Awake Page 11

  Just as Lee was tightening up the last few lug nuts, he looked back and saw that a red car had pulled up behind them. The driver got out and started walking towards them, as if to offer assistance. It was the demon.

  “Get in the RV now,” he said to Ben, doubling his speed on the last of the lug nuts.

  “What? Why?”

  “Do it now, I’ll tell you later,”

  “Bu-“

  “GET ON THE FUCKING RV NOW!” he yelled, losing his patience.

  Confused, but seeing the urgency on Lee’s face, Ben got in the RV. Lee got the last lug nut tight, noting that the demon was now at the back of the RV and still coming towards him. Thankful that they’d already put the jack and the blown tire away, he ran into the rig with the lug nut wrench, the demon at his feet. Safely inside, he slammed the door and locked it behind him.

  Ivy was sitting back in the living room and watching TV with Stella, so Lee quickly hopped into the driver’s seat, started it up, and pulled away.

  “I thought I was driving? Why are you in such a hurry all of a sudden?” Ivy said, coming up and sitting in the co-pilots seat.

  “I just want to make sure that we get to DC soon,” Lee lied, looking out the rearview mirror at the demon as he pulled away. It just stood and stared. Just before it disappeared from view it pointed at him.

  Suddenly, Lee realized that the demon would be able to catch up with them easily in its fast red car. He pulled off at the first exit he found, hoping that the demon would miss them and keep going down the interstate until it hit the Atlantic Ocean.

  “Where are we going now?” Ivy asked.

  “I just think we should grab some lunch. I’m feeling pretty hungry.”

  “You were in a huge hurry just a minute ago,” she said, and then reached over and put her hand on his thigh. Lowering her voice, she asked “Did you see something again?”

  He nodded his head, and she gave his leg a reassuring pat. She didn’t say anything else.

  He pulled the into the lot of a fast food joint and parked. The seating was outdoors, on picnic tables, and Lee kept spinning around as they ate to see if the demon had followed them off the interstate. He didn’t see it. Lee wasn’t really hungry, but he forced some food down anyway.

  As they walked back to the RV Lee took Ben aside and apologized. “It’s no problem buddy, I was just a little confused,” Ben said.

  “I thought I saw something and panicked. It’s the lack of sleep.”

  “Are you really sure you should be driving then? I know you’ve only been on for fifteen minutes or so, but I can take us through to DC, no problem.”

  “Thanks, I guess I’ll take you up on that. You’re right, I probably shouldn’t be driving right now.”

  Stella sat up front with Ben, and Ivy and Lee went back to the bedroom so that Lee could lie down and watch shows on the television. It was much more comfortable than the couch; he wasn’t sure why he hadn’t thought to do it before.

  Lee took his new prescriptions before nestling down next to Ivy, throwing in a pill from one of the old ones for good measure. The pills decided to work, and quickly Lee drifted off into a light sleep as Ivy chuckled at a sitcom beside him. After a couple of hours, his bladder woke him up, and after using the bathroom he broke out another book and read while Ivy continued to watch the TV.

  It was almost five when they got to the outskirts of DC, and they were way behind schedule. Ben announced over the intercom that they were twenty miles out and Lee and Ivy went up to the front to check it out.

  “Crap, we’re not going to have much time to see anything if we go in now, and I I’ve heard bad things about crime in the city,” Lee said, studying the GPS. “Would you guys be cool if we stopped in one of these suburbs for the night and waited until tomorrow morning to do our touristy stuff?”

  Everyone was cool with that. They found a grocery store in Bethesda, and parked in its parking lot. Planning on making it an early night so that they’d be well rested to see the sights, the girls started working on dinner, while Ben and Lee went into the store and got beer. They ate, drank to a medium buzz, and then everybody hit the hay. Everyone except Lee, that was.

  Though he took more of his pills, try as he might, he wasn’t able to go to sleep. He felt close to falling asleep a few times, but each time he started to drift off he’d suddenly snap wide awake. He gave up after the third time, and pulled out the novel he’d been reading.

