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There was a time when humans did not sleep. They closed their eyes in exasperation, or despair, or to peek at the dark, but not until they closed their eyes for good did they properly touch oblivion.
Therefore it terrified them. So oblivion gave a piece of itself to them so they might practice, and called it the Little Death, or Sleep, or Remy.
They practiced without knowing. Their bodies lay still, their minds disappeared. When they woke up they found the world almost -but not quite- as they had left it. Maybe a kid would wake up to find their parents already making breakfast, or having dropped off on a long cart ride a woman would wake to see smoke from her own home smudging the horizon, or a soldier would jerk awake to see his comrades still resolute around him as the moon glinted off their armour. Things carried on, but they didn’t change too much in their absence.
Before being buried side-by-side, people practiced how it felt to be together when they did not exist.
One prince and his servant, stuck with one bed in a dingy tavern, dissolved into dreams together as their limbs tangled. They realised that there was not so much between them through unbecoming. They grew to love the gentle dark.
And then- they’d wake in glorious sunrise and shine gold together, and it’d feel all the brighter in comparison.
The Little Death cooed over them tangled together. He covered the void of his eyes with darkened glasses and met them on the morning of a battle."Come back to bed..." he tempted them.
They refused, and set out into the battlefield.
They didn't want to bury the pair together.
But in the design of the tomb the sculptor had carved the prince slumbering. The prince himself had carved an angel lying at his side with the face of his love.
Remy made sure they lay together when they disappeared entirely.
~
There was a scientist who wanted to chase oblivion out of the world.
Swallowing pills, making elixirs and keeping every light in his lab blazing, he never practiced it. Instead he lay awake at night and thought of the negation of his death and how it would destroy all he was and all he had made.
His thoughts became even more chaotic and disjointed as time went on, lack of sleep slurring his words and blurring his vision. His appetite went quickly, his energy shortly after. He was smart enough to know this was making him ill, he was too smart, he thought, to prioritise sleep over answers.
Remy watched in slight offense and grudging concern. Then the god touched him, and he fell into slumber, slumped on his papers.
It was soft. He felt better in the morning; hazy, like the sunshine fuzzy through mist outside his window. Everything was as he left it: his notes, his beakers, his lights. The dark seemed a little further away.
~
There was a man who, through sleep, learned to love the void.
As he slept, everything disappeared. Somewhere between the screaming nightmares and the terrors of the day, he died a little death and it didn't hurt so much any more. During the day he made his own darkness, where nobody could see him, and made the world which so hated him disappear.
Sleep noticed his visits, and became concerned. But he did not say anything.
The man practiced for Death, until he thought of it as a long sleep- a gentle end. That night, when he tried to give himself to the void, it would not take him.
"Gurl," the Little Death said, crossing his arms over his chest, "It's like, seven at night. And you woke up at five pm."
Virgil screamed, because he was not used to strange men appearing in his apartment.
Remy slid his sunglasses down his nose until Virgil could look into his eyes and see the eternal darkness which sucked light and warmth from the room around it. Then he popped them back on. "I'm the Void. Or Death. Or, like, Baby Death slash Sleep. Just call me Remy, m'kay?"
"Is this-" Hope rose in Virgil like water closing over his head. "Have you come for- me?"
"I want you to get out," Remy said, pulling a phone from his pocket and scrolling through. "It's not cute running after me this much it's, like, stalkerish and I'm not here for it."
"I'm sorry? I didn't know you- I know it's pathetic-"
"I didn't say that, babe. Don't put words in my mouth."
"O-okay."
"I'm not a therapist, babe, I'm a tiny piece of black hole, a whole lot of dark matter and...human belief shit, so let's get that gay, okay?"
Virgil nodded. He wasn't too sure what he was meant to say to that.
"Do you know why we sleep, Virge?"
"Brain...shit? Exhaustion."
"Yeah, that. But like, first of all - we sleep to practice being gone."
"I mean...I do get tired, all the time-"
"Have you been to a doctor?"
"I...don't want to bother them-"
"Do that. If Sleep tells you himself, he's right, okay?"
"Okay. But if you're the God of Sleep, shouldn't you, I don't know, like people sleeping?"
"Sleep is practice for death."
"Mmm."
"But death is not like sleep."
Virgil frowned. "What is it like, then? Is there something else?"
Remy shook his head. "Nothing else."
"Then why can't I..."
"Put your shoes on, babe, we're going out."
"I'm not dressed-"
Remy snapped his fingers and the two stood outside a Gothic church. Virgil’s pajama pants barely protected him from the cold air, and the stars above shone through the ruined church more brightly than they ever did in his city.
