Survive the Night

5

About an hour later, Ashley woke with a violent jarring from Victoria, who was looking at her with sharp green eyes. She sat up so fast it made the bed bounce.

"What is it?" she said with agitated breath. Her black, kinky hair was a knotted mess.

"I don’t—know," Victoria stammered. "It’s still dark." She thought she sounded like a frightened little girl. Maybe she was.

"What?" Ashley croaked. "You woke me up for that? What time is it?"

"Our phones say it’s still forty past midnight."

"Okay, then our phones are clearly broken. What are you so wired about?"

She didn’t know. She just felt a layer of fear thickening over her flesh, like a hardening shell.

"Don’t you feel like you’ve been sleeping a long time?"

Ashley thought about it. She did.

"So what does that...?" Ashley started, somehow knowing the answer to the question she had started to ask.

Victoria felt as if bugs were writhing around under the sheets. Cold, numberless, tangible little creepers that climbed and fell off her skin, off the covers. They climbed and climbed, trying to reach her hair. Trying to get into her pores, her mouth, her ears, her eyes. Roaches and moths and bees.

"Ashley, I’m scared," Victoria said, gripping her friend’s arm.

She could almost picture Ashley smiling at her in the dark, amused at her incompetence. Then, suddenly, the nightstand lamp clicked to life and the room was lit. When Ashley turned back to face Victoria, she wasn’t smiling like Victoria had imagined. Her face was distraught, terrified.

"I thought I felt bugs," Ashley said, shivering.

They both threw back the sheets. But there was nothing there.

***

They waited another two hours before deciding to tell the others. In those long hours, the moon had not moved an inch from its place and the sky was the same shade of inky purple.

"What does this mean?" Ashley asked after a long period of silence. "Do you think we’re just being silly? Imagining things because we’re afraid?"

Victoria shook her head and stood to move near the window. She knew what it looked like. It looked like the night was never going to end. It looked like time had no relevance here like it did in the real world. Of course, that couldn’t be true. But that’s what it looked like. And she had to disprove those absurdities before she could give Ashley a logical response. The problem was, though, that the absurdities couldn’t yet be disproven. The only logical course of action would be to leave. And that was the only plan she had.