The bright blue moon in the dark amber sky lit the room in an eerie cyan aura, as the Sandman tried to piece what had happened. He had agreed to do this, after his fellow spirits had showed their concern over his exhaustion. Day after day, night after night, the constant clocks ticking had thrown the Overseer of Sleep into sleepless days, weeks, months, years. So many people going to sleep at different times, fixing their body clock for them to change it all up the very next morning. If he had known this is what he'd be doing in his old age, then he would have quit this job years and years ago. And now here they were. Glass was shattered and scattered among the ground across the floor between the two older spirits - One who saw the humans did the sleeping, the other who watched over their dreams.
"What...have I done?"
The pale man stared at the room, where countless clocks had smashed and vanished into nothing, All that was left of them was the sharp shards of glass that laid on the floor, though even those too were beginning to fade out. The Sandman twitched, and looked to his right hand man.
"...That...Wasn't supposed to happen," He whispered, before turning his back to his friend. "...Was it? That...Just didn't seem right,"
A smoke-wreathed hand found itself on the Sandman's shoulder, it's twin scooping a shard of glass from the floor. He'd known something was wrong when his watch stopped ticking, but this was worse than he feared. The glass dissipated in Mytchell's hand, and to replace it, he drew his pocket watch from his chest, clicking it's silver door open and glancing at the stilled clock face inside. Just as quickly as he opened it, it was closed again, held by its chain as Mytchell glided around the room.
"I..." he began, then scrapped his phrase, deciding on a new one. "No, I don't think so."
Bringing his watch back in hand, he clicked it open again, repeatedly shaking the thing, changing the clock face. Each was the sleeping pattern of a different human, and all of them, still. Through the mirror on the inside door of the watch, he could see no dreams, the same for every different pattern that crossed the watch's face. Clicking it closed once again, Mytchell glided to face his old friend.
"Salare," he softly said, cradling his own chin in one hand, "I'm sure we can find a way to fix this."
Salare twitched at both his real name, and the touch from his dearest friend, before he calmed down. The lack of sleep within the last century had set him on edge and as such, he barely talked to the residents of his home. He sighed before straightening up his body and brushing himself off. His friend was right - Anything that were broken could be once again fixed. He gave a silent nod before looking around the room.
"I'm trying to place my mistake...I know I practice the incantation over and over. Has my lack of sleep really begun to affect my physical and mental capacities?" He mused, as he went over the previous moments. A spell, a blur of dark magic and then nothing but frozen clocks, before each of them had cracked and shattered into a thousand tiny glass pieces. As he took a glance to the wall where the clocks had once hung, the male knelt down, lifting up something from the ground. "This...This one survived," He whispered in relief, almost ready to hug his find to his torso. But he restrained himself, and took a closer look, seeing one on the ground nearby, and another on the table.
"Mytchell, see if you can find any more. Some of the clocks might have landed on the shelves or in the bookcase," He murmured as he went to dust the fine particles off the clock face and examine it, the hands, frozen at midnight, like all the others.
Mytchell nodded in tandem with his friend, and turned away, examining the now-empty walls. "You more than anyone would know the effect that a lack of sleep will have on humans, who's to say the same thing won't eventually happen to you?"
Mytchell had watched his friend's condition deteriorate for some time now. and although he tried to lighten the burden, it hadn't helped much. Delaying the inevitable, really.
At Salare's command, Mytchell dissipated into the air, looking like a plume of smoke ascending to settle in the rafters. From there he found two more intact clocks; one having landed behind a larger, now broken, grandfather clock, and the other having come to precarious rest atop a shelf, nearly falling over. His body forming into his humanoid shape once again, he collected his finds, treating them with the care one would give an infant.
Cleaning the clock faces of dust, he laid them on a table, beckoning for Salare to do the same with his. They were stopped, yes, but not physically broken. This was what Mytchell found particularly odd. Pulling his watch out yet again from it's place where a human's heart would be, he opened it, glancing between the clocks and his watch with a furrowed brow.
"Hmm..." Salare placed the clocks he had found on the table gently with the others, brushing them off. "Are they dreaming?" He asked, almost hesitantly. In truth, he was scared to know what the fates of these last five were. He rose his hourglass near to one of the clocks, and after a moment, the sand glowed. However, the grains in the magic hourglass did nothing but stay put. "I can't tell if they are sleeping..." He muttered, almost sounding defeated. Was that really it? After dismissing his fellow spirit's concerns for over twenty years, but only listening when he was at breaking point.
He'd taken their advice. And now he would pay the price for being so selfish.
"...If they aren't dreaming, we have to look into their state of being. We're going to have to take a trip to the human realm," He sighed and looked down. "We'll need to tell the others about this too. I shall take the blame,"
Mytchell said nothing, silently looking between the clocks and his watch over and over. He turned the rim of the watch's face, a thin dial covering the outside, switching between millions of clock faces until he found one that matched one of the clocks on the table. He repeated the process for the four others, mentally marking their places on the dial.
In late response to Salare's question, he looked deep into his watch's mirror for each clock face, although to no avail. Each clock was also stuck halfway between a waking and sleeping moment. "They're not dreaming, and not sleeping..." He murmured, "But not entirely awake..." The spirit stared into the watch for a few seconds more, wondering why these faces looked different than every other stopped clock. Then, looking closer, the answer came to him.
Drifting over to his friend's side, he held the watch up by the chain, pointing to the hands of it's current face. Although frozen at midnight like every other, the hands weren't entirely stopped; instead, they twitched in steady rhythm, as if something was stopping them from ticking.
"So...I guess we succeeded...But they're still awake somehow?" Salare peered at the watch with great interest. "Insomniacs maybe? Or something worse...?" The Sandman shook his head as he examined the hand that seemed to be stopped from ticking. "Either way, this all needs to be looked into. We need to see what happened to the other humans, and what state the ones who these clocks belong to are in. It's possible we could of disturbed their sleep by our spell, and if they wake up..." He paused and stared to the ground, his hazel eyes filled with fear.
"Who knows what they'll see when they wake up. But it's our job to put them back to sleep and sort out this whole mess," He then looked up. "Come Mytchell. We have to inform the others of this, as well as get to the human realm as soon as possible," Salare gestured with his hand and walked out the door, making his way back to the main room where their companions were waiting. By the time the two reached the end of the hallway and opened the door to the room, the Sandman had gained his composure, and was once again stoic and unapproachable.
"Everyone... We have a problem," He said, his voice darker as if it held no emotion. "The spell... did not work,"
As midnight hit the sleepy small town on the outskirts of the big city, everything had stopped and everyone was gone. It was dark, and the lights on the streets flickered, cloaking the streets in an dim amber light before fizzling out, drenching the street in black. Only a few lights survived the black out, as power drained, their electricity supply cut. The streets outside were empty, and the deafening silence roared.
They were the only ones still in this quaint town - Five students who lived on this street were tucked away, safe and warm under the covers, though they could not sleep. Try as they might, they could not. And as they felt themselves drifting off, a noise sounded, akin to the sound of a high pitched ringing, waking them up with a jolt. Was it nothing, just a mere coincidence, or was there something wrong?
Either way, a bad feeling begins to stir in the bottom of their stomachs, giving them the sensation something is amiss. Perhaps it was nothing, but the gut feeling still remains, knotting and twisting in the pit of their stomachs. It forces each student to get and check their house beyond their bedroom door, unknowing what awaits them in the dead of the night.