once upon a time, there was a girl. she was quite a normal teenage girl, apart from one very important detail: she could never remember to sleep.
sleeeeep. go to sleeeeep. the word was always on the tip of her tongue but it couldn't cross her mind. she went a day, two days without it, her world tilted at a strange axis as everything muddled in her tired little brain.
"help me, help me, make it stop," she would beg people, and they would command her, "sleep."
so she did, and she felt refreshed in the morning, and she went on with her day. she grew tired again, forgetting it all over, staying up all night and watching the sunrise, eyes twitching from her exhaustion.
she began to write it all over herself, under reminders for things like homework and shopping lists. her hands, her arms, if she could find a pen she would scribble it, so that at night she could find the happiness she couldn't remember, except that it made her feel better.
but it washed away, and being a teenager she had better things to do than sleep. the marks on the inside of her hand smudged as she stayed up doing homework, the ones on her forearms washed away in the shower. she forgot again and again and again. her parents, tired of being woken up at night by her music playing and wailing, simply put on headphones and went to bed, secure in the fact that they could never forget something so trivial.
she grew wearier and wearier. no one would believe this girl who couldn't remember what was so basic to everyone else. "I want to-" she would frown, unable to think of it. "I think I just need to- uhm..."
her homework became scrawls. her social life went away, because no one likes zombies. she went a week before someone could tell her, "all you have to do is.."
it was the cure to all her problems, but it seemed she was cursed to go on forever as this drowsy, half-alive thing.
(there is no happy ending. the girl is now on her third week without sleep. help her help her help her. before she walks into traffic or something.)
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