The City That Always Sleeps
Citizens of Callan need something to save them from their inability to wake up.
“Get down on the ground!” Callan Police Chief, Norman Ryder shouts at the woker who isn’t at all interested in getting down on the ground. Chief can tell this guy is high on his own supply as his body and head bounce around like a squirrel weaving through sedans on a busy road.
These dealers have plagued the city of Callan for weeks now, offering a drug called “woke” that gives users just enough energy to get through their 9-to-5 before they need more to balance their work-life balance. The wokers exist to supply the woke everyone wants. Everyone wants woke because for some reason, no one can wake up.
Chief Ryder has been as addicted to stopping these dealers as the users are to the drug. He’s had 20% of his boys in blue quit the force because they can’t stay awake without staying woke. I’d tell you the percentage of girls in blue that have quit, but “girls in blue” just doesn’t sound as cool as “boys in blue.” Sexist? Sure. Is that my fault or a systemic issue though?
Ryder stretches his beefy arms out to his sides as a barricade for the officers following him on the chase as the offender runs into an abandoned warehouse.
“Boston, Rivers, you two go around back,” Ryder said with the look of a man who’s found the fight he’s been looking for. “I’m going in.”
“Should we call for backup, Chief?” Officer Rivers asks, setting Ryder up to look like a badass.
“The only backup I need is for these dang wokers to back up out of my city.”
Not the most badass thing to say, I know. Ryder is a badass, I swear, but he’s not the best at saying badass things. What makes him a badass is even if he had known beforehand he was going to get stabbed as soon as he set foot in the warehouse, he’d still run in.
Ryder lets out a noise one can only make if they’re very concerned with how manly their scream sounds. Imagine the noise Frankenstein’s monster would make if it were abruptly stabbed after running full speed into a warehouse maniacally hunting an enemy.
“Sweet dreams, Chief,” the woker says as he hoists his knife up before delivering the fatal blow.
CRASH
Exploding into the warehouse like a missile heading straight for the stunned drug-dealer is Alpha Girl, Callan’s guardian angel.
Her golden illuminating hair flows behind the flying heroine like the tail of a comet. The light shining from her eyes flashes through colors like police car lights, except instead of red and blue, her eyes flash through colors that look like how it’d feel to be Spider-Man lifting Mjolnir while wearing the Infinity Gauntlet.
The woker doesn’t stand a chance. Moving so fast that time appears to almost completely stop around her, all Alpha Girl has to do is touch his chest with the tip of her finger as she floats by his body.
BAM
“Looks like you caught another woker, Chief,” Alpha Girl says to Ryder like a dad congratulating his son who he just let win in driveway basketball. “Nice work!”
“I had him right where I wanted him!” Ryder lies as he tries and fails to get to his feet.
Alpha Girl reaches her open palm down toward Chief and what looks like rainbow sunlight radiates from her hand and shines on the ailing chief, easing his pain.
“That should make your trip to the hospital a bit more pleasant,” Alpha Girl assures her friend.
AAaagGHhh
The criminal is coming down hard off woke. He must have taken a massive dose. Alpha Girl zooms over to help before it’s too late. When she touches his skin his body melts as his agony subsides. His body doesn’t literally melt. Alpha Girl doesn’t have the ability to melt people. Not that she’d want to. She’s a good guy.
“I know you don’t want to be doing this, Alex,” Alpha Girl says to the drug-dealer, who hasn’t introduced himself. “So tell me who’s putting you guys up to this.”
At this, Alex turns to Alpha Girl and tears drip from his eyes like a faucet you keep on to avoid freezing pipes. Suddenly, Alpha Girl’s healing abilities aren’t strong enough to keep Alex awake.
“You’ll have some company on your way to the hospital, Chief,” Alpha Girl stares at Alex sleeping like a baby would stare at their parents who just removed a ball from existence by hiding it behind their back.
Ryder manages to slowly but surely get to his feet.
“You sure you don’t wanna leave him here?” he asks bitterly knowing Alpha Girl doesn’t see criminals the way he does.
“I didn’t leave you passed out with injuries when we first met, did I?” she responds calmly, conversationally checkmating her friend.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Ryder dismisses the conversation to avoid thinking about his past. “So your healing abilities don’t work on woke?”
Alpha Girl scans her palm like a rover searching for signs of life on another planet.
