Eleven Days

The record for a human staying awake was about eleven days. Ty's challenge was simple: stay awake for twelve days, by any means necessary.

I’ve never been  one to believe in ghost stories, and I still don’t. Tales of fearsome

creatures and morbid entities are all child’s play, the works of overactive imaginations and the constant craving some humans have for the occasional thrill. So when people ask me for ghost stories, I tell them the truth: I have none. And so instead, I tell them the story of Joseph Mcclaire.

Joe and I met in seventh grade, and made sure to stick around one another all the way up to tenth grade, where the story really begins. We weren’t anything special as far as best friends go, yet nowadays more than ever I often regret not ever treating him like the best friend he was; for not letting him know how much I appreciated his company. That said, I’m not particularly the guilt-ridden type either, and I especially don’t blame myself for what happened to Joe. At least, I try not to. But at the end of the day, what they all told me afterwards was true, it was a fault of Joey’s own decision.

That decision began on a sunny day in May in tenth grade. With the school year nearly over and the deluge of schoolwork steadily slowing down, boredom spread infectiously throughout the halls. This wasn’t normal boredom, however. It was the gnawing, persistent agony of having too much time and not a clue what to do with it. Naturally, solutions began presenting themselves. They ranged anywhere from book reading to house egging to finding summer jobs.

Joe, being one of the more adventurous types, somehow managed to find himself in the hands of one of the more unusual ways of passing the time. The challenge had been come up with by our peer, Tyron Gold, who’d become interested in breaking a world record ever since we met him in eighth grade. Each year around this time he’d come up with ways to defeat the looming threat of boredom, and this year was no different. This year, the record he was going to have us all break was that for the longest time without sleep.

The longest time a human has gone without sleep is about 11 days. Ty’s challenge was simple: by any means necessary, stay up for twelve days. He was eager to get anyone who was willing to join him. After all, the odds of breaking the record increased with the more people who attempted. In his mind, even if he couldn’t personally break the record, it was enough to at least be personally responsible for whoever did.

Looking back, I realize that only a few of us really believed we could come anywhere close to the record. For the majority of us, it was just a contest to see who could last the longest. But for those who were taking it seriously, like Ty or Joe, prepared like madmen. The challenge was to begin on the last day of school, about a month away. In that time, Joe stockpiled enough energy drinks, instant coffee, and movies to provide for an army. Ty and this girl named Jenna stuck to the 65 cent energy shots from the convenience store. The rest of us, including me, were going to just use willpower. And finally, the day came.

That first night was the easiest. We stayed up mostly texting each other, all taunting about who was going to win. The three real competitors didn’t even begin using their rations of caffeine that night. There were twelve of us doing the challenge, and only one fell asleep that first night. Richard lasted until about 3 in the morning before dozing off. For the rest of us, though, that first night was a piece of cake.

It wasn’t until about the third day that people really began dropping. By then Ty, Joe, and Jenna had all begun their caffeine binges, and there were only eight of us still left in the challenge, including me. The fourth night we were down to five. I was among those to fall asleep. The five left were Joe, Ty, Jenna, Emma, and Marshall. It was also around this time that they all began to really change.

Even by the third day, people had become walking nothings, just empty shells of people. On the fifth day, Emma and Marshall were the real life equivalent of the walking dead. Emma had a constant dreamy, lost look in her eyes, as well as, as she would tell me later, a persistent booming headache. Marshall was in no better condition. He struggled to walk in a straight line and every few seconds his head and eyes would droop heavily. Any attempt at speech from either of them came out as incomprehensible slurred muttering, soft mumbles from the brain that the tongue could not translate. Nor could anyone else, for that matter.

Needless to say, both of them did not last past that day. Marshall passed out on the swings while we were all hanging out at the park, while Emma admitted to drifting off at dinner that evening. So on day six, that left the Big Three, as we jokingly called them. Of course, we all knew it would be them from the start. Ty barely functioned, just barely staying afloat on energy shots. He’d gained a tolerance by that time, and it was increasingly difficult to even maintain normalcy. He didn’t last the night. Jenna, however, was functioning as though she hadn’t gone without sleep for the past six days. Being from the more well off side of town, she could afford to keep up with the quickly building tolerance. Her trouble came not with exhaustion, but illness. The world was constantly spinning, she later said, and she would often throw up. Her heart would race in her chest, and anxiety attacks were a constant looming threat. The seventh night, she fell asleep in her bed after an hour of heaving over the toilet.

