on sleepless roads, the sleepless go;
backdated to the early hours of the morning.


It wasn’t the first time he’d woken this way since the attacks, bolting upright in bed, sweating, heart racing, blood thundering through his veins as if it were being chased by something unseen; something hungry and fierce, predatory and relentless. Panting, chest aching from the force of the heaves that disturbed it, he sat there. Sat there and waited. Waited for the next stage to strike. It never took very long.

This time was no different. It didn’t start at any one particular point, rather consumed his whole body, head to food, all at once. The shaking lasted anywhere from five to forty minutes, he had noticed, with no way to predict the length in advance. There had been little else to do for the duration of the aftermath periods to date; Luka usually spent them sitting back against the headboard, watching the little neon numbers on the alarm clock flick past, waiting for everything to subside. Were they panic attacks? It was hard to say. All Luka knew was that they were preceded, each time, by a vivid replay of the events at the school, at least the ones which he had been involved in. He didn’t want to call them nightmares, that seemed so presumptuous and almost juvenile in a way. For now, he wasn’t calling them anything. Giving a name to them gave them power, in a way.

Perhaps that was ridiculous too. Maybe he should just call them nightmares and be done with it.

Luke knew one thing. He couldn’t sit there and count down the minutes until the shaking stopped. Not again. After more than a dozen of the nightmares and following panic attacks -- so much for not giving them names and therefore power; apparently he was just calling a spade a spade now -- maybe a break in routine was just what he needed. Really, there was only one way to find out.

Without even taking the time to change out of the pyjama pants and t-shirt in which he slept, he padded barefoot out of his room in the faculty wing, absentmindedly leaving his door ajar, and headed downstairs to the kitchen. Behind him as he walked, his shadow seemed to turn its head, occasionally stopping altogether and doing a sweep of the area. His shadow, sentient though it seemed to be, had no means of detecting danger, rendering the cautious, watchful behaviour obsolete, but it continued all the way to its host’s destination.

The light was left off subconsciously, as if standing in darkness would protect him somehow with the greater access to the surrounding shadows, the bottles and jars in the door of the refrigerator rattling softly as it was opened, the glow playing over Luka’s features as he stood there, trying to figure out why exactly he had come to the kitchen, of all places.


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