tomjaski
In the Burg, you learned young: keep your head down, your guard up, and your faith close.
I forgot that lesson for thirty years. Left Bridesburg after my mother's funeral - a phone call, a job in Poland, and I never looked back. Gdansk, London, Alaska, the Caribbean. I ran until there was nowhere left to run, then came home to retire in Ma's old house on the same red brick sidewalk where I grew up.
But something's wrong with the neighbors. Pat and Putty never look tired. Tessie never sleeps in. At 2:47 AM, they stand outside in their pajamas like statues, faces tilted toward nothing.
I'm sleeping ten hours a night and waking up like I've worked doubles. Because I have.
When exhaustion finally drags me under, I don't dream. I wake - in the dark, in a pod, in a place that makes every factory floor I ever worked look like paradise. Thousands of us, lined up and twitching, generating the energy that keeps their world running. We're not people here. We're batteries. We've always been batteries. And the things wearing my neighbors' faces are the shift supervisors making sure we stay plugged in.
They tell me I volunteered. That we all did, before the first sleep.
They weren't expecting a stubborn Polish kid from St. John's Parish who still remembers the prayers his mother made him memorize before his voice changed.
Turns out, I came home to finish what she started.