That left Joe. And of them all, Joe was in the arguably worst position. We didn’t see him often, but he always made sure to shoot us texts to let us know he was still awake, and the occasional video to confirm it was really him doing the texting. After Jenna dropped, we all congratulated him with hearty laughs and high fives. But even then, the Joe we were friends with seemed to have vacated his body.

He was constantly trembling. He’d even go into small fits of uncontrollable shaking, which was usually accompanied by something too devastating to simply be called anxiety. On the eighth day we all expected him to let it go, to succumb to slumber. He’d won, after all. I even told him so. The news was greeted with a weak, quivering, pallid grin. He then whispered to me that he wanted to see how long he could go. I nodded, and he let out a small breathy laugh.

He was a mess by the ninth day. He had thick, baggy circles underlining his eyes, and the constant trembling hadn’t ceased. He also grew very paranoid, constantly wide-eyed and watching over his shoulder. It was at this point we all became very concerned, telling him that he really should stop. That, after all, it really was just a silly record, and that he had nothing to prove.

We tried. That’s really the most I can say for our efforts. Reflecting over the years I realized we could’ve called his mom or even the cops, anything that was necessary to stop Joe from tearing himself apart. But of course, either of those possibilities would have demanded that we take some responsibility for Joe’s actions(or perhaps blame Tyron, though we were all too loyal from our years together to do that), and it is fair enough to say that not even the most sadistic person in this world would want to be responsible for the way Joe was.

Like Jenna, he began to get sick  on the tenth day. So I did what I believed was the best possible effort that night, and convinced my mother to let me sleep over at his house. So on the night of day ten, I stood watch as Joe hurled in the bathroom. Midnight crept upon us, and Joe and I sat silently together, looking out the window. Joe was so quiet that I had to glance over every few minutes to make sure he was awake. He was, of course, his strained eyes lost in the window. I hadn’t noticed that he’d stopped shaking.

The silence bothered me, and seeing Joe was upsetting. I needed to know why he was still doing this. Why he was apparently killing himself for a record that no one had really expected him to break. Just as I opened my lips to ask, a sound escaped from his.

It was quiet the first time, then it grew concerningly loud. A desperate gasp of sorts, almost as if he was choking on air while simultaneously sucking it in. His eyes widened until they appeared to be the size of a cartoon character’s. His shaking became more like violent thrashing, comparable to convulsions, even. His eyebrows pressed together harshly, wrinkling his forehead until it looked more the face of a mountain, scarred with cracks and crevices. The noise he made grew more panicked, and for a moment I was frozen, not having a clue of what to do.

Regaining my senses I rushed over to him and tried to hold him. I tried to calm him but it was like I didn’t even exist. His bulging eyes were fixated on something out the window, and at it seemed his mind was completely absent save for its mechanisms of terror. I finally decided to yell for his mom, who rushed across the hall and became nearly as panicked as Joe when she saw him.

Immediately an ambulance was called as we both tried to get through to him. But it wasn’t until his father came in and shut the blinds on the window that we got any reaction. Instantly Joseph froze, and his eyes slowly passed over each of us, as if only just registering that we were there.

“Did you see it?” He whispered.

And before any of us could respond, his eyes rolled back and his body slumped. The room was quiet for an instant, and then the panicked shouts of his parents echoed through the halls as we tried to determine if he was still breathing. His father laid his ear on Joe’s chest, and sighed in relief as the sound of a heartbeat greeted him.

A few minutes later, the ambulance arrived and loaded Joe up. The three of us answered questions to the paramedics about what exactly the situation was, as Joseph’s mother had only been capable of a brief panicked version over the phone. It was through this interrogation that his parents learned of the challenge to stay awake, and shot angry glances my way for not having told them earlier. Interestingly, those dirty looks were about the extent of the trouble any of us involved got in over the matter.

