Grandma's shadow must have tinged the entirety of the living room when she rose to her full height. The large gulp of air she took escaped in the form of a toothy growl. Two oval eyes, hooded by a giant snout, found mine. Now that she had my full undivided attention, her grayed lips pulled back. "I've had it," she spat, "with you and the rest of our lazy, good for nothing family." Ruddy-hued fluid trickled from her maw with each word she spoke. The droplets splattered upon a dusty and claw-torn carpet.
Shudders flashed like lightning strikes through my spine. An image flashed of sharp canine teeth biting into dough-like flesh. I cringed and tossed the foul idea into the void where it belonged. "What," I said, "have you done, Grandma?"
"It isn't obvious?" she said. Her eyes rolled sideways. I didn't need to remove my gaze from her to know she referred to a nearby unmade bed bathed in weeks-old laundry and wet scarlet. "She's dead, sweetheart. I couldn't take her shit anymore and ambushed her in her sleep." She turned back around to me. "I couldn't stop there, so I…"
"You… You…." The words I dreaded wouldn't form. I couldn't find the strength to recite them before the hideous beast. This reality couldn't be happening. Not now. Not ever.
Grandma spoke for me. "I," she said, "killed her." She opened a clawed hand and examined it. "And I couldn't leave the corpse to rot in the apartment. It'd attract attention after about a week. So I gave in to my beast and ate her." Her blackened lips curled. "I liked it."
"Yo-you what?!" I squeaked, clinging to the cord of my messenger bag. Pulling it tight didn't do the same for my shivering limbs.
"What else would you want me to say?" she said, admiring her claws. "That I killed your mommy? That I'm making a meal out of you next?"
My grip tightening on the woven zigzagged stitches of my bag's cord would leave an imprint on my palm. Never mind I wouldn't have fleshy palms if Grandma got her way. I discovered the hard way how she hated biting into bones.
Mom. Grandma butchered Mom. I found skeletal remains in her bed alongside the pool of blood before the beast turned against me. She didn't care at all to preserve the dead or honor the late victim's wishes. Mom would have wanted to be cremated and have her ashes spread on her father's grave. Never… That.
"Sit still," Grandma said, dropping on all fours. The moonlight through the window behind us shone on her ebony mane. "Your death will be nice and painless if you don't struggle."
"No!" I cried, thrusting my arm at her. Oh, please. The "stop" signal I flashed with my trembling left hand wouldn't get through to this man-eating creature!
"There's nowhere to run, sweetheart," she said. "You're trapped." She stomped towards me. Each step shook the dusty rug below. The neighbors downstairs might not think anything of what happened here until it was too late. Hell, I didn't even know if anybody did live in the apartment below. But it was certain now my fate would be to die being torn to shreds.
"I never loved you," I spat, "so I hope I give you indigestion or someone puts you out of your misery or—"
She launched into the air. "Goodbye, bitch!"
I froze. My arm remained outstretched. Mom was gone. I would die now. Life would move on without us. The end.
The beast reached the peak of her leap. Her jaws loosened in anticipation.
I clamped my eyes shut. An odd, tingly feeling tumbled through my outstretched arm. My heart thumped. The blood in my veins flowed. I could have mistaken the feeling for being set alight.
In my last moments, I imagined having the ability to stand on equal ground to the beast. Somewhere in the multiverse must have been a reality where I could unleash a great power or summon a weapon to defend myself. Being on top of the food chain for once in my life would be amazing. If only I could squash her how she would with me.
Grandma howled.
The tingle in my arm reached my palm. My fingers shuddered. Even with my fear of there being nothing after death, I would have to accept this terrible fate of mine—
"Augh!"
My eyes flew open. That hadn't been the sound of a massive lump hitting the floor. Nor did it align with the victory cry of a beast making a pancake from its victim's remains. A big black furball had pounded into the defined line between the beige wall and the white ceiling on the opposite side of the living room. She made an indent in the structure. Cracks of various sizes scattered from her limp body.
"How did…" I muttered before my vision swayed. The next thing I knew, everything from my forehead and below screamed in both disbelief and pain. Thoughts scattered in all directions with a single thing being the sole clear connector between them.
I shouldn't have survived.
