Tales To Keep You Awake Novels & Stories

]* Bedtime. Not Alex’s room. Not ‘through.’ Our room. Big bed. Knight bed. Day 1 bed. Twins. Middle. Already asleep. Sand in hair. _HOME_ washed off. Still there. Alex. End of bed. Book. _Not_ shark. _Not_ court. _Not_ 11 seconds. _The House That Was Just Home._ Susan wrote it. Last night. 4 AM. “Therapy,” she said. Illustrated it. Stick figures. Us. Bear. No bad men.

THE NEXT STORY Kira It’s New Year’s Eve, and in just a couple hours, this miserable, sexless year will finally die. Twelve months. No sex. No close calls. Not even a halfway decent kiss. Just me, my vibrator, and the hollow kind of ache that doesn’t go away no matter how many times you take the edge off alone. It’s not like I’ve been holding out for candlelight and grand gestures. I just want someone to take control, to ruin me in a way that doesn’t ask permission or apologize afterward.

LENA I did not sleep and it wasn’t because I didn’t try. Goddess knows I tried very hard, I closed my eyes, turned onto my left side, then my right, then onto my back, then back to my left again as if changing positions might somehow trick my brain into shutting down. It did not. Because apparently being told that someone had poisoned your dessert was not the kind of information a person could simply hear and then sleep peacefully through. Who knew? By the time dawn finally crept through the curtains, I had managed perhaps ten minutes of actual rest and even that had been interrupted by dreams involving tarts, knives and Kael glaring at me while I died in an extremely inconvenient manner.

But NOOOOOOOO! I woke up still on the sofa in the animal shelter’s staff room, cold and exhausted. I woke up with an almighty bitch of a headache… I needed full-fat coke and Mc Donald’s chips… That had always been my hangover cure… I woke up hearing their conversation and their need to talk to me. Oh, and let’s not forget that Alpha shit! For… Fucks… Sake… How long can I pretend I’m asleep for? Could I sneak out? “Millieeee…Wake up Millie…” One of them tapped my face in an attempt to wake me from my ‘beauty sleep’.

I stared at the impossibly beautiful man standing at the foot of my bed, my heart slamming against my ribs like a trapped bird. The rain continued its steady rhythm against the window, but the room felt hotter, thicker, charged with something ancient and electric. “Get out,” I whispered, voice shaking. I clutched the sheets tighter to my chest. “Leave my apartment and never come back. Whatever you are — hallucination, dream, whatever — just go.” Tah’s golden eyes softened with amusement rather than anger. He tilted his head, long black hair sliding over one powerful shoulder. “No,” he said simply, the single word resonating through my bones like a caress.

They just lay dormant, waiting for someone to wake them. Tonight, they would wake. “I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Grace whispered, her voice barely audible over the crackling of the fire they’d built in a small clearing. “Just think of it as a challenge,” Travis said, grinning as he passed her a flask. “We spend one night in the woods, come out, and we’ll be legends. Everyone will want to know us. They’ll be talking about us for years.” Grace rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t help but smile. Travis always knew how to make things sound like an adventure.

Cole sent me a text around 9pm. At the library till midnight. Don't wait up. Adrian might stop by to grab my hoodie. I stared at the message for longer than necessary then tossed my phone face down on the bed. Adrian might stop by. Well that's fine. It's cool. Completely fine. I lasted about twenty minutes trying to watch something on my laptop before giving up entirely. I couldn't focus or sit still. I showered. Changed into just my sweatpants. Told myself I was going to sleep early like a responsible person.

" With every word I uttered, his face paled. He seized me by the shoulders and shook me in shocked disbelief. "You're only saying something so cruel because you're still mad at me, right, Shana? "It's all because of Elise—that bitch! She dosed me with an aphrodisiac and took pornographic videos of me. I was afraid that you'd be mad at me if you knew, so I pretended to love her. "I kept everything from you because I was afraid that you wouldn't want me, Shana," he pleaded. "You'll understand that, won't you?"

Next morning Vanessa’s apartment. “So did you have a great time?” Megan groaned in satisfaction and smiled, “How can a man be so handsome and so good in bed at the same time? How on earth is that possible?” Pouring a glass of juice for herself, Vanessa chuckled, “I can say that you had a really amazing time.”

I'm quiet because I actually feel guilty about all of this, I feel like I would have been able to do something. “No, that's not it, mom. I'm not scared of the news, and I will not get any nightmares,” I say and mom smiles. “Goodnight honey!” mom says and I wave, “Goodnight mom,” I say. She flips my light switch off and darkness floods the entire room. I turn off my phone and now I'm in absolute darkness, the kind of darkness where I can't even tell whether I'm lying or standing. After a few seconds of counting sheep, I fade. into my subconscious, gradually.