It was determined that Joe had had a panic attack that night, a common result of overdoing it on caffeine. We didn’t see Joe for a few weeks after he got out of the hospital, and when we did see him he told us that he’d been going through very severe caffeine withdrawal. After initially making sure Joe was okay, we silently agreed not to talk about the challenge anymore. We also all grew somewhat distant from Tyron, who didn’t question it. We all eventually got back into the groove of things, as though the No Sleep Challenge had been nothing more than a bad dream. All of us, of course, except for Joe.

Joe was never the same afterwards. He became much more withdrawn, and just a tad more aggressive with people who hadn’t been his friend before the No Sleep Challenge. Only those who knew him noticed the shift. As far as our friendship, I still considered him my best friend, yet I seriously doubt if he still felt the same for me. His personality was cold and silent. And he never picked up another caffeinated beverage again for as long as he lived.

It wasn’t until senior year of high school that he began to loosen up again. Although no one dared say anything, we all knew why. It was around this time that his breath seemed to constantly reek of alcohol, and he would occasionally forget how to walk straight. We all felt sorry, but once again did nothing. Because once again, to do something would seem to attribute a responsibility that none of us wanted to bear.

Still, it was nice having him sociable again. He would crack jokes and laugh in that unrestricted drunken way of his. Those brief good moments were followed by equally awful ones though. As many of us went off to college and moved out, Joe stayed put with his mom. He grew scrawnier and shaved less and less often. And it didn’t get better.

I remember one particular night I was out driving, when some homeless man ran out into the road. I swerved to a stop, and before I could yell out at the idiot, he waved at me, and I realized it was Joe. He was too wasted to speak coherently, so I loaded him into my passenger seat and drove him home.

I walked his unsteady body to the door and knocked lightly with one hand, using the other to keep Joe from tumbling backwards.  Mrs. Mcclaire opened the door with a tepid smile on her face, and quietly informed me that this was no longer Joe’s home.

Joe slept at my place that night, and disappeared for awhile afterwards. It became a pattern, after that. He’d be gone, I’d find him, and then he’d be back again. I almost began to anticipate happening upon him whenever I drove around.  And then one day, I couldn’t find him. For a few months, he was gone without a trace. Until one day, his mother called me up. Telling me I ought to know that Joey was in the hospital. Dying.

It took me about a week to find time to visit Joe, but when I finally did, I teared up at what I saw. Joe looked like an old man now. His breaths were slow and ragged, and his hand was constantly clutching at his side. His eyes lit up at the sight of me.

“Hey buddy!” He crooned.

“Hey. Where’ve you been?”

“Around.”

I sighed, and sat gently at the edge of the bed.

“How’d you end up here?” I asked.

He smiled weakly and wheezed out a small laugh.

“You know.” He said.

I knew he wasn’t talking about just this one hospital stay. I closed my eyes as a small wave of guilt washed over me, then dismissed it. I kneeled over by his face, and looked into his eyes. I could already see the light in them slowly becoming more murky, dying just as rapidly as he was.

“Joey.”

“Yeah?”

“What did you see that day?”

He went silent, and stared down at the floor as if recalling something. He took a deep, gurgly breath and rubbed his palms against his eyes. He then refocused his gaze on me. After another pause, he answered.

“Something Awful, buddy. Something Awful.”

A moment after a nurse came in and informed me that visiting hours had ended ten minutes ago, and that I needed to leave. I waved one last goodbye at Joe, and walked out.

I tried to find time to visit him again, but time wasn’t on my side. I received another call three days later, and wept for a solid hour afterwards.

The funeral was as most funerals are. Somber, and attended by those closest to him. I even saw Tyron and Jenna there, conversing by the refreshments. I refused to say anything when we were all saying our final goodbyes. Not because I didn’t want to, but simply because I felt there wasn’t anything worthwhile that I could say. That’s possibly another reason why the Mcclaire family doesn’t call me anymore.

And now, as I’m sitting here typing up Joe’s story, I suppose this is my way of saying goodbye. And perhaps, this is my way of taking the responsibility that no one else wanted, even at Joey’s death. I’ve often wondered what it was that he saw that night that changed him. Wondered what it might have been like if Ty hadn’t been bored that year. And most recently, I wonder about the story of that woman who committed suicide yesterday. It’s been all over the news. Rumor has it, before she died, she stayed awake eleven days.