The Insomnia Club.

At some point, Palmer felt he was about to snap. Life had become one slow, grey monotony. His existence was punctuated by brief moments of blissful oblivion. These respites were mostly initiated by narcotics but those moments were increasingly fragmented and fleeting. The long dull days moved into long nights of emptiness and long insipid mornings, like beads on a Rosary, round and round and round.

Sickened by the vapid, hollow jabbering of the television, unable to concentrate on books, he began to walk the streets in the late hours, usually between half two and five in the morning when time stretched, like elastic; taught enough that it might, at any moment, break in two. He liked that time of night when most of the rest of the world was asleep. The streets were silent, except for the taxi drivers, the odd homeless person sleeping in doorways, or the scurrying rats, occasionally a scrawny fox. He'd wander through areas he'd never visited, drinking in the cold night air, reading the graffiti-scrawled shutters of closed shops. Over time he built up a detailed map of the city at night inside his mind, renaming the roads and alleyways with what he thought was more accurate descriptions; Trash Road, Whore Lane, Waiting Taxi Drive, Vomit Row, Piss Puddle Boulevard, Needle Street.

One night, during his nocturnal wanderings, Palmer came across a part of town he had never visited. Light blazed from an all-night cafe, which he expected to be as desolate as the streets he’d traversed. He peeked inside seeing that there were four people sitting alone in tables. They looked like him, tired, pale and with wide eyes that seemed to focus on something beyond the dark material plane. There was something about them that attracted him, alone but not lonely, beat but not beaten. He looked over to the serving area where a thin grey-haired woman stood bored, staring at a large coffee machine. Coffee seemed like an insane idea, but the place seemed like the perfect spot to kill a few hours. He pushed the door and stepped inside.

There was a pungent redolence of disinfectant which was not stifled by the overwhelmingly rich aroma of coffee. Both tingled in his nostrils as he approached the counter. The old woman looked glumly at him and half sighed. “What can I get you?”

He could tell she knew the answer before he spoke, she was already pouring a cup of coffee. He went through the motions anyway. “Coffee please, black, two sugars.”

Her nod took about as much effort as her blinking. She handed him the cup and a bowl of sugar with a half-buried teaspoon. “Pound fifty, free refills.”

Palmer handed over the money and took the bowl and cup gratefully. He turned to find a seat, noticing that all four customers sat as distant from each other as possible. This left him feeling awkward, exposed, out of place. He scurried from one table to another, deciding on one near the window, between two of the customers. Both were men, both looked exhausted, beyond that they were both dissimilar. One was a man approaching old age by the looks of it. His complexion was wraith-like, pale, thin and wrinkled. His lank, greying hair abandoning his skull so the skin shone through under the icy fluorescence of the strip-lights.

Opposite him was a young Asian man, well kept, well groomed, with dark rings around his eye sockets. He turned to catch Palmer staring at him and, as if guilty of something Palmer looked away, through the condensation out into the blank night. Blue strobing police lights seemed to smear past the foggy window. He heard the squeaking scrape of a seat and from the corner of his eye, he saw the young man move towards him. Palmer hoped the kid was leaving but knew he wasn’t.

“Not seen you in here before.” Was the lad’s opening gambit.

Palmer rolled his eyes up to look at him, saying nothing he gestured with his left hand, palm up, inviting the young man to sit beside him. The young man nodded, smiled and took up his offer.

“I’m Mutraad.” The lad said, planting his cup of coffee on the table.

“Palmer.” Replied Palmer. “Mutraad? I’ve never heard that name before.”

“It is a fitting name. My four brothers, all older than me, they all have wives, children, businesses to take care of, I have nothing, nothing but the car and the night hours.” Mutraad explained, vaguely.

“A night bird eh?” Palmer asked.

“Indeed. I could not sleep, even as a child.” Murtaad answered with a defeated laugh.

“That must have been tough.” Palmer said, realising this was the first conversation he had had in over a week. He tried to recall whom he had last spoken to but could not.

Mutraad nodded. “My mother said that for my first three years she thought I may drive her mad. I screamed and wailed and tore off the covers. I would sit late at night watching the empty, hissing, static of television rather than late night shows.”

“You were missing nothing, I can guarantee that.” Palmer said. He took a sip of the coffee.

“She told me she would find me there, in the early mornings, hypnotised, sometimes she said I seemed to be holding conversations with the dead screen. Of course, this concerned her. My father, the doctors, even our Imam told her there was nothing to worry about but she worried. This lead to a distance between her and I and eventually, I was somewhat the black-sheep of the family. This was fine, I seemed to live in a different world from the rest of them. I could not sleep, my world-view was somewhat nocturnal.”