  He couldn’t read it, try as he could. His sleep-starved brain wouldn’t let him get more than midway through a sentence before he’d lose his focus and stare at the book blankly for a few seconds before remembering he was reading. Then he’d repeat the process. He went at it for an hour before giving up on that as well.

  He turned the TV on and watched it for the rest of the night, not even bothering to put on the headphones. Everything was a blur after that until he heard Ivy’s voice calling him, distant, as if he were underwater.

  He realized he’d been staring blankly at the television. He turned to her, forced a smile, and said “Hey love. Good morning.”

  “Morning, how was your night?” Ivy asked.

  “Alright.”

  “Are you sure?” she smiled at him, but looked concerned.

  “I’ve had better nights,” he admitted, “but I think I’m just excited about seeing DC.”

  Thankfully, she didn’t press the subject. They both dressed, and went out to the main room to rouse Stella and Ben from their blissful slumber.

  At first Lee thought Ben was naked when he walked out of the room, but as he got closer he saw that he’d managed to keep his underwear on, but only that. Stella, at least, had had the decency to have put on pajama bottoms and a t-shirt after whatever they had gotten up to.

  They didn’t have any eggs left, and Lee didn’t feel much like going into the grocery store, so they found a diner on the GPS called “Tastee” to visit for breakfast. Lee was never a fan of intentional “cute” misspellings, but the place was close and he was hungry.

  The food could have been better, but it could have been worse. Lee didn’t really notice that much anyway. He kept catching himself spacing out and was unable to pay attention to anything for long. Ivy shot him concerned looks from time to time, but Ben and Stella didn’t seem to take much notice. Ten minutes after they left the diner he could hardly remember anything about the place.

  “You look like you’re getting sick, are you sure you don’t want to just take a day off before going sightseeing?” Ivy asked him as Ben drove them back to the grocery parking lot, the plan being to taxi into the city like they’d done in Chicago.

  “I’ll be alright. I don’t think I’d be able to rest even if I tried. Might as well see some stuff,” Lee said groggily. He really did want to stay back at the RV, but he hated admitting weakness, and didn’t want to worry the others.

  “Okay, just tell me if you feel bad and want to come back early. You shouldn’t push yourself too hard.”

  “I’ll try not to.”

  11

  Lee sat in a daze and waited for the cab. There was something on the TV, but he couldn’t pay any attention. After fifteen minutes, a pleasant enough man named Valentine, a swarthy man in his mid-thirties with slicked-back hair, turned up with a cab.

  The next thing that Lee knew, he was standing in front of the Washington Monument with the others, with hardly any memory of the ride over.

  “Wow, it’s really a lot bigger than I thought it was,” Stella said, gazing up at the obelisk.

  “That’s what she said,” Ben said without missing a beat. Stella chuckled and gave him a playful punch on the shoulder.

  Taking the route suggested on a map that Ivy had acquired from a stand, they made their way towards the reflecting pool, stopping at the World War II Memorial. It was beautiful and fascinating, but Lee couldn’t focus on it any more than he could on anything else, and before he knew it, the group was making their way along the reflecting pool towards the Lincoln
Memorial.

  The statue of Lincoln was magnificent and awe-inspiring up close, much more so than images could capture. Being in the presence of something that he’d seen in so many pictures snapped Lee out of his daze slightly.

  “Everything here is so much more beautiful than it looks on TV and in pictures, isn’t it?” Ivy asked as they stared up at the statue.

  “Yes, I think that…” Lee said, and then stopped. He noticed that there was a trickle of what looked like blood coming from the corner of the statue’s mouth. He opened his mouth to tell Ivy, but then in a blink of an eye Lincoln’s head turned into the demon’s.

  Don’t panic, it’s just a hallucination, he told himself, looking away.

  “What is it?” Ivy asked, giving his hand a light squeeze.

  “I’m getting a bit dizzy,” Lee said. “I think that I need to go sit down for a bit.”

  “Okay. It’s really hot. I could use a break too.”

