not blunt and go dead. I don't know how I knew all of this; I just did. You may think I've seen too many X-Men films but I haven't. I've only seen one. What I knew was true.
I filled out the forms and asked my teachers for recommendations and sent in the application and when I got in, I told my parents I was leaving. The enrollment at Night School had always been low, and now that the Doomsday Clock was one minute to twelve, that only made it easier to gain admission.
Mom and Dad, I didn't leave because I didn't love you anymore. Mom andDad, I was frightened of you. The things you would do to me or make other people do to me, same difference, only because you were afraid of those purple hours late at night, early in the morning-before-it-is-morning. Those hours during which I paced crazy eights into my bedroom carpet. I would never hurt you.
Anonymous
Posted October 26, 2010
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