Two figures slept on a grave: one with wings, one with a crown.
"These people died."
"I mean...no shit," Virgil said.
"That's your ancestor."
"The prince?"
"The servant, sorry. Or, his sister is. Something like that."
"So, what, I have to have kids and like...meaning of life?"
"His name was Patton. He liked dogs. And puns. He loved Roman, but he couldn't be buried as his lover because humans are bigots."
The wind skirled through the gaps in the ruin and flapped Virgil’s pajama pants around his ankles. He shivered. Often he wasn’t sure he completely existed at all, he was so deep in his own head, but the scene in front of him was almost hyperreal. He looked at the curve of the angel's smile. "And he's gone now."
"He's gone next to Roman. Nothing there anymore, the bones went missing. They liked to sleep together-" Remy slid his glasses to wink at Virgil, who wrinkled his nose.
"He is my great-great-however-many-times uncle, dude."
"And they’d just sleep, too. They were cuddly."
"So… I should stay alive for my gay ancestor Patton?"
"Would you like to ask him about it?"
Virgil's eyes widened. "I mean- can he come back? Wait, could he see Roman again? Let's- let's do that!"
Remy took Virgil's hand and squeezed it. "I asked if you'd like to, sweetheart. You can't. He's sleeping forever, I'm afraid. He can’t wake up, not even for his emo descendant."
"You're a god," Virgil said. "How was I meant to know you can't do that?"
Remy shrugged. "I told you. Death is oblivion. Sleep is just little ones." He tugged on Virgil's hand. "C'mon, let's see my Man Crush Monday... and every day..."
They moved again, and stood in a navy bedroom.
A man lay on the bed, asleep. Glasses folded on the bedside table; a black polo folded on a chair.
"Man Crush Monday is a bit outdated," Virgil pointed out.
"And I'm older than your planet. Look- isn't he beautiful? God, those cheekbones!"
"Creepy."
"I'm being whimsical, baby. I don't get attached to humans; I'm playing. You gotta have a sense of theatre! I'm giving you this human realness, and what do I get? Nothing!"
Virgil raised an eyebrow. "So the Valley Girl accent, the gay stuff, the leather jacket...you're a void that likes human stuff."
"Isn't it weird?" Remy said, sitting on the end of the man's bed. "This collection of atoms which knows it's atoms, sleeping to take a break from that knowledge. On a little cuboid of foam for its back. Dreaming of Doctor Who, probably. Another world behind his eyelids, with Daleks in. Weird, huh?"
"I...guess...yeah. Weird."
Remy handed Virgil a thermos from the man's desk. "Drink up."
"I don't want to steal his coffee..."
"Don't be a pussy. He'll make more tomorrow."
Virgil sipped at it.
"He might die tomorrow," Remy said. He paused in case Virgil said something. "And his entire future would be gone, and he wouldn't even know. They say it's like falling asleep...you don't dream, don't worry."
"Okay," Virgil said, voice cracking.
"But he's going to wake up. Tomorrow morning, at 8AM, like usual. The sun will shine. Or maybe it will be dark. Maybe he won't be happy. But he will...be. And he'll feel better for the sleep. He will feel more himself after it."
Virgil looked at the man in the bed, and imagined he was dead. That he didn't exist outside of memory, or a carved face on a tomb. He could just barely hear breath whistling through the man’s nose, and he felt his own breathing reach the same, sleeping rhythm. Glancing at Remy’s still chest, he felt almost painfully close to the human, just by virtue of how different they were from the god.
"YOLO, memento mori- you humans get so close to the truth it hurts."
"What?"
"Life meaning more because there is death at the end. Being sweeter because it will end. I don't know if it's true, I'll never die. But I'm not… exactly the god of sleep."
Virgil took a step back, looking Remy up and down.
The god took his glasses off, and the eternal darkness of his eyes exploded into light and stars and dust.
"There is stuff in the void," Remy said. "And you are a thing in the void. And before you unbecome, you must become first. The dead don't come back. Patton, he will sleep forever. But Logan...he'll undo his little death this morning. Like I never was at all. And you, Virgil...you only tried to see only one part of me."
Virgil found himself back in his apartment. The sun shone through the windows, red and pink and newborn.
He felt rested. Not unanxious, or with the weight of depression lifted, but like he'd finally had a good night's sleep.
There was a handwritten sheet pinned onto the cork board over his sink.
A therapist, a crisis line, a texting service. A paragraph about hard work and expecting steps backwards and needing to commit to getting better without magical mystery tours. Definitions of mental health issues, with over-sleeping highlighted in bright pink.
And scrawled beneath it: "Love, from the god of Waking."