  They walked away from the statue and sat on the steps leading up to it, in the spot that Lee had seen pictures of Nixon giving an impromptu speech to some college kids when he was president. Lee kept his back to the statue.

  Stella and Ben came by not long later, and Lee kept pretending he was fine as they walked on towards the Vietnam Memorial. He started feeling better almost as soon as he got away from the statue.

  At the Vietnam Memorial, the couples split up again to wander the site. As soon as Stella and Ben were out of earshot Ivy said, “It’s fine if you don’t want to tell me, but I know you’re not doing as well as you keep saying.”

  “I just had another minor hallucination, it wasn’t anything really big,” Lee said.

  “Okay,” she said, nodding her head as if he’d confirmed what she suspected. I just want you to know that you don’t have to hide anything from me. Like I told you, I’m here for you.”

  “I know, I just don’t want to be treated differently because of this disease.”

  “I know. Let’s just forget about it,” Ivy said, and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Forget about the hallucinations too, they’re nothing to worry about.”

  It was easy to say, but harder to forget. As they reverently walked around the wall and studied the names, Lee found that his eyes were messing with him again. He’d be looking at one set of names on the memorial wall, only to blink and find that the names had changed completely. Then in another blink they’d turn back. He tried to ignore it, but then he thought he saw his name appear on the wall, just for an instant. It was gone just as quick, replaced by one Leigh Farnham.

  “The names, they’re of the lost,” he said suddenly, the words coming out of his mouth of their own will.

  “What’s that?” Ivy asked.

  “Nothing, brain fart,” he said, rubbing his eyes and wondering what was happening to his brain.

  They ran into Ben and Stella, and joined back up with them. Together, the group walked along the reflecting pool towards the White House, which was some distance away.

  “This is just insane, I still can’t believe we’re in the capital,” Ben said as they marched the long trek.

  “Yeah, this is really cool,” Stella said.

  “I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that you can govern over this huge country from this city,” Lee said.

  “Well, it doesn’t seem so huge now that we’ve driven across the whole thing, does it? I mean, of course it’s huge, but it seems navigable now,” Ben said.

  “I hadn’t thought about that, but it does seem smaller now, doesn’t it?” Lee said.

  “Don’t forget it goes north to south as well boys, not just east to west. And then there’s Alaska, which is more than twice the size of Texas, at least according to one of my grade school teachers,” Ivy said.

  “Aw come on, don’t ruin our fun,” Ben said.

  When they arrived at the White House, they had to go through a ton of security measures to be allowed on a tour, which Lee supposed was understandable. Still, he had never been patted down before and found the experience to be a little more intimate than he’d have liked. From the look on the others’ faces, they felt the same, though at least they had a woman to pat down the girls.

  “You should feel lucky,” one of the security guards said after the pat down. “We just started doing tours without appointments again. We hadn’t done ‘em in years.” His testicles sore from the thorough pat down, Lee didn’t so feel lucky.

  He soon forgot about the ordeal as their tour of the White House commenced. What struck Lee the most was how much smaller the house seemed on the inside compared to how he’d imagined it in his head. That wasn’t to say it wasn’t big—just not as gigantic as he had expected.

  The tour went uneventfully, and Lee spaced out throughout most of it, despite his interest and his best efforts to pay attention. His sleep-starved brain was shutting more and more of itself down. Several times Ivy had to squeeze his hand to get him to pay attention to something she was saying.

  Next thing that Lee knew, they were out of the White House and walking to the Capitol Building. Lee paid even less attention there. By then he was practically a zombie, moving and going through the motions, but otherwise not there.

  “We should get back to the RV,” Ivy said after they finished up at the Capitol.

  “I think so too, I really need some sleep,” Lee said.

  Ben and Stella wanted to tour a bit more and then hit up some bars, and Ben was running low on cash, so Lee went to an ATM and got out a few hundred and gave it to Ben as an advance on his pay. Ben and Stella went off, and Ivy called a cab.

