"After Ginger Snaps"
24. Love to Sleep
Sam would love to sleep. He would love to take his sling off, lie down and drift away. To forget everything, to forget where he's sleeping. A cigarette helps, so he smokes one, facing the ceiling. Rest isn't something that he can count on, because he feels wide awake, and it's already two in the morning and he will crawl to get up when daylight, gray and monochrome, floods the sky.
He thinks of Brigitte, sleeping –he hopes- in the living room, and doesn't know where the thought comes from; but understands why it's there. He takes another drag from his cigarette and lets his thoughts scatter with the swirling smoke.
Brigitte would love to sleep. She would love to shut down completely, imitate death in an involuntary, brief and incomplete suicide, slow her heart and close off her mind. She would love to close her eyes to the world, because long is the way that out of hell leads up to light, and she has no pennies to give the one that can carry her there. She doesn't have anything to give at all.
She thinks of Sam, sleeping –she hopes- in his room, and doesn't know where the thought comes from. Doesn't understand why she would. She turns to her side, and the warm thought lingers. There's a knot in her chest that's aching in harmony with her back.
They would love to sleep. The awareness of each other, in different rooms but still together, the fact of one another, stirs them from isolated rest and keeps them awake through the night.