Sleep Walking

"Why do you have such black eyes? Didn't you get any sleep last night?" Luke asked Mikel while there were walking to the school.

After his first cigarette, the nicotine rush that he got make him unable to sleep and he ended up thinking about all the thing that happened.

Thoughts of his encounter with Luke and that Seer, his family, his mother, his future and Luke's, the part about being 'enemy' were popping up like mushrooms after the rain.

Once he thought about them, he couldn't stop thinking of them until he saw the ray of light entering his room indicating that it was already dawn.

"I got bad dream last night and I couldn't sleep" Mikel lied with straight face.

"What do you think we should do to earn more money?" Luke asked.

"Repair sh*ts like you always do" Mikel said uninterested.

"What if we create something original" Luke said, his eyes lit up.

"Just stop it. The time you finished, that U thingy would already be gone" Mikel words were like a splash of cold water that extinguished his dream.

After the incident at Ling's party, they agreed that ,no matter what circumstances they were in, they wouldn't say the name of that thing Luke wanted to acquire.

"Steal some money?" Mikel proposed an idea.

"Don't talk nonsense" Luke rejected immediately.

"Ask from Gram or your Uncle?" Mikel proposed another one.

"Do you really think before you speak? It was even more impossible than stealing.

Both of our family are broke, remember?

Otherwise why would we lived in that kind of a place." Luke looked at Mikel in disbelieved.

Mikel looked at Luke deeply but he still stayed silent.

He thought that there was a reason for his mother to come to this place which was his grandfather's action in the past that made everyone target them.

But what about Luke's family?

They seemed decent and their bearings didn't belong to these places.

Especially that uncle of him.

Everyone saw him as an disappointment thinking that they were superior to him and normally he would ignored them in his old chair while he himself was sleeping.

But there was one night when Mikel had a sleepover at Luke's and what he saw had etched deeply in his mind.

He went to the bathroom in the middle of that night and he was on his way to Luke's room when he heard Luke's uncle shouted,

"If I knew you would do that, I would have killed you, you piece of sh*t" which didn't frightened him much because he was briefed by Luke before that such things would happened.

But he didn't know better.

He pushed the door open just a little to see what's going on and there, he saw an unbelievable scene.

Luke's Uncle got up from his favorite chair as if he had two legs and as if they both sprang up at the same time.

He was, now, standing on his one leg with his eyes opened and started walking toward the door like he had an invisible leg supporting his body to move like a 2-legged human.

The scene gave him a goosebumps at that instant and he tried to look up so he wouldn't have to see the scene again but Luke's uncle just stopped there.

When Mikel looked up at Luke's uncle, eyes to eyes, he froze.

Just a gaze alone immobilized him completely.

Sweat drenched his monster-patterned pajamas making it cling to his skin a little.

The second Mikel's eyes met that cold and murderous gaze, Mikel felt like he wasn't in Luke's house anymore but some inter-continental battlefields.

He felt like if Luke's uncle took another step forward something similar to what appeared in his vision would happened and he would lost consciousness forever, without him even knowing.

The next thing Mikel remembered was that he was woken up by Gram asking why was he sleeping in the hallway and after a bit of talks, all of us concluded that he was just sleep walking.

Actually, Mikel thought so too and had been keeping this matter in the back of his head since then as he thought that it was all a dream.

Who could walk like that and even hallucinate someone with just a gaze?

That's the most illogical thing that he could think of and nobody's gonna believe him including Luke.

However, with all the strange things going on, this event emerged in his mind again and he couldn't get rid of them no matter what.

What if Luke's house wasn't that simple either and they were hiding something or 'from' something like he and his mother.

Mikel came back to his sense and shook his head.

'These are all speculations and couldn't be proved no matter what I do.

But if there is really something going on, this peaceful façade would break down with a single poke and I feel that it is going to happen sooner than later'

Mikel thought

He stopped daydreaming and brought out a cigarette, lit it up and puffed in.

Luke looked on in surprised mix with disbelieved.

"What the h*ll are you doing?" Luke said while he hurriedly snatched it from Mikel's mouth and threw it to the ground.

Before Mikel could say anything, Luke's feet stomped on the newly lit cigarettes.

"What the h*ll are you doing, Luke?

Do you know how hard it is to get a loosie these days" Mikel looked at Luke, screaming at him.

"You should answer me first, Mikel, what the h*ll are you doing?" Luke stopped walking and stared at Mikel.

"I am a grown up now.

I can choose how to live my life" Mikel said uninterested while squatting on the ground and picked up the flattened cigarette seeing if it could still be smoked.

"There are many choices that you could make.

Why don't you start with sports? or books? or may be a weird conspiracy theory?

A cigarette?

Are you out of your godd*mn mind?" Luke said, half shouted.

Mikel just looked at the cigarette and didn't pay Luke any attention.

Luke sighed.

"Whatever. We are in an apocalypse anyway, so breathing might be even more carcinogenic if we took everything into considerations" Luke said without care and walked ahead.

Mikel stood up smiling and followed Luke as he knew that this was how Luke was.

Accepting everything that Mikel chose and stay with him till the end.

"You know maybe we could sell some loosies to the student who wanted to buy a cigarette but couldn't as the underage cannot buy a pack of cigs" Mikel said

"We are also underaged" Luke looked at Mikel like he was the stupidest person he had ever met.

"It's coming though"

"What's coming?" Luke asked curious.

"Your birthday"