I'm Not Tired (Please Let Me Sleep)

Chapter thirteen

Walking at night was strangely therapeutic, especially when sleep simply didn't want to embrace him. Or maybe it was him not embracing sleep like he should, ignoring the constant begging of his body in favour of not losing himself in the dreamscape again. The incident at the coffee shop a few days ago had already been a rather close call and he'd refused to sleep since then.

Which, now that he thought about it, was almost a week ago. How Tommy was still alive really was a mystery to him, by any means he should have dropped dead a while ago. He thinks he remembers having read about three days without sleep being enough to have lethal effects on humans. But look at him! Still up and kicking! They should do a case study on him. With how used he is to this he might even break the record and go above the eleven-day mark!

There had been news about an attack on the tower yesterday, a shakey video filmed by a pedestrian showing the Syndicate in their villainous glory blowing up the lower parts of the tower and causing as much chaos as they seemingly could. Tommy had watched with slight excitement because it seemed they were finally doing what they had promised to do weeks ago, working on taking the green bastard down. Unfortunately, nothing came of it apart from a lot of collateral damage and a few injured people that Tommy couldn't help but feel sorry for.

Neither of them had reached back to him yet, despite promising to do so. He couldn't blame them, not with the clip. They must have been busy recently and Tommy honestly did not mind not having to see Zephyrus, especially now that the voices in his head were going absolutely haywire whenever he as much as looked at another avian hybrid or phantom, even just Wilbur was enough to make his head throb and his throat hurt like hell. They wanted him to show the phantom something, to shower him with gifts. Give him shiny trinkets and the cool little rocks he'd started to collect as well (because apparently his shelves still hadn't been filled enough with random crap that made his mind happy for whatever reason).

Tommy still didn't know what was going on with his head. He'd tried to look it up online, tried to link it to any kind of mental illness but the best that came up when he googled strange voices in his head urging him to do certain things were articles about schizophrenia and psychosis and, from what he could tell from those, his own didn't quite fit the criteria for that. But he was no expert and it would probably be better to let a professional take a look at it and get him diagnosed. That, however, was expensive as fuck so he decided to ignore it. As long as they didn't urge him to hurt others or himself he should be somewhat fine. And since one of the causes was apparently severe lack of sleep (and trauma but he pointedly ignored that) maybe there was a chance for them to simply vanish once Dream was dead.

He found himself walking down random streets of the rich neighbourhood that his apartment complex edged on. The streets were relatively clean, save for a few private trash cans which had been set up, likely for a scheduled emptying that night or the next one. Most windows of the homes were dark, people most likely asleep considering that it was well past midnight. By any means, he should be asleep too but Tommy didn't fancy seeing the man again and possibly reveal his secrets by reacting to his gruesome questions of scenes.

A breeze was running through the leaves of the trees lining the pavement, the soft rustling leaving Tommy to almost trust that everything was going to turn out okay, despite how it currently seemed. He skipped a couple of songs, then turned the volume up just a little bit once a song came on that he enjoyed and then continued walking down the pavement.

Walking for a bit longer eventually brought him to one of the parks that were specifically built for parents to bring their children to tire them out, it even had a playground with a couple of swings and whatnot. Tommy considered it briefly and was about to actually leave when he saw a shadow moving from the corner of his eyes. When he turned to look for it he found that it was one of Blood's shadow hounds steadily walking towards him, red eyes glowing in the dark (never scaring him).