  Lee blacked out entirely during the cab ride. He thought that maybe he’d fallen asleep, but thinking about it later, he didn’t even remember getting into the cab. Before he knew it, Ivy was helping him inside, and he was disoriented and confused. When he sat down in the living room, he started to come to his senses as Ivy rubbed his back.

  “Sorry about all that, I guess I wasn’t much fun today,” Lee said when he could think straight again.

  “It’s fine, you need rest,” she said. “Do you want to go lay down for a while?”

  “Definitely,” he said. They went back to the bedroom.

  “Let’s make sure you’re good and tired before you rest,” Ivy said, and began kissing him. He thought that she was just trying to show him that she didn’t think any less of him, but he appreciated it anyway. He had just enough energy to perform (though he came dangerously close to passing out a few times when Ivy was on top), and almost immediately afterwards he drifted off to sleep. He slept soundly for a while, but soon the nightmares started.

  The demon statue of Lincoln had risen from its chair and was lumbering across Washington, each step shaking the earth and leaving prints half a foot deep. Laboriously, but steadily, it was coming for him, a look of malicious glee across its face. “Are you sleeping, are you sleeping, little pig? Little pig?” it sung to itself as it thundered through the city.

  The demon was right outside the RV and about to peer in the bedroom window when Lee woke up. He jumped out of bed, stupidly rushing to the window to see if the demon was really there. There was nothing but the parking lot, and it was night.

  He looked at the clock and saw that he’d slept for four hours. Ivy wasn’t in the room, but he could hear people out in the living room talking and laughing. He threw on some clothes and went out.

  “Hey buddy, did you get a good nap in?” Ben asked when Lee walked out of the room. He was sitting on the couch with Stella, and Ivy was sitting in the recliner. They all had drinks. Stella and Ben looked to already be drunk. Ivy was effervescently buzzed.

  “Yeah, I feel a bit better after getting some rest. How was your night?”

  “Pretty awesome, you guys missed out,” Ben said. “We went to this wine bar called Sonoma, and they had a really great selection.”

  “I was just telling Ivy about it,” Stella said. “We should stop there tomorrow before we head out.”

  “We really sh
ould man, there was a senator there, it was crazy. Not sure which one he was though, everyone just kept calling him ‘senator’. You would have known.”

  “Sounds cool, I’m down if you are,” Lee said to Ivy.

  “Yeah,” Ivy said. “But one of us has to stay sober enough to drive, unless we want to end up staying another night?”

  “I’ll take it easy and drive afterwards. I don’t really want to stay another night, I’m too excited to see New York,” Lee said, retrieving a beer from the fridge and then sitting on the recliner with Ivy, who shuffled into his lap.

  They spent the rest of the night getting drunk. Lee drank liberally, hoping it would help him get some more sleep. The nap he’d taken had worked wonders.

  At some point, Ben turned the satellite to a music station, and they all sang song after song together, loudly and badly. After five or six songs, Stella passed out on the couch and started snoring loudly. Taking that as their cue, Lee and Ivy went back to the bedroom, while Ben converted the couch into a bed with Stella still on it, oblivious in her drunken slumber.

  This time around, Lee instigated their lovemaking. He had a little trouble performing because of the alcohol, but after a trip to the bathroom to drain his bladder he managed. Ivy fell asleep, but though Lee took two of his pills afterwards, he was unable to do the same. He lay in bed awake for most of the night, listening to Ivy sleep and feeling frustrated he couldn’t join her in unconsciousness. Finally, after the sun had come up, he was able to drift off into a light sleep.

  When Ivy got up to take a shower it roused Lee, and he went to join her. A quick glimpse of the clock on his walk by revealed he’d slept for a little over an hour.

  “Wow, I feel like shit,” Ivy said as he stepped into the shower to join her. She was leaning up against the shower head, the steaming water blasting in her face. “No way am I going to that wine bar Ben and Stella were talking about.”

  “I don’t think they’ll hold us to it. They were pretty drunk when they suggested it, not sure what my excuse for agreeing was,” Lee said, chuckling. “They probably won’t even want to get up.”