I grunted as pain forced my aching body to its knees. I knew Grandma couldn't have been launched like a pinball. While it would be cool to imagine, I'm not some superhero with awesome strength. It was just as impossible to happen as almost anything you read or see in fiction! But suddenly werewolves were a thing, weren't they?
I blinked. Wait a second. The ground's moving?
"What the hell?" I wheezed.
This world wouldn't slow for a moment. The floor shifted left and right and up and down and sideways and I found my grip on the filthy carpet Grandma didn't have a vacuum for and arched my back and both my arms shook. My thoughts refused to remain in one place. Why did you get out of bed this morning?
Quake?!
Get up and run, you idiot!
Is Grandma still alive?
Run!
Was it me, or was I lighter than usual? Numb too, I think. Maybe that was why I still stayed where I lay. Flesh didn't seem connected to bones, nor did my bones seem attached at the joints. The familiar weights of curly hair draping around my ears weren't slapping into my ears and neck. Everything around me shook, yet I felt the numb sensation of weightlessness.
An external force wrapped around my shoulders. It radiated warmth. I gasped and threw my head to my left. Hovering over me was a pair of dark pupils. Framing them were narrowed eyes and thin brows. "Whoa," the stranger said, sounding awfully calm for another soul caught in a natural disaster. I somehow could hear him through the thumping of furniture and presumably bodies all around us. "You did kill her. Good job."
I shrank. Hell knows how this person got into the apartment when… When… Oh. I spotted a blurry doorway lacking its most essential part: the actual door. Only then did I find I lost my glasses somewhere in the whole mess. "What," I squeaked at the stranger, "are you— How did the door— Who are—" I hung my head. Hell knows why I couldn't formulate a simple sentence.
"We gotta get you outta here," the stranger said. His calm tone betrayed the seriousness of the statement. "The ceiling's gonna collapse."
"Huh?" I didn't have the energy to shout. Harsh shivers zipped through my spine. I fought the urge to yawn. Tired? Now? I could see a massive lump in the ceiling through the blurriness. It expanded by the second thanks to the massive crack running along the center.
The stranger frowned. His sleeved arms wrapped around my waist. Next thing I knew, he had hoisted me from the ground.
My muscles clenched at this sudden weightlessness. The world still refused to give me the time to think. The shaking around us intensified. Up. Down. Left. Right. It rattled me enough to cause the blurs in my vision to worsen.
Meanwhile, Grandma's HDTV slammed to the floor from her dresser. Bikes that Mom and my sister once rode had been abandoned in a corner by the window. Now they toppled over one another. A half a decade old house phone came loose from its charging port before hitting the hardwood table it shared with a vibrating fake plant.
Somehow, my savior remained standing with his either brown or red boots grinding into the rug. I couldn't tell their real color with my blurred vision darkening. I could still see right above his boots were pants and a shirt of the same shade of yellow. What I felt of his hand was smooth fabric, not skin. He wore gloves.
He lunged for the dresser and gripped the edge.
CRASH.
"Wh-what was that?!" I gasped. The darkness behind my eyelids faded in and out. I forced them to stay open and tossed my head back. No good. His shoulder prevented me from viewing the living room.
"We'll have to leave through the balcony," the man said.
"What?" I cried. A volcano must have erupted within me when I dared to move. I winced. He couldn't be suggesting he would jump from here. "A-are you crazy?"
He went for the balcony door.
"Y-you'd get us both killed!"
"Hey," he replied, latching to the brass doorknob, "haven't you said you're tired of the word "crazy"?"
I savored the next breath I took. I wouldn't deny I disliked the word "crazy". Mom used it all the time to describe anyone and everyone who wasn't "normal". Anyone, I should say, such as Grandma. Mom's use of such language could have been why she died. Or maybe it was why they were both dead. They had both been "crazy".
My world froze. "Wh-what are you talking about?"
Those eyes of his found mine again as I squinted at him. Right there, an overdue lightbulb lit. This man's yellow and, I think, red outfit. Those eyes. Come to think about it, his voice sounded quite familiar. He kept speaking as if we just run into each other at a grocery store.
He pushed the balcony door open, followed by the screen. "This is gonna sound weird," he said, "but I know you."
That couldn't be right. Werewolves didn't exist. He didn't exist. I must have gotten caught in one of those super-rare earthquakes in the northeastern United States. It must have gotten my unconscious mind making a big deal over nothing. I sometimes escaped into fantasies whenever I felt anxious or threatened. This all happening within a dream was a first.
