19 - Exhaust

19 - Exhaust

15-20 times per minute. The time in which a human being can blink. At night, it’s a different story. Our body motionless, our muscles out of are control and our eyes stopping to rest. Every night she woke up at the same time, almost to the decimal point. 3am. Her eyes opening wide awaken from her slumber, not necessarily from a dream or nightmare but just that feeling of a light push of a presence touching her back.

She would stare at the blank ceiling, mindlessly looking at the shadows cast on the wall from the window to the side of her. Even at that time, the roads always seemed to alive.

She would normally give in and end up making a daily early morning trip to the toilet, sitting as the moon would cast light behind her then she would climb into bed, twiddling her toes not knowing when she fell back to sleep as she is always awoken by her alarm clock.

She would feel zombie like all day, it’s strange to think that being disturbed once in the early hours could result in her exhaust the next day. Working in her an office all day was probably the best job suited to her current situation as she could numbly just work on her own on her computer.

She would see younger workers, interns and those that had just started full of energy talking about how they were up all the night before until 5am in the morning, getting ready for 9am the next day, it seemed impossible, even when they she was their age, she couldn’t recall having that much energy to spare.

It was just after nine, just after she arrived in work congregating around the coffee machine. A group of the young ones she knew to be twenty-one gathered in a huddle laughing like witches.

She poured her coffee and gingerly started hovering around the group until they noticed her.

“Hey what’s up?” She asked trying to sound casual.

One of the boys, tall and muscular smiled. “Not much, just talking about last night.”

Two other boys and a girl started laughing as if she wasn’t apart of some inside joke.

“What, what happened last night?”

They all exchanged looks.

“Oh, you had to be there.” The girl said.

“But you can join us tonight.” The other said.

The others looked slightly baffled but they all nodded their heads in unison.

“Alright, come to this address at 9pm, okay?” They took my phone and started writing on my notes.

“How old are you?” The girl spoke up.

She wasn’t that much older and it seemed that I was young even to fall to peer pressure because she lied about my age.

“25.”

They were surprised, slightly taken aback, “You look older.”

She still doesn’t know whether that was a compliment or not.

8.45 pm the following night. She took a taxi from my apartment to the address typed on her phone.

As I got out, she could see it was one of their apartments, very similar to my own. When she arrived, she didn’t realise that all three lived together. She was greeted by one of the boys who asked if she drink, to this she nodded it seemed odd they would ask if she was T total but nothing surprised me about them.

“Try this!” The girl said giggling shoving a red and pink cocktail drink in her face.

She took the glass while sitting on the sofa taking a good look at it.

“What is it?”

“It’s our own, a special concoction.”

She doubted even drinking it, but I took the glass to her lips and began to drink. It was tangy, like a sour orange flavour even though I would have guessed it to be strawberry flavour by the colour.

“It’s good! I didn’t know you made your own drinks!” She said sipping more.

“Thanks, how old did you say you were again?” The girl asked.

Before she could answer, an extreme sense of tiredness flew through me. She felt floppy, my eye lids felt droopy and she could feel eye bags appearing under my eyes. She yawned; it was like she was a whale catching fish her mouth opened that wide.

“I’m sorry, what did you say? She just felt so tired…”

“Your not 25.” She vaguely heard one of the boys say although everything around me was muffled.

“I’m 2... 32.”

It seemed she had been drugged by their drink somehow, as if they knew she was lying, not sure why my age mattered that much to them but strangely enough, although it was making me sleepy, she felt at peace, as though she could sleep forever, until a sharp scratch seemed to pierce her neck.

She was still dazed, but in a few moments, it was like she was drunk and now sober. Her eyes enlarged, the world just became overly hypersensitive, there she noticed the pain, then the blood pouring from my neck.

She jumped from the sofa to see the young adults circling around her, blood on their chins.

“You’re vampires!” She exclaimed.

“You could call us that I suppose.” The girl said casually licking my blood from her finger.

“We’ve been watching you, for a while.” The boy told me. “Every night at -“

“3am...” She finished their sentence. “That was you?”

“It was a sort of test, to see if you’re up for it... but we wanted to know your exact age, why did you lie?”

I shook my head “She panicked, okay? What does it matter?”

“Because the younger the blood is, we can grant you the sleep you’ve been craving.”

“But you lied and this what you chose.”

Insomnia. The feeling of Exhaustion every night. Even her slumber wouldn’t refresh her.