He closed his eyes, not expecting sleep to come, but hop-ing. He hadn’t slept well the night before, or the night before that. He had come to dread sleep; he put it off as long as he could, walking miles of road until late at night, returning home and trying to read, or just staring at the wall. The familiarity was frustrating. He grabbed his pillow and went back to the living room. He lay down on the couch, swinging his legs over the arm so he could fit. The silence in the little apartment was beginning to ring in his ears, and he grabbed the remote off the floor and turned on the TV. The screen was black and white, and the reception was terrible: he could scarcely make out faces through the static, but the chatter of what sounded like a talk show was rapid and cheerful. He turned the volume low and settled back, staring at the ceiling and half listening to the television voices until slowly, he drifted into sleep.

Her arm was limp, the only part of her he could see dangling from the twisted metal suit. Blood ran in red rivers down her skin, pooling on the ground. Charlie was all alone. He could hear her voice again if he tried: “Don’t let go! John!” She called my name. And then that thing—He shuddered, hearing again the sound of the animatronic suit snapping and crunching. He stared at Charlie’s lifeless arm as if the world around them had disappeared, and as the noise echoed in his head, his mind conjured up thoughts unbidden: The crunching sounds were her bones. The tearing was everything else.

John opened his eyes with a start. A few feet away, a studio audience laughed, and he looked at the TV, its static and chatter bringing him back to waking life.

John sat up, rolling his neck to work out kinks: the couch was too small, and his back was cramped. His head ached, and he was exhausted but restless, the shot of adrenaline still working its way through his system. He went out, locking the door forcefully behind him, and breathed in the night air.

He started down the road, heading toward town and whatever might still be open. The lights on the road were far apart, and there was no sidewalk, just a shallow dirt shoulder. Few cars passed him, but when they did, they loomed up from around corners or cresting hills, blinding him with headlights and rushing by with a force that sometimes threatened to knock him back. He had begun to notice himself edging ever closer to the road as he walked, playing a halfhearted game of chicken. When he found himself too far out, he would always take deliberate steps back to the shoulder, and it was always with a secret, sinking disappointment in himself that he would do so.