"You alright?" he asked.
"Y-you're," I said, "not..."
"What?"
How could I word what I wanted to say? 'You look like the hero from an anime I've watched?' That was almost quoting what the person I thought of said once.
B-O-O-M. I returned to reality. I would have thought my heart stopped if it weren't for the tiniest breaths infiltrating my lungs.
He looked back at the apartment. "There goes the ceiling. Nobody's upstairs. You would've been the only casualty."
"How do you even…?"
"Know?" he said. "I've seen this before. You visit your granny. She threatens to kill you. You kill her." He readjusted his arms around me. "You still die."
Oh, he got to be kidding me.
"Let's, uh, say I'm not from your world—"
"I-I know that!" I said.
He tilted his head ever slightly. "Huh?"
Shoot. I forced a drying swallow down my throat. "I-I mean…"
"Really, you feeling alright?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. "I'm Sai—"
"Tama?"
He recoiled.
I cringed. Crap.
The apartment building's shaking slowed, almost as if it felt my sentiment. Grandma's screen door to the balcony shut with a click. Our combined silence continued through the incomprehensible shouting of her panicked neighbors.
My rescuer stared at me once again. He was the one who finally broke the silence between us. I heard him say, "O… 'Kay. Guess I didn't have to introduce myself, Samantha…"
Darkness faded into light. I squinted at the ball of gold hanging in the air. Sunlight? No. The space around the source appeared murky. A dying streetlight, maybe?
"You're awake. About time."
The scrambled egg I called my brain jolted like it received an electric shock. And thump. Thump. Thump. Maybe I would go into cardiac arrest here and now. Or maybe this guy with an overly familiar voice and name would notice my alarm and think, 'She's got her own version of the King Engine?' I wouldn't be surprised if both happened. I would be dead.
Pressure wrenched my waist. The world went blurry. Chicken skin fueled by the touch of smooth material flashed along my arms. Empty air filled with a yelp of, "Put me down—"
"Okay, okay! Gotcha."
The burden on my abdomen slipped. I spun around when both of my feet hit the ground again. "What," I said, "the hell was any of that?! An-and… How?"
The guy in front of me raised his eyebrow.
"How do you know me? How did my granny turn into a beast? How… Anything?"
He stared at me. After a moment, he closed his eyes and exhaled. "How's about," he said, "we start with how we already know each other?" He opened his eyes again before leaning against a blurred wall. There was a light bulb positioned above us brightening his head, which appeared more barren than a wasteland. "You wanna go first?"
"How, uh, short would you like my answer?"
"Why's it matter?"
"I-if you are who you look, i-it's you who gets annoyed whenever somebody feeds you a long backstory," I said. "You prefer explanations to be short. Maybe around twenty words or less?" I stopped him before he could answer. "Bu-but Saitama and his world are fictional things created by a guy from Japan—"
He cleared his throat. "That's," he said, pointing at himself, "me."
"Well, um, a while back, I was reading about character archetypes and penned fanfic after discovering your, um, source material. It didn't take long for me to realize I don't fit in with—"
He held out his hand. Stop. More importantly, he flashed a pair of glasses at me. My glasses. "Take this," he said, "and try again."
Ugh. I knew the lack of an innate filter would haunt me. I swiped my glasses from his gloved palm and pushed them into my eyes.
When I finished adjusting them, I looked back at my rescuer. Never in my life had my throat gotten as dry as fast as it did from what my corrected eyesight revealed here. Yes, this was a man. Yes, again, he wore yellow and white with dashes of red. Though he hated the word, I had to say it: he was bald.
"Yo-you're, uh, cool," I said, "bu-but your fandom kinda scared me off. Since then, I haven't bothered to get your whole story."
My words sank past my eardrums. I tightened my knuckles and sockless toes to keep from recoiling. Even if this was a dream, I shouldn't have been brazen to confess an old interest in a boring hairless squatter whose artists and animators often drew like an ugly barnacle? Who wouldn't want to hang with the often lauded esper sisters or this dude's badass cyborg student instead?
"I can't be called a fan of yours," I said. "I hardly paid attention to anything happening outside of you and Genos' antics. I have moments where I get attached to certain concepts and people for the stupidest of reasons—"
"I know you do."
I frowned. "Excuse me?"