Palmer sympathised with that. “I know exactly what you mean.”

“The day was a time of exhaustion, my schoolwork was, if I am charitable to myself, unremarkable but I did not care. I had no intention of living in the world of rush hour, debt, familial pressure and the purchase of needless things to satisfy me. For two years I worked the night-shift in a food packing factory until I could save up enough money to leave home, buy a car and join a taxi company, which is exactly what I did.”

“A Taxi driver, eh? I bet you have some stories.” Palmer said.

“Many. However, I wanted to talk to you not to tell you my tales but to ask you a question.” Murtaad replied.

“Go on.”

The boy looked around as if the place was filled with spies. Lowering his voice and leaning forward, he looked at Palmer with wide, pleading eyes. “Have you seen them? Out there, in the night?”

“Seen who?” Palmer said, disconcerted by this change in the young man.

“Them. I do not know who they are, or rather what they are, the other ones, that’s all.”

“I’m sorry, I’m not getting what you mean.” Palmer stated.

Murtaad’s entire body seemed to slump into dejection. “Never mind.”

“It seems to be bothering you. You sure you don’t want to tell me?”

Murtaad’s eyes analysed the table. “I don’t know what I could tell you. The strange ones, that is the only way I can describe them.”

“Go on.” Palmer said, his curiosity now piqued.

Murtaad seemed frustrated and nibbled on his thumb. “How to explain?”

He took a drink of his coffee and sat there thinking until his eyes widened once more and again he looked at Palmer. “The box!”

“The box?”

“Yes… Yes! How could I have forgotten? One night, I picked up a fare in the city centre. It was not booked, I was technically breaking the law, but he came up to my car and asked. It was pouring down and I would not leave someone stranded like that, not at that hour.”

“That’s decent of you.” Palmer said.

“Thank you. Heh, no good deed goes unpunished, yes? This man, I could not really describe him, he had long hair that dripped with rain, a long coat, that is all I remember about him, except he had a box, like a present, wrapped with a bow. He sat in the back and asked me to take him to Wishart Street, next to the Cathedral.”

“I know the area.” Palmer answered, knowing also that the other side of the road was the Necropolis.

“I tried to make conversation while I was driving him to his destination. I asked him about the box, thinking it was a present. “Who is the present for?” I asked and he gave me the strangest look. “What?” he said, then he added, “There is only the present.” I was confused by this.”

Palmer suspected he knew where the confusion came from Murtaad was talking about a gift, the passenger assumed he was speaking about time, which said something about the oddness of this passenger, in Palmer’s mind anyway. “He was meaning the present day, not the birthday present.”

Murtaad’s eyes widened and he muttered something which Palmer assumed was Arabic, perhaps Pakistani. He wasn’t knowledgeable about foreign languages. “I see,” he continued. “That explains a lot for when I asked him if it was someone’s birthday he said that it was always someone’s birthday.”

Palmer chuckled, Murtaad also saw the funny side of that and for a moment the two shared a laugh. It was a thin, weak sound bereft of energy but it was enough to break the tension between strangers. Both drank some coffee. Murtaad continued. “I explained I was talking about the box, asked if it was a gift. He replied that it was his but that if I wanted it it would be mine. I, of course, refused, saying he was too kind and was only curious. That seemed to be enough for him. “You want to see inside.” he stated and despite my refusal, he would not take no for an answer. He reached over and placed it in the passenger seat. I immediately felt uncomfortable but thanked him. As I turned onto John Knox Street, he made a noise, like a pained but satisfied sigh and I looked in my rearview mirror but saw nothing. I turned, but he was no longer in the car. It was just me, and the box. I stopped the car, got out looked to see if he had somehow managed to leave while I was still moving, but there was no-one there, on the street.”

“That’s… unsettling to say the least.”

“Unsettling, yes, a good word for it. I went back to the car and sat there staring at the box, I could not say for how long but eventually I untied the bow, nervously, it must be said. I opened the lid and looked inside… and there was… there was nothing.”

“Nothing? The box was empty?” Palmer asked thinking this seemed very much like an anti-climax.

“No, you misunderstand, the box was not merely empty, there was nothing, no insides, no bottom, just… nothing.”

“Just nothing?” Palmer asked, not sure if he was understanding what Murtaad was saying.

“Exactly, it was not even dark it was just nothing.” Murtaad insisted.

Palmer sighed, the nights had broken Murtaad, he concluded, He’d had a weird customer who’d messed with him and he’d lost his mind. “You know what you are saying is impossible.”

“That is what I thought too, but it is. You do not believe me, do you?”