“Woke’s not just any drug,” Alpha Girl says when she gives up trying to find an answer other than the one she knows is the truth. “This is the work of Hypernator’s power.”
“Hypern…” Ryder begins before letting out the kind of yawn you’d expect to come from Winnie The Pooh post-honey-binge. “Hypernat…hyp…hypernator…”
z z Z z Z Z z Z
Alpha Girl catches Ryder as he suddenly falls fast asleep. As she sets him down, a creature materializes in the moonlight shining through the windows of the warehouse. A gray bear wearing a nightgown and nightcap that are made of the night sky stretches and yawns as if he’s just woken from a nap.
“Hypernator,” Alpha Girl confronts her enemy. “I should’ve known it was you. Why are you doing this?”
“Callan is tired, Alpha Girl,” Hypernator spoke with the soft, warm voice of a nostalgic Christmas movie narrator. “The people of this city need rest but refuse to admit it. I’m doing what must be done for Callanians to prosper.”
“What about woke, then?”
“Woke is a tool,” Hypernator explains like a partisan politician explaining their platform during a debate. “It was designed to exploit the user’s lack of energy. Make them realize just how much they lacked. So that they would rest. This is hardly something you or anyone else should be concerned with.”
Alpha Girl slowly turns toward each of the sleeping Hypernator-controlled Callanians she’s sworn to protect, then faces her enemy.
She begins to power up. Her hair illuminates and waves in the wind created from her energy. Her eyes begin to glow all the colors of love, sacrifice and courage.
FWOOSH
She lunges toward Hypernator. She’s far too fast for him to dodge, so he lets her run right into him. Literally. Alpha Girl goes inside Hypernator’s nightgown as if she was actually flying into the night sky. When she comes out from the other side behind Hypernator, they’re no longer at the warehouse but in the middle of downtown Callan. She looks around to find all the citizens’ sleeping.
“You can rapidly punch me as hard as you can with your super speed and strength,” Hypernator lectures Alpha Girl. “It won’t save these people from their real enemy: their unnatural desire to stay awake and stay busy, their fear of missing out. It’s not healthy. You’re their defender. Defend them from themselves.”
Alpha Girl’s heart breaks as she looks around and sees the people of the city she fell in love with dragging themselves around like ragdolls. Hypernator’s right about her powers not being the optimal defense against him. She’s almost ready to give up when she sees a familiar image floating in Hypernator’s nightgown.
Billy O’Reilly is the owner of Callan’s oldest bar, O'Reilly's. That wasn’t the name of the business when Billy first opened it, and it’s not the official name of the business today. It’s just what everyone calls it. It sits in the center of downtown, the center of the city. It’s where every Callanian knows they can go when they don’t necessarily want to talk to someone but they want to be in the presence of someone they know cares. That’s Billy O’Reilly.
That kind of spirit doesn’t come from a guy in good shape. It comes from a guy with a recognizable shape. Angel Girl, and any Callanian for that matter, would recognize his beer belly drooping over his waist from a mile away.
“Billy!” Alpha Girl calls out toward the bar owner floating in the night-sky space created by this sentient bear obsessed with sleep.
Billy began to toss and turn as he floated like a baby in the womb. Alpha Girl looked down toward O’Reilly’s to see Billy passed-out belly-up on top of the bar tossing and turning just like the floaty-Billy was doing.
A lightbulb went off in Alpha Girl’s head, and she shot toward Hypernator like a rocket. Once she floated by Billy in the nightgown pocket dimension, she grabbed his face and shook it to wake him up.
“No more work…” Billy mumbled incoherently as he rolled around fighting to continue sleeping. “Selling the bar…early retirement…”
“Selling the bar?!”
“Buyers from out of…out of town…” Billy continues to sleeptalk. “Need a break…working too much…tired…so tired…”
Alpha Girl closed her eyes. Her hair dimmed and fell. She made herself so calm that everything around her felt obligated to pause. She searched within her heart for the connection she has to each Callanian until she found Billy and spoke to him spiritually.
“Billy, I know you have a lot on your plate at the bar. This city is full of people willing to help you though. If you do choose to sell the bar, the city will support you in that as well. But either way, you need to wake up. You are too important to this city to sleep your life away…
“WAKE UP!”