"Wanna guess why I'm here?" he said.
"Is it because some idiot wrote a bad story lasting three chapters about somebody she barely understood?" In reality, I composed four before I deleted the last one, replaced it with a lackluster statement about ending the story, and abandoned the project. "You're here seeking justice for whatever crimes against fiction I've commi—" Wait, no. This was stupid of me to say. "Nevermind. I don't know."
The straight line on his lips lurched into a frown. Of course that had been stupid to say! "Your writing's got nothing to do with this," he said. 'You're a manga, Sam."
"I'm a what?"
His head tilted. "You don't know what those are?"
"I do! It's a book format which originated in Japan, which is a country…" I paused. "...In, uh, this world, and I've kinda mentioned Japan already." So, when could I unnecessarily mention Saitama got his name from a prefecture in Japan, or how his home continent might be shaped like the same prefecture in Japan? How long would it take for him to get mad and yell at me for writing essays with my mouth?
His frown remained from my earlier idiotic remarks on writing. Crap. That was already a bad sign. Time to reverse this conversation into our previous topic.
"I'm a manga character?" I said. "Funny. You're a manga character." Well, technically, he first came from a webcomic which then got adapted into physical books, and, finally, an anime. "I don't think I've done anything interesting enough to warrant a story about me. You sure as hell have. Assuming you are Saitama, of course. How'd you get here?"
"Maybe," he said, shrugging, "I read a book."
"Feels like it's gonna rain," my new companion said. He easily kept pace with my smaller strides as we walked along the sidewalk. Every once in a while, he would turn his head and stare at a row of one to two-story houses. He probably hadn't seen so many of these tiny buildings in one place before, assuming he was who he said he was.
I pinned my tongue to the base of my mouth. Now wasn't the time to ask him how he felt about this change of setting, grill him on my lack of privacy, or admire the way his white cape wafted like ocean waves behind him. Before I moved out, my family rarely gave me alone time. Today's technology could record a person's every move. This man told me I had not been truly alone for who knows how long. Nobody cared about privacy anymore.
I stopped at the end of the sidewalk.
He halted behind me.
"You know," I said, "you have nowhere to go if you are Saitama. I'm not about to let one of my favorite characters live on the streets. So, um, why don't we do a test? Prove your identity." I pointed to the sky. "See this?"
Vapors high above the hills of my town blanketed a waxing gibbous moon. I didn't see any signs of rain until yesterday evening. He had been right about the possibility of rain. Current forecasts projected a thunderstorm would roll into the area by tomorrow afternoon.
He followed my finger. "What about it?"
"Use a punch to create a chasm in this cloud cover," I said. "Please? I know you did it in your fight with Boros." I knew I could leave him here if he hesitated. I didn't have much further to go. Double signposts for bus stops and a two-seater bench under an awning denoted the final leg of my journey.
His mouth twitched. Faint hints of a curve appeared at the tip. "That's all?" he asked.
I nodded.
Watching me watching him, the smirk on him grew a smidge larger. He brought his closing fist to his chest. "Sure," he said. "Here I go." He flung his arm in the air.
And suddenly, PWOOOO— BOOM!
While I could tell an air current got thrown upward, I couldn't bring myself to care. My palms hurtled for my ears. Curly hairs blew upwards from the nape of my neck. The screech from me couldn't overtake the explosion of noise.
—OOOOSH! Air pushed by his punch breached the clouds. Billions of water atoms scattered. The world opened as if it awoke and brushed the morning crust from its sleepy moon for an eye.
An indicator I hadn't gone deaf from this man's assault on my ears was the cars shrieking to life in the parking lot under the hill. I would have preferred to have lost my hearing, especially when two dozen lights in two dozen sets of windows sprang to life inside a nearby apartment building. Bystanders shouted in incomprehensible languages. Someone's dog across the street and behind a picket fence screamed.
My hair collapsed in a bird's nest fashion over my forehead. I swatted at the myriad of strands prodding my eyeballs.
He dropped his fist. He turned his back to me and surveyed the unrest he created starting from the hole in the sky. "Whoops!" he called. He spread his fingers and shook them, then glanced at the parking lot. "I got too rough there!"
"Holy shit!" I said, shrinking.
