Midnight Moiety

Day One

“Alice.”

            Alice whipped her head around at the call of her name, but there was nobody there.  Had she only imagined the raspy voice in result of her exhaustion?

            “Alice?”  This time the voice came from beside her, but its owner was not that of the mysterious voice; this was her twin brother, Isaac.  “Are you alright?  You’re jumpy.”

            “Yeah,” she replied, rubbing her eyes.  “I’m just tired.  I should probably stop studying so late.”  Alice looked back down to her homework, which she had momentarily forgotten.

Day Two

Had she slept at all last night?  Alice knew she had gone to bed at eleven o’clock the previous night and woken up at six thirty the next morning.  That was seven and a half hours of sleep; why was she so tired?

            Alice was sitting at the dinner table with Isaac and her mother, her father working late.  She sifted blankly through the pasta in front of her, trying to find an answer within its depths.  Her vision was blurring, the colors in front of her eyes mixing.  Her eyes drooped under the weight of the day, beckoning her to sleep . . .

            “Good,” said the lulling, rasping voice behind her, as though from an echoing, faraway place.  “Get some sleep, now.”

            But it was only seconds after she had submitted to sleep that Alice was being shaken awake at the dinner table by her mother, who was exchanging a worried look with Isaac.

Day Four

“Alice, wake up, you’re going to be late!”  This was her mother, whose voice was lifting Alice abruptly from a foggy sleep.  Alice looked at the clock and sat bolt upright.  Seven thirty?  How could that be?  She never slept through her alarm.  The panicking girl swung her legs over the edge of her bed and slid off, only to jump back on with a gasp when she felt something on the floor cut her feet.  She looked down at the floor to find her bedside lamp had fallen to the ground, its bulb shattered into millions of glittering shards across the floor, some pieces shining with the blood from her feet.

            She looked around in a panic.  Alice began to call to her mother, but quickly shut her mouth.  No, no, she couldn’t tell anybody about the bulb or the voice.  Too many things were at stake: school, field hockey, newspaper, debate team. . . .  She couldn’t afford to have people thinking she was insane.  No, this would be kept quiet.

            Alice reached for the doorknob of her bedroom to go retrieve a broom and dustpan only to find her hands were bloody and cut, also; the wounds were mostly shallow scratches, but on one palm two deep gashes were apparent.  Had she smashed the bulb with her bare hands in her sleep?  After a few moments of bewilderment, she carefully opened her bedroom door in a manner that wouldn’t open her cuts farther and returned with the broom and dustpan to clean up the mess, making sure not to trail the blood from her feet on the hall carpet.  Just as Alice was emptying the shards into the trashcan, her mother knocked on the door.  Alice hastily shoved the broom, dustpan, and lamp under her bed.

            “Come in,” she called in a somewhat shaky voice, and her mother entered.

            “Hurry up and get in the shower, Hon, you’re going to be late.”  The mother gave Alice’s hands a curious glance, for her daughter was holding them in a strange fashion as to not show her wounds, but dismissed the strange position and left the room.  Alice winced in pain as she unstuck her bloody feet from the wooden floor and headed for the shower.