Still Awake

Still Awake

                The ship rocked softly as the waves made it bob up and down. Starla wriggled around in her hammock like a bug, swapping to her other side. She flexed her released arm, feeling it tingle as feeling returned to it.

                That was the way she slept most of the time. Wake up every hour or so to a numb arm then rotate and let feeling return while she drifted back to sleep. The numbness probably wasn't a good thing, but there didn't seem to be any lasting effects.

                Her hope that sleeping in a hammock would help was dashed on the first night of the voyage. She'd laid flat on her back and woken around midnight with both arms numb - it was a somewhat worrying experience. Sitting up and poking each arm with the other until both could feel again had been odd to do.

                Ten days into the voyage, ten nights of rolling side to side every hour. She was surprised she managed to dream. Someone had explained to her once that she wasn't really waking up when she turned; she only remembered it because her brain was 'a little weird'.

                It wasn't the only thing a little weird about Starla. She'd died about half a dozen times in her life. Not permanently, of course. It was an odd ability her family had: when near death, their body would completely shut down for ten or so minutes. Completely-completely - no pulse, brain activity, or anything. It was a small miracle that there was no brain damage.

                Not many people knew about their ability outside the family. Even within their family, only those directly related to someone who had it knew. For example Starla's mum had been told after marrying her dad, whereas the kids of her dad's sister had no idea (their mum didn't have the ability).

                Starla was the weird case, the one who had relied on the ability more times than most. When she was very young she had been in an accident. Her brothers and their friends had been playing around with the lawn mower and she chose a very bad time to walk in. The scars from that covered quite a bit of her body, but since she had instantly 'died' she'd lost very little blood - ten minutes was plenty to get her wrapped up like a mummy.

                The blood loss did still nearly kill her, though, and she died a couple more times that night. Her brothers and their friends got in a ton of trouble for it; but one kid stood out. Dwayne. When it turned out she was alive, he'd watched her for a bit. Somehow he'd known she'd been clinically dead.

                After she'd gone back to school Dwayne had watched her keenly for a couple of weeks. Then one day he just stopped. Starla was pretty sure his parents had talked to hers at some point, but it hadn't really made her wonder much back then. That was more or less the last she saw of Dwayne for a while - they were in different years and he ended up going to a different high school.

                Then, through a mutual friend, they'd ended up on the same holiday. Dwayne hadn't recognised her and Starla had decided it wasn't worth bringing up. 'Remember when you and my brothers cut me up really bad when I was seven?' would probably be weird, if not to Dwayne then to everyone else.

                But something horrible had happened on that trip. Monsters - something Starla was only vaguely aware of - tried to replace their group. Dwayne picked up on it when he came back from a walk to find himself already back from the walk

                It turned out that his family did monster hunting, so he was okay. But everyone else - Starla included - didn't have much hope. She almost got away, but the last of the creatures caught her just as she made it to the door. The wounds it inflicted caused her to die a little bit later.

                She woke up to Dwayne heaving her body inside. "Oi!" she said, then groaned. Her wounds were bleeding already - she'd die again soon. Maybe for good if Dwayne didn't patch her up.

                "What the fuck," said Dwayne, tossing her on the floor.

                "Ow!" she said. "You really don't remember me, do you?"

                "What?" said Dwayne.

                "When I was seven you saw me get cut up by a lawn mower," said Starla. "And then-"

                "You're Francesca?" said Dwayne. "I mean, I guess you-"

                "Yes!" said Starla. "I hate it so I've gone with my middle name since high school. Listen -" Starla coughed heavily, getting more blood on her clothes. "- bandage me up so I don't bleed out, okay? I'm about to go under again."

                Dwayne looked at her. "My parents did get yours to cough up what you are, or... What you can do, I guess, back then. So okay," he said.

                Then she died, again. She came back on a bed, tightly bandaged pretty much everywhere. Dwayne was watching her with his sword in hand. "Thanks," she muttered.

                "You probably don't want to move, although... You really haven't lost much blood. Some while you were dying but since then..." said Dwayne.

                "Yeah, it's how I stay alive," said Starla.

                "How the hell does your brain stay alive without oxygen?" asked Dwayne.

                "My dad says it's - oh crap," said Starla. She stopped a cough, the hocked up a bunch of blood. "I shouldn't talk. Apparently it shuts down completely, so no oxygen is needed. Don't know why everything comes back at once."

                Dwayne nodded, apparently satisfied. "I don't want to move you any further - and you're lucky we had a lot of bandages," he said. "Lu was always a bit worried about first aid."

                Starla frowned. "I - don't want to think about it. Not yet. I'm just - going to sleep for a bit," she said. "I'll be alright now that I've clotted."

                Dwayne nodded. "I'll keep an eye things," he said.

                "There are more?" asked Starla.

                "Maybe," said Dwayne. "Just be dead if they pop in, or something." He didn't catch Starla's eyeroll.

                Luckily, though, no more of the creatures had shown up. Dwayne's family had rocked up and checked things out. Apart from a couple living nearby, no-one else had been replaced. Dwayne had killed the couple's replacements right after he killed his double, apparently. Starla'd been too busy running away, although it did explain why Dwayne took a little while to show up.

                Nobody knew exactly what the creatures were, but that was pretty normal. Strange creatures fell into the world all the time; so where these ones had been before they emerged from the ocean was a mystery. After all that... Nothing much. Starla was asked to keep with a story Dwayne's family concocted about the house burning down. His conveniently placed relatives falsified the autopsies, and no-one suspected a thing.

                Starla knew, of course, and it hurt. She hadn't known all of them very well, but two - Ida and Mallory - had been her close friends. They never found their bodies; the coffins were filled with the burnt remains of the shapeshifters that had imitated them.

                Since then... She'd fallen into a rut. The holiday was right after she'd graduated university but she couldn't bring herself to apply to jobs, go to interviews, all of that, when she'd just lost two close friends. Getting a job and working had lost the little appeal it had. After a while she'd realised something: she wanted to stop stuff like that happening again, if she could. Pretending that the world was safe and free from horrifying things was stupid.

                Dwayne had suggested to her that her ability would be useful for the sort of things his relative handled. At the very least she could survive things that should kill her (well, some things). But having her return from the dead - that had 'serious potential'. When Starla realised what she wanted to do, she'd gotten in contact with Dwayne's relative.

                That was why she was on the boat, turning on her side every hour to prevent her limbs going numb. Thinking about her ability made her wonder if her limbs could survive without oxygen for extra time as well - especially since ten minutes wasn't the limit. When she or her family drowned they could stay waterlogged for hours; the one drowning death in the family hadn't been fished out for a couple of days. Between the mower and the monsters, Starla had drowned and been dead for an hour herself.

                It probably wasn't a good idea to test whether her limbs would survive. Knowing that there definitely wouldn't be any damage was good, though - if they were deprived long enough, her limb would probably just temporarily die.

                One day, I think I'll ask someone to study me, thought Starla. She wriggled a bit more in her hammock. Gotta get back to sleep, I need to be on the ball tomorrow when we get to port.

                Also quite luckily for her, she was easily able to. Her soft snores soon drifted through the hold. Tomorrow would be interesting.