The Man Who Never Sleeps

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You might think he's an assasin or a serial killer. But Michael Reed is not such a man.

Michael Reed is an accountant, and during his second shift he's a manager of a local 7/11, but to many people he represents the next step in evolution.

"I don't need cofffee, I don't take any drugs, this is just the way I am, ever since I was born."

Michael Reed has never slept a day in his life. Ever since he was a baby he's been wide awake, never needing to close his eyes or rest his head on the cold side of a pillow.

"I always think it's kind of odd, that everyone needs to close their eyes and lie down several hours out of the day. Seems a bit of a waste really. I tried it myself a few times, I always kind of got unnerved. After a while I just feel like i need to move around."

I'm highly skeptical. There are people who are known as "short sleepers" who need less than 7 hours of sleep...or rather, have difficulty sleeping more than 7 hours a night simply due to the fact that they need so little sleep (they are the up beat, optimistic, thin, energetic over achievers that most people envy and hate). There are people with something called a chiari malformation who have severe insomnia but they lose the ability to function normally because of the lack of sleep, and there are few people with brain damage that causes them to require little sleep, and a small number of individuals with a prion disease called familial insomnia who linger in a twilight for a few months after the onset and then die from the condition, but I doubt anyone who claims they don't ever sleep and go about their business with no ill effects.

It's likely they are getting microsleeps, or fall asleep and don't realize it.

It's a fictional peice, though it does seem somewhat plausible. This is just my latest addition to my toolbox of characters.

I write character peices like this, for instance Lady Bartlebee, who grows her entire life in the span of a day, and gives birth to herself to start the cycle over again.

The man who eats everything. A dim-witted country man who just started putting various objects, plants, bugs, etc. into his mouth.

Jackson Meigs was more a peice about how to write a character, you never get the words of the actual character himself but you have a bunch of people telling the impression about the person.

That's actually quite good style wise.

It reads like a dumb little piece of odd news from the AP.

^

Before he said it was fiction I actually thought it sounded like some online news article or something. I was thinking to myself "this sounds like some guy making s**t up on the internet".

It's not bad for a start I think.

I bet a lot of people kind of wish they had more hours in the day. I'm not quite sure what there is to do. What would someone like that do when they got tired though? Sit on the couch for a bit? Sleep or no sleep, noone has an infinite amount of energy.

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Also wtf she gives birth to herself? Like a perfect clone or something? Does she deliver it herself? OMG what a mess.

She dies while simultaneously while giving birth, it's not quite a clone, she remembers everything that happened from the day before. She wakes up at around the age of eleven. then she's left with her old body, which she uses as compost for her garden. Tourist onlookers often call the police on her when they look out their window at the Rossette Inn and see a little girl feeding an old lady's body into a woodchipper.

Interesting. Do you write these as children's stories? I used to read a series called Mrs.Piggle Wiggle which I enjoyed at the time and still think they are wonderful books.

not really, most of what I write is just stuff I think up in my spare time. They are usually very short, more like story ideas rather than stories themselves. I have never read Mrs.Piggle Wiggle.

Both of those things are very much edible.

^

That's just the beginning!