The Sleep Stealers’ Support Group

by Hannah Ascough

When Liddie can’t sleep, she lets her mind sand down the corners of her room. She watches videos on her phone, reads books, dances to music. She looks out the window and thinks of the night as an expansive beach.

At the meeting, the group decries screens and headphones at night. They sit on fold-out chairs under low lighting and talk instead about warm milk with honey, guilt and its discontents, white noise and apps that tell your mind to drift so far that it’s already morning, and you’ve forgotten that you couldn’t sleep.

Liddie thinks it’s pointless.

She goes to these meetings because Fiona would curse her out, knock down her door if she didn’t. Fiona says Liddie needs the group so she can cope in healthy ways.

Fiona is a different person with the group. She smiles beatifically, nods, affirms the circle. Liddie, on the other hand, shreds paper cups between her fingers and slouches in her chair. She rolls her eyes a lot.

People are confessing now. Someone is crying, saying they just wanted to sleep. They didn’t mean to do it. Liddie groans.

Beside her, Fiona is nodding earnestly. “We’ve all been there,” she says. “We’ve all wanted to sleep that badly.” She speaks gently, like she measured the words before pouring them into an hourglass.

Liddie met Fiona months ago when she went out dancing. Liddie had said, “I like your eyes,” and she’d meant it, watching how the bar lights got caught in the deep pools under Fiona’s dark lashes. Fiona had grinned, then taken her home.

In sex they kept dancing, and Liddie had ignored how tired she was because the lines of their bodies intersecting felt sure, and she had thrown her head back to laugh.

Afterwards, Liddie had watched Fiona fall asleep. She hadn’t meant to, at first, but she’d been jealous. She put a hand on Fiona’s back.

Fiona had sat up immediately. “I’m taking you to a meeting,” she snapped.

Later, Liddie had pointed out, “To be fair, you were also not asleep.” To which Fiona had given her the middle finger.

But that first night, she’d let Fiona drag her to a meeting with fold-out chairs and talk of shame like mint tea. Liddie had hated it.

She looks around now. The sun is rising, slatted light dulling the edges of the room. Fiona wishes everyone a wonderful day. Liddie has flaked the cup in her hand into pieces. Her eyelid twitches. She greets it like a friend.

* * *

When Liddie still can’t sleep, the hard lines of her mind shatter into a fragile rage. Anger threatens to leave her panting and awake, buried in pieces, up to her eyes in a duvet. She imagines smothering whoever is asleep next to her. She hates that they could sleep right through it.

In an effort to be vulnerable, Liddie says as much at the next meeting. “When you think about it,” she says conversationally, “it’s not even a painful death. I pinched some guy’s nose the other night so he’d stop snoring. He didn’t wake up.”

People are leaning in. Some are even nodding. Deep holes under dark eyes seem to get bigger. Liddie feels vindicated.

“What is wrong with you?” Fiona hisses. She clears her throat and smiles at the circle. “Liddie has brought up a great point,” she says loudly. “In this group, we need to keep each other honest and ask: what do we do with our rage?”

Liddie sees some of the smiles sand down into resignation, as people fall back into their chairs.

Fiona goes on. “Think of your anger like a sandbag in a hot air balloon. You can fly only when you let the sand out.”

Liddie snorts quietly: Fiona and her metaphors. Still, she stares captivated as the circles under Fiona’s eyes sieve the low light, cast shadows onto her smile.

“A therapist told me,” someone says, “that you should imagine your limbs liked to be filled with sand.”

Liddie’s head snaps up. She stops staring at Fiona.

“You start with your feet and imagine sand draining into the mattress. Then you can’t move them. It’s supposed to relax you. Help you sleep.”

“Exactly,” Fiona nods. “We drain our rage, so we can sleep. We can fall into serenity.”

The circle is nodding, leaning forward again. Someone else brings up tea, but Liddie just wants to scream. Her heart feels loud. She scatters the remnants of the paper cup under chair.

“Not my thing,” she says and walks out.

“You’ll regret it,” Fiona calls out. Liddie ignores her.

* * *

When Liddie hasn’t slept for too many nights, the sunlight makes her dizzy. It dries her out, bounces between her twitching eyelids. She dances in her room long after the bars have closed. Her heart’s quick rhythm beats her across the floor. She convinces herself that only in the dark do her edges stay intact.

She doesn’t return to the meetings. She doesn’t want to see Fiona’s disappointed face. She doesn’t want to get siphoned into that sieve under her eyes again.

Still, she’s worried about her twitching eyelid. Liddie’s not sure she wants it to stop, but she’s freaking people out, so tonight, she’s at some guy’s house. He’s asleep next to her, snoring loudly.

Liddie thinks snoring is a privilege. It fills her with rage.

“It’s like saying that you never self-reflect, to the whole room,” she had told Fiona.

Fiona had stared. “It’s a medical problem.”

Liddie still maintains it’s an unfair freedom, though, a tryst with the immobility of sleep that only few can access.

Now, this man’s snoring is scraping her sides. Liddie wants to hit him with a pillow. Instead, she puts a hand on his back. She closes her eyes, imagines his peace like a wide vista. She breathes in, draws his sunny seascape, his exhaled waves, around her with the duvet. She sculpts a statue of herself from the sand dunes. It has her face. It will watch over her. She blankets it in darkness as everything except her hand on his back slowly falls away.

