They Never Sleep, rough draft

Chapter One:

One word was all it took and she was awake, awake forever...




After tossing and turning all night, sleeping for only, short, exhausting stetches, Janice Stone finally gave it up, turned on the nightstand lamp and rose angrily out of bed, throwing her comforter to the floor space between her and the window. Her cat, Donner, flew along with it, floating errily above the comforter, then landed with taffy softness and scurried underneath the dresser. Donner eyed her from a crouch as if watching a potential murderer pass. "Sorry, kitty," she said.



She grabbed a glass of milk and went out on the balcony of her apartment. Her apartment building was high on a ridge overlooking the Tennessee River and downtown. She felt spent and abused. The wind stirred a pine tree nearbye, sending its sweet scent, along with something else she couldn't quite place, something mildly fishy, rotten. Maybe from the dumpster, she thought.

This insomnia was insidious. It-- yes, a material presence-- was growing again, sapping her of personality and happiness like a lurking brain cancer. Four days now with only a few hours total sleep; she wanted to crush those tiny parked cars down there with steel teeth. Tomorrow she would go to the doctor's for more sleeping pills, and hope her doctor did not think she was some kind of addict and ply her with ridiculous meditation/relaxation techniques.



Ever since her mother died two years ago, this insomnia took full possession (although it had always been with her in some form or another from childhood). Her boss at the dry cleaners was at first understanding, lenient when it came to her excessive sick days, but lately she sensed his growing annoyance; he had recently scolded her for being three minutes late. She was certain that any further infraction, however minor, would lead to her termination. And then where would she be? Move in with her senile grandmother across town? That paranoid old woman who thought her family was trying to kill her or drive her nuts. She remembered not long ago on a visit cutting a sandwich in half with a massive Butcher knife and her grandmother coming into the kitchen suddenly, with a look of prescient fear: "You're going to put that in my belly when Im asleep, aren't you?" What if she couldn't find another job? Ended up on the streets, found herself selling the only thing left worth anything. She would have to take up drugs to fight off her insomnia, the world, the sick emptiness no one wants you to become aware of, and then of course she'd hear the song of river siren and go to her, finally, deep in the fouled silt at the bottom of the Tennessee River. Balking, hesitant, at first, then wholeheartly, like nothing ever before.


On the cusp of oblivion, sleeplessness lurked like a cranked-up mugger, like a rapist with electricity for blood, like a murderer with blood-soaked thoughts heavy and dripping from his pointed eyes.



Realizing she was too wired now for sleep, and work only hours away, she made a pot of coffee and began to prepare herself for an uncomfortably long day. After showering, feeding the cat and trying to watch some old I Love Lucy episodes on the tv, she took a cup out on the balcony, sat and peered down once again at the city, still dead before dawn. Donner came out too, sniffed the air, then began his figure-8 cycle of brushing her lower legs. Weaving in and out, endless, forever. Only a slight nudge or kick would break it. She let him do it a bit longer than usual, feeling bad about his scare earlier when she got out of bed. "You're a good kitty pie." "Mrrrrow!"



The only sound was the low hum of the comatose city, as if a massive hive lay just below the surface, quiescent. What if a lightning bolt came out of the sky just now and punched a huge hole into the earth? Swarms of bees would rise from their dark honey dreams and cover the city like thick smog, stinging everything warm and moving, stinging the city to death. Distantly a dog also barked, muffled, slow and methodical, a dog just going through the motions, not so much to expose any threat to his sleeping masters, but merely out of boredom, some nighttime bewitchment: a plaintive, droning bark, half wail, half woof.



Donner went back inside suddenly, probably to go back to sleep, in one of his many special spots. Occassionally a car whooshed down below on Lupton Street. She vaguely wondered why this or that person was up and driving around at four in the morning. Maybe they had a job that started earlier than the typical time, or perhaps they were just getting off a late shift somewhere, heading home to a sleeping wife or husband, quiet tv watching or a few beers before bedtime, their room double-curtained to hold the day at bay, falling asleep on the couch while the newsman blithered on the tv, soon to be deep snoring sleep, plummeting sleep, dark as deep ocean. But who else? Who else would be up this time of night, cruising the cooled streets, slow creeping, prowling the night city? The odds were small, but it could be him, inside one of those cars oozing by like mercury, then known as The Pine Needle Slasher.. mainly because the women were mostly found in the woods. One on the unfortunate girls, possibly his first, had her vagina stitched up with thick black thread. Inside, like a gift, was a pine cone. Women much like herself, working girls, or girls working thankless jobs. She shivered as much from this speculation as from the cool March air. "If he got me, at least it would cure my insomnia," she said, laughing half-heartedly.