“I’m sorry, no. I think you’re mistaken.” Palmer said. He took no pleasure in disabusing the young man of his delusion, nor did he think it would make any difference.

Murtaad sat there frowning for a few moments shaking his head before snapping his fingers and pointing. “I still have it. You can see it if you don’t believe me. I put it in the boot of my car. I had forgotten it was there.”

The challenge had been laid down. Part of Palmer worried about this. He was concerned it was all some kind of ruse and that he would end up being mugged or worse, but Murtaad did not seem either threatening or strong enough to take him. His curiosity and the novelty of the situation outweighed his fears. “Sure.”

Murtaad stood up and said “Follow me.”

Both left the cafeteria and Palmer followed Murtaad across the road where he unlocked the back of a silver coloured Skoda and opened it. Inside was a box, no bigger than eighteen inches in both height and length. Palmer looked, waiting for the box to be opened and for him to see an empty inside while Murtaad had some kind of psychotic break. Cautiously, with trembling hands, Murtaad lifted the lid off the box and Palmer leaned over and peered in. “My God!” he gasped.

Palmer could not believe what he was looking at. The square of the top edge of the box was there but there were no insides at all, no bottom, yet he could not see the car. It was as Murtaad described, but less and somehow more. The emptiness seemed vast even contained within the foot and a half, he felt almost as if he was going to be dragged into it. He felt hypnotised by the void, lured by it, as if it held secrets waiting to be revealed. This void was transcendentally vivid, so real that everything outside of it seemed like a dim vaporous dream. To be fair, Palmer considered reality mostly seemed like that anyway but the box, the box was something else. He could not take his eyes off it. “This is incredible.”

“Take it. Please.” Murtaad said.

“What?” Palmer said, more out of politeness than anything else. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, yes. It’s yours, please, I don’t want it.”

Palmer smiled. “Thank you Murtaad.”

Murtaad nodded and placed the lid back on the box. Palmer placed his hands on the sides of it and lifted it. He was surprised just how much nothing actually weighed. It was much heavier than he could have ever imagined. Still, he managed to get it out of the back of the car, much to the relief of Murtaad. Palmer couldn’t wait to get it home and walked off at a quicker pace than his usual nightly shambling. He had got perhaps a mile before it struck him he could have asked Murtaad to give him a lift home. It didn’t matter, he got there eventually.

The box was a marvel, he found himself staring into it as soon as he got home. It had a way of switching off his mind, allowing him to drift into the emptiness within until he was overwhelmed by it. Time had no meaning in there, nothing did, because it was nothing, there was nothing. Eventually, he managed to reintegrate himself as if from sleep, or a coma, to find that there was bright daylight shining through the window, to find his stomach a rumbling agony. His legs felt weak, his face was itchy and he scratched it to discover a beard had grown. Palmer wondered how long he had been gone and though weak and famished he felt like he had the best night sleep he’d ever had. He felt giddy, so refreshed that he did not even shrink away from the sheet of sunlight blazing through the curtains.

Palmer placed the lid back on the box and went into his kitchen, opened the fridge and began to eat whatever was quickly available. Some cheese, some sliced meat and some sun-dried tomatoes were devoured as he pulled out bacon and eggs for frying. After he had his fill he found himself yearning to investigate the phenomena inside the box some more.

Taking a pound coin he had plucked from the pocket of his dirty jeans he once again removed the lid of the box and then threw the coin in. The result was startling. Rather than vanish it hovered there, brighter and more colourful than it had been moments before. Around it was a thin swirling vortex which grew slightly until the coin looked like the centre of a spiral galaxy before it became diffuse, an insubstantial golden glow within several curved and spinning arms. He found his focus becoming drawn towards it until the room became intangible, vanished as if swallowed by the void in which this galaxy was forming. He found himself being able to somehow swim into it, through it, the bright shimmering atoms of the coin like stars. As he witnessed this he began to feel like he was in control of it, that he could make the atoms drift in a certain way, make them coalesce, bond, form complex compounds. He knitted together matter, weaving it into larger shapes and sizes until eventually the coin reformed, in his hand, as he sat on the sofa.

