Katherine Whitley - Society Rules

Katherine Whitley

From Strategy of the Apocalypse

Chapter 1

As the sun burned brightly through the glass panes of the French doors, it painted a path of brilliant light that stretched lazily across the bedroom floor. The day promised to be unseasonably warm for early March in Vermont, and Indiana Taylor was feeling sulky.

Unreasonably so.

What she didnt feel, was ready to face the world yet. Her bed was soft and comforting and her body was still achy with fatigue. But the official start of her day was ticking its way toward her.

Not yet, her mental groan echoed through her head as she breathed in and out in a slow and steady rhythm, despite knowing there was no need for the performance.

It was easy to continue a habit that had become part of her ritual for life management. Out of necessity, shed become well practiced at feigning sleep.

The thought of leaving her four-hundredthreadcount sanctuary shoved her into a mental cringe, but Indie knew that allowing the obnoxious blast of the alarm to actually sound off was the more unpleasant option. She detested loud noises. The only exception to this rule was music, whose decibel levels never seemed to assault her in the same manner as other sounds. Music was her sanctuary, and soothed her in an almost hypnotic way.

Her ears were painfully sensitive, and her children often accused her of having superhuman hearing. Superhuman vision as well, but this was either a sign of her ocular acuity, or the mark of mental issues that Indie simply refused to address, because she sometimes saw things that were not only disturbing to her, but obviously unseen by others.

Still, thinking of her childrens suspicions made her smile into her pillow. Those suspicions were true and she admittedly used it to her advantage. After all, wouldnt it be a shame not to acknowledge and use a God-given talent?

A faint click announced the impending buzz, just seconds away. Indie launched a preemptive strike against the unfortunate piece of timekeeping equipment, silencing the alarm before it sounded. Just the thought of the intrusive noise made her shudder.

Alarm clocks.

It was Indies personal opinion that the inventor of this instrument of torture should be forced to submit himself to the endless ringing, clanging or buzzing of a few of his creations for several hours a day. She clenched her entire body in horror at the very thought.

In spite of the knowledge that she never needed the nasty brain-smacking things, she always set one at any rate.

Just in case.

Because she never know when normal behavior would covertly steal into her life, and maybe sleep would happen.

Right. Sure it would.

As early as she could recall into her past... even in her childhood, Indie had never needed an alarm. This was because of the admittedly bizarre fact that she never actually slept.

It was something that Indie didnt let get around. No, she knew the reactions news like that would prompt; one of many lessons learned the hard way at a very young age. Not sleeping seemed to be regarded by the world as a little freakish, shed found.

When Indie was fourteen years old, a cousin with whom she had lived for a short time made Indie painfully aware of the insanity of such claims.

Kristen had indulged her with a rare moment of attention, and Indie, overwhelmed by a rush of release from her loneliness, had blurted out her secret.

Never sleep? Kristen had asked, skeptically. Everyone sleeps, Indie. What youre having is called insomnia. Her cousin had then run down the tired list of remedies for curing this simple problem, from warm milk, to sleeping pills as a last resort.

When Indie tried to explain that her condition went way beyond insomnia and into the absolute absence of sleep, Kristen had become impatient.

All human beings sleep! People cannot survive without it. You would be wild, crazy and hallucinating right now if you never slept. It is a mandatory human function!

But... but I dont, Indie had persisted in a whisper, tears stinging her eyes, mostly because she had wasted the rare moment on what had turned into an argument.

Then maybe youre not really human, her cousin had stated coolly. And by the way... she tossed the words over her shoulder as she escaped into the hallway, I wouldnt go around telling people stories like that if I were you. You might earn yourself some special time in a padded room!

Indie was horrified by her cousins sarcastic retort about not being human. Her extreme reaction to words she knew were obviously spoken with only the intention of causing pain had confused her as well.

She knew very well that her cousin didnt believe that she was anything but a normal, if possibly crazy, human being; but something in that comment crystallized her years of unrest and feelings of not quite belonging.

A strange sweeping sensation swirled through her head that as absurd as Kristens statement was, she had somehow hit the nail on the head.