Sleep Donation

Baby A

The suburbs are rain-wet and green. Those white flowers look even more abundant than before, if that’s possible. They could be sentient, almost, wagging their lunar tongues at us from glittering gutters and construction sites. The Van pulls around a familiar corner, parks. The moon really is inexpressibly bright.

Does it matter if we mean what we say, if the mere fact of the utterance saves lives?

I am thinking about Jim, what to do about him.

Tonight Baby A’s blue eyes flutter open in the catch-crib; a nurse adjusts the flow of the ultra-sedative, and she falls into REM sleep within seconds. It’s a free-fall, accelerated by our medications; she descends through the uppermost levels into deep sleep, our monitors confirming “delta-wave,” and it’s from this vacant corridor of being, beyond the reach of language, image, or memory, that Abigail Harkonnen produces the lifesaving blackflow, the cure for insomnia, sleep piped in from her last home, perhaps, whatever “stasis in darkness” precedes even the womb.

After the draw is done, I bike straight home. It’s a little after one a.m. I’ve locked the bike and I’m heading to the apartment when I notice headlights come on at the end of the street. A car rolls slowly towards me, blinding me. A brown sedan with turquoise doors.

“Get in,” says Mr. Harkonnen. “We’re going on a field trip.”