*****

Later that day, Janice was behind the counter, slumped in an almost protective posture, as a cranky middle-aged woman-- a Lookout Mountain socialite-- complained about her clothes smelling funny and being poorly pressed.

"Are you even listening to me?" the woman barked.


In the corner of her eye, Janice saw Mr. Grune, her supervisor, glaring out at the scene from above the computer monitor in his office. He always kept the door open, unless he was drinking. Meryl, the other girl who worked the counter with her, was off pretending to do something. She was picking imaginary lint off the plastic wrap covering customer's orders.


"Yes, ma'am I'm listening. We can redo your clothes and have them ready tomorrow afternoon..."

"But I need them today!" the crone shouted.

"Im sorry. I think Aaron has left for the day. He does the dry cleaning. We can get them re-pressed for you though. Miss Longerhorn is still here."

The woman's brow was furrowed and her lips curled into a snarl. Her hair was a bizarre shade of dirty blonde, the color of hay mixed with mud, mussed up like an angry wave on top and hairsprayed into a frozen state. Her face looked as if it had been removed and replaced several times and each time flattened and stretched a bit more, made thinner and more and more taut. To counter-act this, her lips looked obscenely inflated, much too large for a caucasian woman, painted a lurid red. Her eye shadow was a neon blue. The rest of her was covered in garish clothes, a blouse the color of spruce and unbuttoned midway down her frontside, exposing sun-blighted breast cleavage, massive ballooning things certainly too round and attentive to be natural. Black slacks covered her lower body and bright yellow high-heeled sandles protected her bony feet from the derelict floors of the world. All in all, she was a strange being to behold. Janice wanted to laugh out loud several times. But she could wait till the nightmare woman left and she and Meryl could have a good snicker over her.

Mr. Grune stepped out of his office, peering over his glasses, like a perturbed librarian. "Janice, is there a problem here?"

In her four years working here, Janice had not once witnessed this man, her boss, take up for an employee. He always sided with the customer, no matter how in the wrong they were, or abusive.

As if who he was beholding was the first lady of the United States, or the Queen of England, Mr. Grune gazed sympathetically, even a bit reverently, at the debuttante. "What seems to be the problem, Mrs. Sutton?"

"My clothes smell like an unshowered homeless man. I needed this outfit for a benefit dinner tonight. My husband, as you know, has organized a collective of Chattanooga businessmen in an effort to clean-up the Highbridge and Fallowbrook areas. I guess I can wear something else."
Mr. Grune turned to Janice, a look of annoyance in his eyes, "Did you tell this woman she could not have her clothes done today?"

"Well...I..." but he did not wait for a complete answer. "Janice, being rude to one of our longest and most devoted customers is not the kind of attitude we need here." He turned to face Mrs. Sutton. "I will personally dry clean your clothes and have Miss Longerhorn stay late to press them."

"I need them by seven." She looked unconvinced it could be done.

"Not a problem at all. Your clothes will be done in less than three hours. I'm truly sorry for this inconvienence, Mrs. Sutton."

"Well, I suppose that will be fine. Good thing I had plans downtown to have coffee with a friend." She turned to leave.

When the woman was gone, Mr. Grune turned and faced Janice. "Janice, you need to use your brain-- if in fact you even have one-- in these situations. For our important customers, who spends hundreds of dollars a month, we must be extra sensitive to their needs. Being rude--"

"I wasn't being rude. And you told everyone this morning you had to leave early today to take your son to soccer practice. So naturally I didn't think anyone would be here to..."

"Just come to me next time, Janice. You obviously cannot handle stressful work situations anymore." He turned abruptly and went into his office, shutting the door this time.

It wasn't long after, maybe twenty minutes, Aaron came through the front door, his face shiny and red from obvious drinking. He was smiling. "Grune in there?" He was pointing at the office door.

"Sure. He was supposed to start on Mrs. Sutton's clothes. Guess he called you back in."

The lanky, shaggy-haired man smirked and said, "You got it."

