The Insomnia Club

Julia Bennett tossed in her bed. She grabbed her pillow and pounded it like it was her worst enemy. Because it was! She couldn't sleep, damn it!

With a frustrated sigh, Julia tried to get comfortable. "Now, where was I?" she said out loud, staring at the ceiling.

Julia shrugged, and picked a random number, somewhere around where she thought she had left off at, "Eight hundred and fifty two, eight hundred and fifty three, eight hundred and fifty four..."

When she reached one thousand, Julia let out a scream, and threw her pillow across the room. She rubbed her face with her hands, and then glanced at the clock on her bedside table.

"Great, only 2:46 am," Julia muttered, climbing out of bed.

"This is ridiculous! I need sleep! I have to work in the morning! Well, later this morning!"

Julia didn't have to start getting ready for work until at least 7:30 am. She groaned, thinking about how tired she was going to be at work.

Insomnia was the bane of her existence. Julia had tried different medications, but though they made her sleep, she didn't feel rested the next day. Julia felt like she was walking around like a zombie, so she stopped taking them. If she was going to walk around like a zombie, it might as well be from a lack of sleep than from drugs. It was pointless to poison her body with chemicals, if she didn't need to. And Julia felt that she didn't need to if she wasn't feeling rested, even though she had slept while on the medication.

She didn't even have dreams while she on the meds, and she had read, somewhere, that having dreams, R.E.M sleep, was vital to having a normal and productive life.

Julia walked over to the little desk that she had set in front of a window. She leaned over the desk to draw open the blackout curtains that she had purchased a few weeks ago; another attempt at something that had failed to help her sleep.

The streetlamps made everything on the street visible, but there wasn't much to look at except parked cars.

Julia sighed, and sat with a plunk into her leather executive desk chair. She turned on her laptop and waited impatiently for it to spring to life.

When the computer did finally come fully on, she typed 'insomnia' into the search engine. There had to be something else that she could try.

Julia's eyes quickly scanned over the usual stuff that she always read about insomnia. There was nothing useful there. Her eyes suddenly stopped skim reading as they came across something named 'The Insomnia Club'.

Clicking on the link, Julia's heart pounded in her chest with anticipation. She didn't know why, but the word 'club' got her excited. Maybe it was because she was new in town and didn't have any friends? Julia thought.

"Probably," she muttered in answer to herself.

She had recently moved to Los Angeles from a small town outside of Richmond, Virginia. Her job promotion had been the cause of her move and she now wondered if the pay raise had been worth the upheaval of her life.

Julia had barely slept a wink since her move to L.A six months ago. She had never had issues with sleeping before her big life change.

She scooted forward in her chair to get a closer look at a cute website that had opened up.

Julia read out loud: "The Insomnia Club, a community of people who come together, in a safe environment, to get each other through the long sleepless nights."

She browsed through their lists of activities. They had all sorts of games listed, from poker to Scrabble to Twister. You could even bring your own games to the club or suggest more to be supplied. You want to play it? Just ask someone to join you! the website proclaimed.