Invasion

At any moment, she could fall asleep and lose everything.
Her ex-husband wanted time with their ten-year-old son
after a four-year hiatus. Which she granted - how could
she not? She's a psychiatrist, knows the law. Her son
texts that dad is acting weird, which is why she left in
the first place. More and more people have lost themselves,
wander listlessly with accusatory expressions. Are you
one of us? The male half of a forty-year married couple
leaves with no explanation. When he returns, he brings
unsavory people into the house. Her ex-husband, a high
political official, won't answer his phone, and when he does
won't let her talk with her son. "He's asleep," he says,
and she imagines the worst until another text sends her
into the subways to pick up her son. It is so late that
nothing is open. Everyone is asleep. They enter a picked-
over pharmacy and she downs uppers with two-liter
Mountain Dews, instructs her son to punch her in
the heart with an adrenaline shot if he discovers her
asleep. "You can be brave," she says and he nods. His
father was furious that he wouldn't sleep, and even
when he did, he didn't become the boy his father
hoped for. His mother, he knows, wants him for himself.