“GO SOX!” Billy shouted in a way that sounded like triumph and desperation were tug-of-war-ing his tone just before disappearing from the sleep dimension as he was ripped from his deep sleep. Alpha Girl’s shocked shout carried enough power to jolt him out of his sleep and make him so alert you’d think he just downed 10 shots of espresso.
Alpha Girl looked around at all the Callanians Hypernator had under his control within this domain. She flew from person to person like a bumblebee gathering pollen, waking up each sleepyhead one-by-one after telling each of them how important they are to the city. Of all the vague overpowered powers Alpha Girl possesses, her ability to encourage others might be the most powerful.
Back in Downtown, Hypernator boiled as he saw all the Callanians returning to their bodies free from his influence. He took off his nightgown, exposing his bear butt to all of downtown, turned it inside out (the nightgown, not his bear butt) and threw it on top of his head so he looked like a poor kid whose parents told him throwing a sheet over his head made him a ghost on Halloween.
As Alpha Girl was heading to Chief Ryder in the sleep dimension, Hypernator materialized wearing only his nightcap.
“You’re in my house now, Alpha Girl,” the villain proclaimed arrogantly. “And when you’re under my roof, you’re under my rules. And rule #1 is don’t stay up past bedtime!”
Hypernator summoned dimension-ripping ninja-stars shaped like Z’s and flicked them at Alpha Girl. After dodging each one, Alpha Girl turned around to see the flying Z’s had punctured the fabric of the dimension’s reality and opened a hole to another dimension. Stampeding through the wormhole were flying sheep with numbers branded on their side.
As the sheep charged toward Alpha Girl, she concentrated on her connection to Ryder.
“Chief, I need you to wake up. You can’t save the city in your sleep.”
“YOLO!” Chief cheered as he woke while floating in the sleep dimension. He must have been dreaming of something from his past.
He saw Alpha Girl about to be trampled by the sheep and swam toward her. He swam so fast he genuinely thought about quitting the force to pursue becoming the next Usain Phelps.
“Don’t worry about me,” Alpha Girl told Chief through their spiritual connection comms system. “Wake up Hypernator.”
Hypernator was watching in satisfaction as his sheep were about to crush his enemy when Chief Ryder tazed him from behind, shocking the bear awake.
When Hypernator woke suddenly in the middle of downtown, he flailed inside his nightgown like he was suffocating. When he finally got out of it, he was followed by Chief Ryder and Alpha Girl crawling out from under it.
In this dimension, and with no magical nightgown, Hypernator was no match for Alpha Girl. She grabbed him by the ear and flew him to the Callan Police Department like a mom dragging her misbehaving son through McDonald’s, draining all his energy on the way.
“You think this was bad?” Hypernator said as Alpha Girl threw his chained body in a cell. “Callan’s got bigger things to worry about than being put to sleep.”
If you’re anything like me, you sometimes have trouble motivating yourself to get up and be productive with your time instead of sleeping as long as you can.
Ultimately I feel better when I force myself to get up and take time in the morning to do something my busy life might not allow me to do later like write, jog or read.
I wrote this story to express how I’ve battled oversleeping and hopefully help others fighting the same battle.
Alpha Girl would tell us how much the world needs us to not waste any time oversleeping when we could be doing the things that make life worth living.
If Hypernator has someone in your life trapped in his nightgown, share this story with them.
“How about another, Chief?” Billy offers Ryder from behind the bar that’s packed with Callanians who refuse to go to sleep in celebration of another Alpha Girl victory for their city.
As Chief Ryder declines the offer, a man in the middle of middle-aged and old steps up to the bar wearing a white suit with navy pinstripes holding a tan briefcase.
“Mr. O’Reilly,” the man says with no emotion in his voice but an effortless smile on his face. “I’m sorry things didn’t work out for you and the prospective buyers I introduced you to. I must say Callan wouldn’t be the same without Billy O’Reilly owning O’Reilly’s.”
Ryder peers at the man as he holds his hand out for Billy to shake.
“I don’t know who I was kidding,” Billy says as he grabs the man’s hand and tries to give him a nice casual loose handshake. “I could never sell this place. What are you drinking?”
“Water,” the man replies as he forces Billy to firmly shake his hand before he lets go. “I have to get up early in the morning.”
Who is this mystery man, and what’s he doing in Callan?
Find out as Alpha Girl’s adventures continue every other week!
Love the message and characters. Something very familiar about them ❤️
This story has such a great hidden message! Love the personality put into it as well.