Awake

Chapter Eighteen - The Creeping Doubt

Ebb's eyes were open and the world was bearable. He felt lazy and fuzzy, but the feeling was familiar and not at all unpleasant. He knew this state well and he lay limply on the bed staring at the room in front of him, only half-seeing it.

  He watched the progress of a boy he vaguely recognised. After some time, the key to that recognition filtered through: this was another one who had woken up, the one who had been dancing. So that had been real. It had all been real.

"You're awake," the boy – Sandy – said. "I was beginning to wonder."

Ebb stared at him in silence for a moment, considering the potential of replying. It didn't seem like an easy option, but neither did silence.

"I don't know what it was you're hooked on," another boy appeared in his line of view, "but I've given you a shot of something and you should be fine for the moment. We're going to have to break the addiction though."

Ebb didn't really hear him. Break the addiction? Why would he want to break it? The drug made him beautiful and reality, as he had just experienced, did not. Where was the sense in giving up the best part of himself?

 But that boy was already leaving the room, intent on some other mission, leaving only Sandy behind. Ebb watched as his fellow former sleeper cleaned something at a metal sink, his hands working deftly, his brow furrowed in concentration. Ebb wasn't used to being ignored in this way, as though people had the option to see him but chose not to. Either they were conscious, and they wanted something, or they were flying far away.

"What do I look like?" Ebb asked and his tongue felt loose in his mouth.

Sandy snorted. "Like you haven't slept and haven't eaten and you've got vomit in your hair," he said, bluntly. "It's not pretty, if that's what you mean."

Ebb didn't question further. He hadn't dared glance in a mirror since arriving here. He had a half-formed idea that he wouldn't know the face that looked back. If everything they said was true (he couldn't confirm it; truth was arbitrary) then his body would be entirely different, utterly unrecognisable. The thought frightened him.

"What was it you took?" Sandy asked, abruptly.

Ebb shrugged. "I don't know. It wasn't pure, anyway. A mix of things. I don't think I ever needed a name for it."

"Why'd you start taking it?"

Ebb almost laughed. "You know, I hardly remember. I think...I was on a train. Yeah, I was on a train."

Sandy scoffed. "You don't even remember?"

Ebb cast his mind back, dredging up the memories. "It was just after I left home. I was stowing away in one of the freight carriages on the railway. There were a bunch of others in there, couple of them helped me out. And they offered me some of it and...I wasn't about to refuse."

Sandy didn't press for more details of his history. Ebb was glad; he wasn't sure he could have remembered it all anyway.