Kim’s Earth: Micheal: Trying to Sleep

[k_a_webb]

Written for a random number prompt.

The sound of breathing filled the room. Michael lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling, and tried his hardest to fall asleep. If he was asleep then he wasn’t thinking about everything that had happened, why it had happened, how quickly his life had changed, what might happen in the future, and all the other things had hadn’t been able to stop thinking about. On the day his parents had returned he’d known that something was wrong, but he’d always believed that they’d be fine. Never, for one moment, had he thought that Kim would find their parents dead and they’d need to leave everything behind because they had no idea why the injection had done what it had.

Like everyone else Michael had read the conflicting reports on the injection. Some believed that it hadn’t been tested enough, that if it was given to humans something would go wrong, and they’d been proven right. That didn’t mean the World Council had done it on purpose but he was glad that Kim had moved them all to somewhere they hopefully wouldn’t be found. He rolled onto his back, staring up at the ceiling. It was strange to think that his friends, the ones he could get in contact with at least, were upstairs, while he slept in the lounge with his siblings, best friend, and two babies.

“Are you okay?” a voice asked in the darkness and Michael smiled when he realised it was Jamie.

“Yeah, just thinking. It makes it hard to sleep.” Michael rolled onto his side so he was looking at where Jamie would be if he could see anything. “Why aren’t you asleep?”

“I have the same problem as you.”

“We all have the same problem,” Kim said, sounding like she was sitting up. “Sleeping is…” She yawned. “Impossible, even though I’d really like to be asleep right now. The last few days have been difficult.”

“Tomorrow it will be easier to sleep,” Jamie replied. “If we’re going to be spending the day working on the garden it should help, because we’ll be physically tired which should help our minds stop.” He sighed. “I hope.”

“Nan has a blackboard in the kitchen and plenty of chalk, so I want to use that to keep a track of the date.”

“What does the date matter?” David asked, also yawning.

“If we keep a track on the date it will help with harvesting and planning what to plant next in the garden.” Kim yawned again. “We’ll also know how much time has passed since everything changed.”

Michael looked over at where Kim was, even though he couldn’t see her. “What do we do if more people turn up?”

There was a long silence. “I don’t know know, Michael. I want to say that we help everyone we can, maybe see if we get into more of the house and make them into space for us to live in, but I just worry that we might bite off more than we can chew if we try to help everyone.”

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.