Palmer felt as if he was on the border of some great, monumental understanding but it was not quite there, as if just out of reach, as if at the corner of his vision. If he could grasp it, he knew it would be devastating, transformative. He looked at the coin to see if it would trigger the knowledge but instead saw his fingernails had grown by about a centimetre. Immediately he touched his face to find the beard was much longer and realised another long period of time had passed. He pushed himself to his feet. His jeans felt far too big for him. Concerned, he wandered into the hall and gazed at himself in the full-length mirror he’d hung in the hall years previously. He was thinner than ever, the bags under his eyes had changed into dark curved smears that looked like sunken black eyes. His skin was almost transparent and his cheeks drawn in making his teeth look too big for his mouth. Again he wondered how long had he been gone. He was horrified by the state he was in and decided the box was dangerous, decided to avoid it, decided to only use it with some kind of alarm clock, some way to pull him back to normality. Disgusted by his self-image he felt angry and cursed the mirror. He imagined it rippled, like water. Palmer knew he needed food, needed real rest, needed to get his shit together. The food in his fridge had gone stale, out of date, stank the thing out, so he decided to go out for something to eat, it was night, he felt comfortable outside at night.

As he walked through the dark streets, he spotted, from time to time, other people. They were not walking the same streets as he but sliding into dark closes, narrow lanes. They were little more than vague hints of people, disappearing from view. If he had not been so hungry he may have given it more thought. The local takeaways were long since closed, the pubs too and so he had little option but to continue on his journey until, once again, he arrived at the little all-night cafe. As he approached and looked in the steam coated windows, Palmer noticed the place looked exactly the same as it did the last time he went in. The same four people sat as far apart from each other as they had, they even appeared to wear the same clothes. They still looked tired and pale, still stared with wide eyes that seemed to focus on something beyond the dark material plane. The thin, grey-haired woman still stood bored, still staring at a large coffee machine. He pushed the door and stepped inside walked up to the counter. He was looking through the glass display at some stale looking sandwiches and an array of unimpressive cakes.

The old woman looked glumly at him and half sighed. “What can I get you?”

The deja-vu was so immense, he felt himself shuddering inside as if part of him was trying to flee his body. This was no shaking of the nerves, but a phenomenon he had never experienced nor was aware was possible. He felt like his bones might burst through his skin.

“Um… could I get some of those sandwiches, a cake and… and.. and… some coffee.” he stammered, trying to keep his grip on his consciousness. The old woman frowned at him in a way that made Palmer think he had said something wrong.

“Four fifty. free refills. Sit down I’ll bring it over to you.” she said as if reading a script and with a thick treacle of contempt in her voice.

Palmer decided he hated her. Once again he looked around the cafe for somewhere to sit and eventually chose the same seat again. He looked over at Murtaad and gave him a nod to say hello. The lad gave him a dirty look and looked away. Palmer felt insulted for a moment until he realised he looked very different, probably more like the old gaunt old man sat directly across from them. Palmer found he was staring at the old man who had a keen look on his face, nodding, with his eyebrows raised as if he was the one who recognised Palmer. Seeing Palmer was looking him at him was enough for him to move from his seat and he scampered across. “You know, right?”

“What?” Palmer said.

“You. You understand. I can see it in your eyes.” The old man said excitedly, almost a giggle.

“What are you talking about?”

“round and round and round. Like… umm… those beads… yes! A Rosary.” The old man answered as if the words made any sense.

“Who are you?” Palmer asked, hoping to get some form of coherence from the man.

“Good question. Good Question. I was… I mean I don’t know who I was. I think I’m becoming one of them, one of the others. Like you, yes? Round and round and round. When is it happening? Is it tonight? Please tell me it’s tonight.”

“Yeah, I’ve got nothing for you, man.” Palmer said as a plate slammed down on the table with four quartered sandwiches. A cake followed and then the cup of coffee. The old woman stared at the old man and shot her arm out, pointing to the seat he’d come from.

“You, get back to your seat, stop bothering the customers.”

The old man bowed as he walked backward, muttering sorry repeatedly. He went back to his seat.

Palmer thanked her, took the creamer from the table and tipped some of it into the coffee. It was thick but not too thick, somewhere between a dollop and a splash. It floated on top until he stirred it with the teaspoon wherein it formed a familiar pattern, a milky way on top of the of black coffee. It spun in one direction and he felt himself being pulled in so he stirred it the other way and the pattern smeared into chaos and then began to reassemble in the opposite direction. Round and round and round, he thought and in thinking that his brain seemed to explode. He was barely aware of dashing up from the table and running out of the room. The night slid past him as a series of flickering moments as he raced home. He slammed in through the door and immediately opened the lid of the box and this time, laughing like a maniac, stuck his head deep into the nothingness that filled the box.

Pressure fronts of omnidirectional topography crushed every single part of his being.

Awareness was rapidly detached from the organs of his limited perceptual apparatus.

Light emerged in the void, a pinprick in the emptiness, expanding out exponentially.

Mere phenomena of the world he left were illusory, a sideshow of its energetic atoms.

Everywhere was Eternity, all of it was one thing, nothing. A lock, but he had the key.