“How did you sleep?” she asks the next morning.

The guy groans. The sunlight seems to burn the skin under his eyes. “Terribly,” he mutters, holding his head.

“I’ve been there,” she nods. She lets the light warm her face. She doesn’t worry it will dry her out. She says no to a second cup of coffee and leaves the wrong number behind. She’s so energized, she goes to the gym.

It’s only five sleep thefts later that she runs into Fiona at the grocery store.

“You seem well-rested,” Fiona says suspiciously.

“Mint tea,” Liddie shrugs.

Fiona leans in. “What you’re doing is immoral, and you know it.”

Liddie glares at her. “Like you weren’t going to steal sleep from me the night we met.”

Fiona steps back, affronted. “At least I’m trying to get a handle on myself,” she spits out.

“I thought we were all on our own journeys,” Liddie mocks. Her sharpness sands down her ears, and she tries to hide her wince.

Fiona sees it anyway. “Come back to the group,” she says, carefully now. She always speaks with care, even when she’s angry.

Measured for an hourglass, Liddie remembers. She could love her for this care. For a moment, she considers going back. Paper cups and fold-out chairs. Draining into a mattress. She shakes her head instead. “I need the sleep.” She leaves Fiona behind.

* * *

Whenever Liddie finally falls into her own sleep, she dreams about the statue she makes of herself from other people’s sleep. She watches it sift and blow away. She always screams and wakes up crying, running her hands across the hard lines of her chest and down her legs. She’s careful with her tears; water erodes edges.

Stealing sleep is difficult. It doesn’t always work. Flailing limbs and sleep talkers pull at Liddie’s concentration, and even as she fills up with rage, she gives up on those nights. Her heart pounds too hard.

Still, she keeps at it. She goes to bars, swipes the apps, asks people out on dates. She lies back against unfamiliar pillows and siphons sleep slowly until she’s buried in it. She rips across her weeks like a sandstorm. She joins another class at the gym.

She doesn’t, however, see Fiona, though she looks for her in every date she goes on. Sometimes, Liddie finds herself wishing that Fiona really would bang down her door and drag her to a meeting. But it would ring too much of saviourism, and even Fiona wouldn’t do that.

One night when she can’t sleep, Liddie thinks: “Loneliness is an insomniac.” She’s not sure what it means. Her mind cuts strangely when she’s tired.

She likes the idea that Fiona might curse her out, though, if she showed up, and it’s that daydream that finally pulls Liddie to a meeting.

The group is all there, sunken stares and hazy yawns like rituals. Liddie sits across from Fiona, who raises an eyebrow.

The circle is talking about guided meditation again. They’re comparing sleep tips. Masturbate. Write. Tape your hands together so you can’t touch someone else’s back. Liddie rolls her eyes, but she doesn’t want to leave.

Fiona glares at her. “Liddie,” Fiona says loudly, cutting the conversation off, “anything you’d like to share?”

Liddie thinks about the backs she’s touched, the thieving she’s done, siphoned it all into her mind, leaving behind now-tired strangers with circled eyes and ringing headaches, strangers were privileged enough to tryst with sleep. She tries to feel sorry.

“I stole a lot of sleep this month,” she acknowledges. The group leans in. She hesitates, stares at Fiona.

“Look,” Liddie finally says, “I’m not sure what to say. We all want to promise we won’t do it again. We all know how hard it is not to sleep.” She pauses and her voice cracks. “But it’s hard, too, to forget what you lived through when you were asleep.”

She sees people nodding. Someone is crying. She stops listening to the group even as they agree. Her shredded paper cup coats her legs like fine sand. She stands and shakes it off.

“Are you coming?” she asks Fiona pointedly.

Fiona crosses her arms. “I’m still mad.”

Liddie nods. She loves her for it. She’d hate if she’d said anything else. “Go for coffee with me anyway?”

“Obviously,” Fiona snaps and leads her out the door.

At the coffee shop, Liddie is suddenly nervous. She wishes she could draw someone else’s sleep around her.

“I can’t be a bag of sand,” she starts.

Fiona nods.

Liddie thinks about the statue of herself she makes from other people’s sleep. She worries about its edges all the time. She worries they will drift away. These worries wake her up even from stolen sleep.

“I used to sleep like I had been drained,” she tells Fiona. Her face feels dry with the slatted light coming through the window. “I saw beaches in my dreams. I could sleep through anything.”

“So what happened,” Fiona asks, “when you were asleep?”

“Everything,” Liddie says, hands shaking, heart pounding. “Sand washes away. It has no form, it can’t move. So, everything happened when I was asleep.”

They’re silent for a moment. Liddie can’t picture her statue. She touches her face, can’t feel her hard lines. Can you erode in a coffee shop?

Then Fiona looks at her carefully. “Someone stole sleep from me once.”

Liddie looks at her, unsurprised. “A sleep siphoner?” she finally asks.

“No,” Fiona says, “I could have forgiven that.” She doesn’t say anything else. Liddie grabs her hand.

“You know,” Fiona says, after a while, “they add coarse sand to concrete to strengthen it.”

“Really?” Liddie asks. Her mouth twitches. Fiona and her metaphors.

Fiona grins and shrugs.

They sit there for a long time, the firm lines of their palms intersecting into something gritty and sure. Then they get up and go to Liddie’s house. They let night come to them in gusts and waves. They lie back together. They don’t sleep.