Circadia
written by: W. Glewicz
My eyes snap open. No need for a clock. I know the time, down to the microsecond. Middle of the night isn’t when dark spirits roam the Earth. Not to me.
It started when I turned thirteen, waking exactly halfway between sundown and sunup. Every night. Then remaining awake until the next night. My parents took me to specialists who spoke about how the brain’s suprachiasmatic nucleus regulates sleep cycles and how mine was broken. They named my condition Circadia, something totally new.
They flew me to Jakarta. The equator’s relatively fixed sunrises and sunsets afforded me a predictable six hours of sleep. Then things took a turn. My parents were shepherded away to somewhere unknown. Unsmiling, uniformed men eclipsed my doctors. Trapped in a cell somewhere outside Fairbanks, I hibernated all winter. As summer loomed, I clawed at the walls from lack of sleep. Even they understood the need for another move.
Now I’m here, locked away in this underground lab. They continue to study me, poke at me, hoping to duplicate, adapt, and weaponize my condition. I hear them talk about twenty-four-hour soldiers commanding indefatigable drones.
But there’s someone else here, too. My name is Edgar Allan, but she calls me Poe. Her name is Anna Li, but I call her Raven. She’s just like me.
We’ve developed a sort of sign language. Our head tilts and blinking eyes communicate plans we hope they’ll never decipher. We’ve memorized access codes and the maze of hallways that lead upwards, onwards, to freedom or whatever lies beyond.
And the thing is, routine has made our captors predictable. We know the timing of their patrols. Tonight, we escape. I pray that final hallway, always unmanned and unlocked, isn’t some trap, some new test they have for us. We’ll know for sure come morning.
- Cathedral - November 15, 2025
- Circadia - September 11, 2025
- The Hatter’s Tale - May 3, 2025
