If you were suspicious about the aurora that started up a few days ago, it seems like you have good reason to be. Ever since they began, no one seems to be able to get a good night’s sleep. Fatigue is setting across the town, making people a little extra cranky. It’s a complete downer to the holiday cheer but no one seems to know what to do. There’s no sign that there’s anything supernatural about the aurora, but there’s certainly something odd about it. People lucky enough to even fall asleep only get to rest for a few moments before they are violently jostled awake by the sensation of falling through a rainbow of colors. Some worse off may suffer from the sensation of drowning beneath strange, rainbow colored water. People are passing out from fatigue and some people are suffering from strange vertigo. There doesn’t seem to be an end in sight.

Drew paced the floor in the dark, muttering to himself. He hadn’t slept in three days and he knew no one had – heck, the Mayor had ordered all schools in Destiny City to be closed at noon, so that all children might try to go home and take a nap at least. Try being the operative word. Then after cussing out the cameraman on live television, for getting his bad side, he ordered Destiny City shut down for at least twenty-four hours, and everyone, even police or fire or medical were sent home. Police, fire, medical, and military were called in from other regions and everyone was ordered to go home and sleep, or at least try to.

Drew pondered about how people had been affected by sleep loss. It had started the day the aurora came, which could have been coincidence, but not with the experiences he’d had or he had gathered from others. Of course, no one could really think clearly right now, including him, but hey. He had to work with what he had.

At one point, he had dozed off, somewhere around T + 41 hours, though he only had moments. He had then been brutally shaken and dropped through a flood of colors, after which he was knocked awake. He supposed at that time the aurora might have something to do with it. Dani was now in the hospital, due to passing out from fatigue, along with many younger kids and the elderly. Dria had, in the last ten hours expressed to him feelings at certain times of drowning in weird colorful water. He knew then it definitely had to do with the Aurora. But how? It didn’t seem to be unnatural in any way.

Then just an hour ago, Mom had been rushed to the hospital for vertigo. Her vertigo was strange though, because she had started to sweat profusely, and Drew could almost swear that the sweat glistened in rainbow colors. Dia had gone with Dani, and Dad had gone with Mom, leaving Dria and Drew to themselves.

Dria was in her room laying down (they had to move recently, due to going from a family of three to a family of six, practically overnight and now everyone had their own room except Mom and Dad of course). Drew himself had gotten up to try to figure this whole thing out, but at this point, his mind had gone to hell in a ham basket, from lack of sleep. So here he was, pacing the floor, muttering senselessly about the Aurora, in the Dark, as he mulled it over in his mind. The only coherent thing that he could come up with was that there was no end in sight, that there was no way to stop this. Otherwise, his mutterings sounded like the mutterings or ravings of a madman or lunatic.

Dria must have heard them, as she came in and hugged him, with the phone in one hand. “It’s going to be alright Drew. I’ve called the Ambulance. They’ll be here soon.” He put his face into his sister’s shoulder and wept. He knew he probably should’ve turned his bookcase over fifteen minutes ago, he was just so upset.