This man hadn't lied. He was Saitama, the "guy who was a hero for fun". He could land one-hit kills on his foes. He would dash into the path of incoming trains if it meant he could arrive at a sale on time. Sweet Mother-of-Goodness. Dear God. Saitama. Sai. Freaking. Tama.
"There's no stars," Saitama said, now almost not making the effort to distinguish his voice from the discordant chorus around us. "Weird. They're always showing 'em in your story."
"Light pollution," I squeaked, knowing I ran my dried mouth for no good reason.
"Weren't you writing a fantasy novel with stars as a theme? Your main guy was, uh, "Arse Hell"?"
'Arzel,' I almost corrected him. "We-well, yeah, I was writing something like that. It, um, proved to be a really stupid idea. I got lambasted to hell and back because my writing wasn't "publishing quality". I'm bad at everything having to do with writing except for thinking of great ideas and stringing together okay-ish plots. It's why I quit on my childhood dream to be published. Heck, you would've yelled at me for going on tangents because I've always had a hard time writing relevant and decent descrip—"
"Honey!" screeched a man amongst the shadows flashing across the windows and balconies. "Where'd you leave my jimjams?"
Saitama pivoted from the confusion. He straightened his back. This time, the sharpness of his features made me jump. Did the series' running gag of him being poorly drawn until he wasn't apply to him in real life? I hadn't worked up the courage to stare at his shaded form for more than ten seconds to answer that question.
"I-I never should've defined me by my writing," I said. "I sought acceptance through a talent I couldn't bother to refine. If some "big shot" fanfiction author ditched my works without saying a word or readers squealed at me for committing some unspoken sin, I often had doubts about continuing—" I found my legs bent under me. Further investigation revealed my butt seated on the nearby bus shed's metal bench.
Saitama collapsed into the seat next to me. He lifted a finger. "That's why you've got a lotta dialogue in the manga," he answered when he rendered me speechless for long enough. "You talk faster than you think."
"I guess I should shut up?" I said, discovering an abrupt interest in the cracks in the concrete sidewalk beneath us. "I-I hate these words spilling from my mouth as much as you probably do. I'm surprised you haven't yelled at me yet."
A shadow not belonging to me appeared from the corner of my eye. It lingered there for a time before moving closer. This was his shadow. Saitama's shadow.
The shock of the reveal remained in my system. I couldn't budge a muscle. I wasn't sure when I would be ready to climb that hill.
"Sam," he said. "Look at me for a sec."
"Why?" I said.
"I wanna ask you something."
I gritted my teeth. Forget not being ready. Freaking Saitama wanted me to directly confront him with little to no preparation. That could be a one-way ticket to a panic attack. So, "No. Just ask it."
He stooped upon hearing my answer. He folded one yellow pant leg over the other.
I pulled my legs into a squished criss-cross between the bench's armrest and him. This bus stop didn't get many passengers, so nobody bothered with the seating here. I nonetheless silently cursed the lack of space on the bench. My voice lowered as the car alarms in the parking lot quit squealing, though the atmosphere hadn't quieted with the sounds of other folks. Still, having one of these unruly factors disappear helped slow my pounding heartbeat.
Hold on a second. Another component in this situation seemed wrong. I took notice of an odd heaviness settling above my forehead and beginning an ascent. along the way, it flew into my loose messy curls.
I breathed.
The weight ceased gliding at the peak of my skull. It held the strands it collected hostage.
"Wh-what are you d-doing?" I sputtered. I threw my hand into the fray and swatted his fingers.
His arm didn't move when I struck him. He continued resting at the top of my head. "You've gotta stop plucking your hair," he said. "It's uneven."
"Excuse me?" I exclaimed, raising my head.
Saitama smiled when our eyes met properly for the first time. "There we go," he said.
I gulped. "I-I…"
This was real life, right? Here I sat staring at a man not much older than me. Possibly due to his training, he lost all the hair on his head aside from two thin and sharp eyebrows. I noticed he had a sharp chin when I wandered from his pitch-black eyes. Perhaps the constant warping of his true face in fiction would stay in fiction?
"Sam," he said, "has your hobby felt like one since you started sharing it?"
Fresh air entered my nostrils. Jiggling feet scraped the sidewalk before retreating to fold into a pretzel underneath me. An index finger twitched. I could discern the golden shapes on the brown leather bag the finger scraped across. I forgot what the letters spelled, nor did I care to relearn the word. Ironic given my hobby? Commitment? Duty? Obligation? Assignment? Chore? Unpaid job?
