The Empty Ones Read Online Free PDF Page B

state. The channel I’d left the TV on started playing back-to-back infomercials around two in the morning, and the easy cadence of the host’s pitch-voice mesmerized me. I watched the light around me change from the diffused harsh white of a parking lot streetlamp, to the hazy crimson of sunrise, to the muffled clarity of day. Whatever the source, the light always felt suppressed. Probably because it had to filter through two sets of thick, scratchy motel curtains, and had an even harder time squirming past my itchy, burning eyes and into my muddled brain.
    I was pretty rough on my body back home, doing grunt-level stunt work on whatever B-movie was willing to hire me. I had shattered elbows, broken teeth, twisted fingers, and sprained knees. But I always came home to my bed, which had a truly excessive California King memory foam mattress. It filled every inch of my room, which was my sleeping space, and only my sleeping space. I adored my sleep. I could come home limping, picking sugar-glass out of my hair, covered in fake, caked-on blood, and it just didn’t matter. Because I knew I could always swing open my bedroom door and fall facefirst into a deep syrupy slumber, my body utterly absorbed by that gorgeous hedonistic slab of heaven. Down comforters. Big fluffy pillows. It was the one thing I had.
    Now I slept in musty hotel beds with springs poking through the fabric, dried blood—not mine—on the jagged ends. Probably some sort of exotic mite infestation in the fabric. A whole alphabet of hepatitis just waiting for me to snuggle on up.
    Wait, no, I’m being unfair: I didn’t sleep in them at all.
    Another night gone. How long can a human being function without sleep?
    I thought I heard somewhere that a person can only take a week of sleeplessness before insanity sets in. That’s probably a rumor or something, right? Yeah, it’s like “mixing Pop Rocks and Coke will kill you.” Just stuff kids say to each other because school is boring and lies are fun.
    It has to be.
    I mean, look at me. I wasn’t crazy. And I hadn’t slept for a second since that night three weeks ago, when I dive-tackled the angel—when I leapt headfirst into a ball of sentient light that was burning my best friend’s brain from the inside out. I don’t remember much of what happened to me in there, just a few vague notions. A feeling of misplaced nostalgia, like re-watching a show you loved as a kid only to realize, as an adult, that it’s total garbage. A void. Whiteness. The number six?
    And then I woke up in my apartment, and heard Carey and Jackie laughing in the living room. I thought we beat them. We won. I forgot about Marco for one beautiful, simple afternoon.
    Then he started sending the Unnoticeables after us. A guy from the gas company knocked on my door, all bureaucratic smiles and shrugged apologies. I let him into my apartment—he had the paperwork. I didn’t read it, but it was paperwork. You don’t have that stuff unless you mean business. He needed to do an inspection. There was a leak. He made it all the way to my bedroom before Carey flushed the toilet, came out of my bathroom, spotted the guy, and stomped his head into pieces all over my hallway.
    We ran, after that.
    We’d been running ever since. We holed up at a friend of Jackie’s house at first, until her friend went to the kitchen to make dinner and Carey asked Jackie what her good friend looked like. She couldn’t remember.
    We burned the place down to cover our tracks. It was shitty motels and sleeping in the car ever since.
    Haha. Sleeping.
    It was me, staring at the clock on the dashboard, watching the glowing green digits tick over one by one while Carey snored in the passenger seat and Jackie kicked my chair, trying to get comfortable in the back.
    It was nighttime TV. Watching until the channels ran out of programming and just started playing terrible orchestral music and