Keep It Going

For today's posts, we will be writing a chain story. I will start us off with the prompt below. The next person to post will pick up where I left off and will stop without finishing the story so the next person can pick up. At the top of your story paragraph, please write "responding to [name]" so we will know to whom you are responding. If students respond to the same person's paragraph, we'll just see this as a "choose your own adventure" situation, and the next student may respond to either post. 

Please write at least one paragraph and make it easy for the next student to follow you. In other words, don't start writing in Klingon or about the intricacies of particle physics or the like. In the same way, accept what the previous writer has established: if the main character is an elderly woman in the previous paragraph, don't switch her to a world-famous member of a boy band in yours.

Prompt

I. can't. sleep.

It's not that I have difficulty falling or staying asleep. I never get there.

My parents told me I fought sleep as a baby, that however warm and fed and swaddled I was when they put me down, in minutes I'd be arching my back and screaming so loud they could see down my throat. I didn't nap. At night I slept restlessly, waking often. But now I can't even do that.

My name is Jamie Kent. I haven't slept for 40 days. I don't drink coffee, use electronics before bed, or leave the light on. I get plenty of exercise, sunshine, and healthy food. I've tried melatonin and everything else you are thinking of suggesting. Nothing works, and I haven't slept in nearly a month and a half. And that's not the only thing that's changed.