"Look!"
Saitama flickered between me and the sky before relocating the apartment building. He appeared confused until, "Oh." Upon following my lead, he spotted a small crowd cloaked in shadows either huddling together on their balconies or peeking from their windows.
"Anyone knows what the explosion could've been?" somebody shouted above the rest.
"We should go," I murmured.
"Hey," a woman said, "you two there! Did you see what happened?"
Saitama removed his glove from my head and placed it on my shoulder. "You mind not screaming this time?"
"Depends," I said, "on how hard you pull—"
He got lucky. I hadn't uttered a peep by the time we zoomed down the hill. Maybe double lucky he didn't break or demolish the bones in my arm.
I didn't even realize we moved until I glanced about my surroundings. A sapphire blue-hued sign revealed by ground lights read, "CLEARPEAK COMPLEX" by a tall tree and an arrangement of flowers. The sidewalk merged with a parking lot leading to a ten-story apartment building.
"This is where you live?" Saitama asked.
I nodded. I still couldn't believe how lucky I was to find affordable housing in a basin of nature. Surrounding the complex was a forest in the process of losing its autumn leaves. On some nights, wildlife could be spotted going about their lives. I would never forget the raccoon family who raided the building's dumpsters on the evening I moved in.
I reached into my left pockets and the felt cold metal of my house keys. "I-I think I'm done for today," I said. "Let me know if there's anything you need in the morning. Alright?"
My guest didn't say anything and glanced into the lobby through a thick window pane. I supposed his silence meant we were in the clear, so I unlocked the lobby door.
Maybe this would be a dream after all. Mom and Grandma would be alive when I came to. We would continue our lives and I would somehow forget to record this ridiculous fantasy in my dream binder. Besides, I got over Saitama like how I did any other silly obsession: by embarrassing myself. All it took was not clamming my mouth shut after having a stupid idea. After seeing everyone's baffled reactions, I would always disappear without another word.
It would be best to keep this dream to myself. There was no need to kill what little of a social life I had because a badass bald dude saved my life when it didn't even matter. So, "Alright," I said. I guess. I needed to go to sleep and think about this later. That was all.
Please.
Saitama rolled on his side. He pulled a thin sheet, his unattached cape, over himself. He should have searched for a blanket before going to sleep. Now he found it difficult to leave his spot after twenty-something minutes of drifting in and out of consciousness.
Tonight's been full of surprises, he thought. It wasn't every day he stumbled into a story he read. He bought some new books after a grocery run and left it in a backlog up until a few hours ago. How could he have known that this of all of his books would summon a magic portal to abduct him?
Now what? I can't be stuck here… His fist tightened and eyebrows furrowed. Can I?! Damn! Maybe he should have started with the other new one he had, which featured a muscular barbarian woman on the cover. But hey, maybe being stuck here wouldn't be awful? He read a few chapters of the story Sam came from before being thrown into the thick of things. She was a timid homebody who lived in an alternate reality. This alternate reality was much more diverse than his world. The country of Japan most resembled his own. Sam was from America, a "melting pot" country that celebrated the freedom to say almost whatever they pleased.
Blah, blah, blah, worldbuilding. He only came to like the main character, and she died at the end. He intended to save Sam from being crushed to death and figure the rest from there. Then he went and found, I'm "One-Punch Man"? Okay, he couldn't help smiling a tiny bit. He liked the name. Perhaps he could use it instead of Caped Baldy while he was stuck here. Nobody would mind if they liked the story Sam recognized him from. Guess I'm living here for now. I've never had a female roommate before.
More questions pestered Saitama when he flopped on the couch cushions he threw on the floor. Who else knows about me? Maybe he would have been identified if he hadn't been wandering this new world in the middle of the night. Should I do anything if I'm recognized? More importantly, his life had been drawn as a manga. I've gotta read that.
Instead of wasting any more brainpower on pointless thoughts, he yawned and adjusted his position on the floor. Sam didn't want to be bothered after what she went through. He didn't blame her. Her family put her through a lot of crap. Even so, one of them deteriorating into a monster came from too far out of left field. What's more, she lost two family members in one night. Can't hurt to check on her in the morning.
Sleep arrived to whisk him away after a few more minutes. He welcomed the plunge into darkness.