Round and round and round.

It was so simple. A matter of matter, the rotational constructs of time which was an expression of entropy. Remake and rebuild, round and round and round. Glorious, Holy nothingness fell into existence, ceased to exist as it became something, a limitless liquid light that bloomed like a tree, stretched out like a nervous system, grew constellations of veins and nebula of muscles and galaxies of skin. A screaming burning agony of perfection squashed inwards and downwards from the highest existence to the lowest material plane and found itself crying, in a living room, looking at an empty box.

He did not know how he had returned, only knew he had lost everything to return to this world of illusion, this debased realm of deception. He felt disgusted, a rage that came from loss. He knew he had to correct this, unlock the world, return to the bliss that he had fallen from. He looked at his shriveled hands, his dark claw-like nails and the pound coin in his palm. Palmer, he recalled, his name had been Palmer. He walked out into the cold night and saw the others, the ragged shamblers who glowed with light, the lost and abandoned, jetsam from the ocean of night. He wandered through the streets, deconstructing the buildings at a quantum level and rebuilding them as he saw fit in an instant. The street signs warped and were made new, False Road, Delusion Lane, Return Drive, Ejection Row, Emptiness Boulevard, Collapse Street.

The fake lights of a building beamed through foggy glass. In the place sat four mannequins with a fifth behind a staged counter. It seemed familiar. He pushed open the door and walked up to the counter were an old plastic doll scowled at him.

He pulled at his mind to locate memories of speech. From a rasping throat, he groaned “Coffee, black.”

The false people disgusted him. He decided to have some fun at their expense. He took the coffee and sat at a table equidistant between the dummies. Stirring the coffee with the little spoon, he started to make the young puppet boy’s table shake, brought it to life, twisted its shape into that of dozens of rats. There was a squeal and the puppet ran towards the door. Palmer decided it was not a door, there were no doors, only brick walls. He heard the pretense at panic from the false people. Palmer was just beginning. The old woman doll he stretched and twisted into a long thin roll of plastic flesh and bone, a screaming writhing snake-like thing perhaps four meters long. It began battering itself off the counter until blood spurted out of lots of torn holes. The others ran towards the walls, slamming on them with their little fake fists. The old male one seemed less agitated than the others, so Palmer wondered how it would react if he made the spoon he was holding appear inside its throat. A few minutes of panicked reaction before the body toppled, uninteresting, disappointing. He made the young puppet boy attack the middle-aged fat mannequin with his fingers and teeth, with cutlery and anything else he could see until what remained looked like the set of those movies he used to watch as a child, the ones where killers tore people apart. The young puppet boy retreated to a corner after that and mimicked sobbing. He let it be, for the time being, focussing on the last one instead. Palmer took a sip of the coffee and got it to tear out its own eyes, bite out its own tongue, then as a finale, swallow all three. This made him laugh, the shocked look on the man doll’s face was almost perfect.

He grew bored playing with the toys and so fused them together into one blob of matter which he inflated like a balloon. It burst with a rain of meat and blood and skin. Palmer finished his coffee, returned the door and exited the scene of his massacre.

Out in the street, he still did not feel satisfied. He felt dirty, tired, needed a shower to wake him up. The rain began to pour down on him. It seemed almost real. He looked back at the cafe, everything had reset itself. The mannequins were all back in their places. This confused him for a moment but he nodded with understanding as he saw, placed in a bin affixed to a street-light, a box, tied with a big bow. There was one of the others, no, one of his kind scuttling away from the bin and he knew that it had been placed there for a reason, for someone to find it.

Palmer took the box and walked aimlessly through the streets. He saw a rat run across a road and turned it inside out, to see if it would still live. It did, for a squealing moment. Through streets and alleys, he stumbled and staggered, wanting to be gone, wanting to be free from this world, wanting to go home to the blissful, paradisical nothing. Round and round and round he went until eventually he was standing in a part of town he knew well; the centre. By the side of the road, he stood watching the rainwater pour into the drain, a ceaseless fluid motion that threatened to break his heart. He knew he had to go, he knew he had to stay, all he had to do to be free was to somehow get rid of the box. The box, however, was his, always had been his, always would be his.

A car pulled up, a Silver Skoda. Inside a young Asian man pulled down the window.

“Hey, are you okay?”

Palmer nodded. “Yes. I need you to take me somewhere.”

“Where you heading?” The young man asked.

In the back of his mind, Palmer recalled hearing a conversation like this once before. He knew then, he like all the others were mere puppets, playing roles for the amusement of the great hollow emptiness that was both within and without all things.

“Take me to Wishart Street.” He said, getting into the car.