Member-only story
The Sleepwalkers
Speculative Fiction
It all started as just another game to play: Cass began to go out into the night and take photos of the downtown area. Her mother would have locked her up in her room and barred the windows if she had known, but Cass always made sure to leave out the back door right after her mom fell asleep from that third glass of wine. And if her dad had known — well, he wasn’t there, so what did it matter?
Taking shots of the city at midnight gave Cass a sense of purpose few things rarely did. She felt like she was sixteen going on twenty-one when the local nightclub bouncer let her through without even needing to see her (fake) ID. The pools of dancers were the perfect muses for her camera, the multi-colored strobe lights flashing and illuminating them all in strips of neon.
A week in, though, something started happening. Less people crowded the dance floor, and Cass grew bored with the same partiers she had seen flock around the club night after night. By chance, she went out into the alley behind the club, ready to call an Uber to get home, when she saw a girl stumbling along in the shadows playing off the alley walls.
Alarmed, Cass held out a hand before the girl could trip and meet the cracked pavement. “Hey, you okay?” she asked. “Should I call you a cab?”