He knocked on the door and heard a muffled "yes". Aaron said, "Im here." Then to Janice, "Where's that hag's clothes..." Janice thought the grin on his face was alarming, and reminded her of the expression on her ex-boyfriend Tee's face whenever he smoked too much crank. He brushed passed her, too close, maybe on purpose. He grabbed the clothes and headed to the rear of the building. She heard voices exchange hellos and laughter. Both Aaron Steepling and Vera Langerhorn had over ten years at this place. After than she was next line for seniority, a concept utterly meaningless in this sweat shop. A fifty cent raise after ten years was the most you could hope for.

*****

As Meryl prepared to leave work just before five, she turned back and gave Janice a warm and condescending smile. "Hey, babe, you want me to work late for you? You look really really tired girl."

"Oh, no, Meryl. Thanks though. You know he'll just bitch me out again, maybe even fire me. I have to keep this job, as sorry as it is."

"Well, ok, hon. If you want to meet up with us at The Swarm later, you are perfectly welcome to join us. You know that don't you?"

"Rain check? I didn't sleep very well last night. Going to make an early night of it."

Meryl's expression dropped to serious, conspiratorial, "You need a little something, hon? Hydros, Oxys, Pillow Slammers? You know Robert has a real good connection... You'll have to swing by The Swarm though later tonight, when he get's off work, around nine, say?"

"Hmm, I'll think about it, ok? Goodnight if I don't see you later."

"Goodnight, hon."

When Janice turned around, after watching Meryl leave, she was startled by Mr. Grune, standing red-faced in the door way of office. One half of his face seemed to be mocking her, the other, wanted to devour her. When he spoke, his words slurred slightly, "Go home, Janice."

"Are you sure? I don't mind waiting out for Mrs. Sutton. I could use the extra money..."

His eyes turned insolent. "I said go home. Get some sleep. Get drunk. Better yet, get pregnant. Hey, do whatever, just go home. I can't afford to pay everyone overtime." Then something like a thought struck his eyes, like a glowworm in a cave. "Unless... Unless, you want to stay and have a drink with me." He shuffled closer.

Oh no, thought Janice. Mr. Grune had never deliberately come on to her in all her years working here at Riversong Dry Cleaners, but this smacked of perhaps the first time. Luckily, at that moment Aaron came to the front counter, to ask Mr. Grune a question. Aaron, my hero, she chuckled inside. The guy drank and did way too many drugs, but she always had an instinct of goodness in his heart. He even stuck up for her a few times when Mr. Grune was coming down on her. He was a very outgoing guy, and she was a bit on the introverted side, but she always felt he had an understanding, a soft side, for the quiet-spoken, the underappreciated. He used to play in a local sludge/doom metal band until one of the members, high on lsd, threw himself off the TennBridge, claiming he saw his better self made of solid gold, on the moon-crinkled surface of the river below. They tried to reform with a new lead singer, but it was never the same.. Janice had seen a couple of their shows-- what was there name... Osho Fire?-- and thought the lead singer had too much range, his lyrics too deep, to be confined within the narrow parameters of a sludge metal band. She didn't care too much for metal music in any genre but had a good nose for talent. And Jeffrey Allen Karsten, aka, Bloodthorn, was, she thought, vastly misplaced in the local music scene. Aaron told her once, while on a cigarette break outside the steaming dry cleaners (which stayed morbidly hot up until November, then became unbearable again by late March), that he had been up there and high with him that night, saw him jump. Watched him fall, in silver-lighted fractals that seemed thickened by distorted tv signals, one bloodthorn becoming thousands, then millions, in mathematical horror. "Aaron, Im solid gold at the bottom of the river, man. Look, Im dead." His last words. He was laughing as he fell. Tumbling, polarized in the moment, dancing down to death.

Both Mr. Grune and Aaron went to the back of the building, and Janice punched out quickly, and headed for home.

*****

When Janice got home she took a brief nap and woke up at seven p.m., with a suprising amount of energy. She might make it out to The Swarm after all. She needed a night out, drinks, friends, loud music, men bouncing off her like stingless mosquitoes. More like black flies, the more she got drunk.

