Status Updates From Insomnia

I DONT WANT TO READ TS

It was life, often unsatisfying, frequently cruel, usually boring, sometimes beautiful, once in awhile exhilarating

The ring rolled down the gutter and disappeared into a sewer grate, and there it remained for a long, long time. But not forever. In Derry, things that disappear into the sewer system have a way – an often unpleasant one – of turning up.

[‘One life means so much, then?’]

Lachesis: [Yes. If the child dies, the Tower of all existence will fall, and the consequences of such a fall are beyond your comprehension. And beyond ours, as well.]

Trying to suck the life out of them? Close, but no cigar. Ralph didn’t think it was their lives the thing inside the deathbag wanted, nor their souls . . . at least, not exactly. It was their life-force it wanted. Their ka.

Looking at that wheel brought a deeper chill; it was as if the metaphor his mind had seized to help grasp the concept of ka had become real.

“We are all bound together by the Purpose,’ Dorrance said abruptly. ‘That’s ka-tet, which means one made of many. The way that many rhymes make up a single poem. You see?’

‘No.’ Ralph, Lois, and Joe said it at the same time, in perfect, unrehearsed chorus, and then laughed nervously together. The Three Insomniacs of the Apocalypse, Ralph thought. Jesus save us.”

For one flickering moment he seemed to catch an image from the mind of the other, one he found both exciting and disturbing: an enormous tower constructed of dark and sooty stone, standing in a field of red roses. Slit windows twisted up its sides in a brooding spiral.

“Ralph? You’re getting that moogy look again.’

‘That what look?’

‘Moogy.’ She tossed her hair pertly. ‘That’s a word I made up to describe how Mr Chasse looked when he was pretending to listen to me but was actually thinking about his coin collection. I know a moogy look when I see one, Ralph. What are you thinking about?”

You were talking, in other words, about something that could foretell the future. The idea that he had been noticed by such a force frankly scared the hell out of him.

“Ralph . . . this . . . this is . . . oh my!’

‘Bigger than Michael Jackson at the SuperBowl, isn’t it?’

She laughed weakly. ‘Well, just . . . you know, just a little.’

‘There’s a name for what’s happening to us, Lois, and it’s not insomnia or senility or Alzheimer’s Disease. It’s hyper-reality.’

‘Hyper-reality,’ she murmured. ‘God, what an exotic word!”

In some ways – in a lot of ways, actually – Derry wasn’t like other places.

Ralph went out to the porch, stuck his hands in his back pockets, and read the day like a catalogue.

Suppose I told him about his hat? Ralph thought. Suppose I just opened the conversation by saying, ‘Bill, I also know what happened to your Panama. Some badass relation to the guys I saw last night has got it. He wears it when he jumps rope between the bakery and the tanning salon.’

If Bill had any lingering doubts about his sanity, that little newsflash would certainly set them to rest. Yep.

There are doctors who won’t prescribe anything for insomnia, you know. They like to say that no one ever died from lack of sleep, but I’m here to tell you that’s crap.

How much courage to go on and do that after you’ve spent all that time finding out how to prepare the soil and when to plant and how much to water and when to reap? How much to just say, ‘I have to quit these peas, peas are no good for me, I better try corn or beans.’

‘A lot,’ he said, wiping at the corners of his eyes again. ‘A damn lot, that’s what I think.’


[2/2]

He slid the letter carefully back into its envelope, trying to remember how long Ed and Helen had been married. Six or seven years, he thought. Carolyn would have known for sure. How much courage does it take to fire up your tractor and plow under a crop you spent six or seven years growing? he asked himself.


[1/2]

They were old-school Yankees, for the most part, raised to believe that what a man doesn’t choose to talk about is no one’s business but his own.