Then she recalled the guy who seemed to be following her home from work. Yeah, that was odd. She only lived about a mile and a half from Riversong and walked every morning and afternoon between home and work. She had a car, an old beat up Corolla, that she avoided driving because she couldn't afford insurance. Truthfully, she loved walking, during the day, and sometimes at night. But in the last year or so, she tended to limit her nighttime excursions and got rides from friends. Not that she had many. Friendships were like illnesses, seeming to drag on forever, then in most cases dissipating into nothing. Sometimes they simply went away in a flash, like a cosmic trapdoor opened up and swallowed someone you felt like you were just getting close to. You'd still see them in the physical world, they were there materially still, but by and large they were gone to you. And now with Chattanooga's first ever bonafide serial killer in her lifetime, for the first time she was afraid to walk at night.

When she left work, the wind had picked up, and clouds were swarming in from the north, falling dark and coldly off the Ridge. She hadn't noticed being inside the un-airconditioned dry cleaners but the temperature had dropped way off. It must have been in the forties. She should pay more attention to weather forecasts, she hadn't brought a jacket with her. The day had started off sultry and the fat sun rose like an blood-coated abscess. She had thought surely the day would crack eighty degrees for the first time this year. But a cold front, powerful for late March, had come in earlier than expected. Flowering dogwoods shivered and tossed off their white blooms like dandruff. The sweet scent of unknown blossoms mixed with exhaust from cars and trucks coming off Fonteneau Ave.

As she crossed Fonteneau, her arms crossed over her chest to fend off the cold, a tall man slipped out of the alleyway between Ginger's Flower Shop and O' Flannigan's Irish Pub. On the other side of the street she walked south toward the river, and when she reached the corner of Lupton and Fonteneau, where an almost spanish-style Episcopal Church sat-- dirty cream adobe like walls and rectangular bell tower-- she peeked behind her and saw the man walking toward her. She would have thought nothing of it, but the cold air and darkening skies-- the sun would set within an hour-- and odd attire of the man made her feel immediately uncomfortable. He was wearing a dark trench coat and black leather gloves, and what appeared to be combat boots. On his head was a thin tight tobaggan and a black scarf around his neck. She could make very little out of his face, but two things stood out: his sharp beak-like nose and intent narrow set eyes.

Janice picked up the pace, nearly crashing into a man in a tweed jacket carrying a load of folders in his arm. "Hey watch out, lady!" "Sorry, sorry.."

She turned the corner and headed down Lupton Street-- which is the main riverfront thoroughfare on the north shore. Her apartment building was a few blocks down and up Vinecourt Road, which rose steeply into the hilly neighborhood above. Her apartment building, called Angelic Pines Estate, was fifteen stories high and her apartment was on the seventh floor.

As she passed the drug store she stopped at a street crossing, and looked back over her shoulder. the man was still behind her, but not any closer really, maybe thirty feet, and was now smoking a long black cigarillo. She decided to go into the drug store and see if he came inside as well.

When she turned and headed back toward the drug store, the man stopped suddenly beside a telephone pole covered with flyers for various businesses and local band gigs. He grabbed a green sheet of paper with his left hand and examined the contents. She now saw that the man had a long goatee writhing beneath the scarf. When she went inside, she couldn't see him, so she went to the cosmetics aisle and idled through various shades of lipstick. Every few seconds she turned to the entrance to see if he would come in. When at least ten minutes had elapsed with no sign of the man and one of the employees eyeing her with unconcealed suspicion, she headed back out to the parking lot. She didn't see the man anywhere. Maybe he went across Lupton and headed down one of the alleys which led to more parking areas, several restaurants and pubs, and the riverfront park. Maybe he went back the other way and blended in with those waiting in kiosks on city buses. Maybe he had simply crouched down between two cars, waiting on her next move.

She continued on to Vinecourt and didn't see him. The wind whipped through fragile budding trees and still naked limbs. She felt raindrops, almost sleet. Clouds overhead darkened, the sun was fast sinking behind Stinger's Ridge. Maybe I should call the police, she wondered. The closest known victim to her area had been miles away, near Sinker's Shot, a deeply racist working class white neighborhood snugged away in folds of oak hills and bisected by Rattlesnake Creek. When she finally made it to her apartment building, the light had faded to dusk, streetlights were coming on, and the shadows once again grew like animate things between houses and trees. where objects of the world were not, the shadows grew. Her follower would dissolve right in, if need be.

But she did not see him and made up to her apartment, took some pain medicine and ate a banana and fell on the sofa, almost immediately, falling asleep.