Snorers

A short story

Part I, Becoming the Enemy

Mickey Kruger opened his eyes the moment before Julia would have stabbed him with a kitchen knife. He screamed, rolled off the bed, and shoved Julia with the sole of his bare foot to create more distance between him and his wife, giving him time to think. “What the fuck!”

“You’re a snorer!” Julia shouted back. “A loud one, too, like a wood chipper pulverizing a petrified tree.”

Harsh halogen street lights illuminated their third-floor apartment. The crash of pre-dawn garbage trucks reverberated in their room. 

How could she hear anything over that? 

Soundless green lightning bolts shot from cloud to cloud, tearing the clouds apart, like cotton candy pulled from either side. 

Mickey trembled. 

“I don’t snore.” Keeping his fearful gaze on Julia, he gathered his socks and underwear from the floor and slipped them on. He raised a t-shirt and jeans with his foot and put those on, too. Goosebumps populated his arms and neck. His heart beat fast, fueled by terror distilled to its essence.

The bed was a tenuous barricade between them. 

I don’t snore. Do I? Nobody’s ever said I snore before now. It’s a one-off, maybe not even snoring, maybe just a cough or wheeze or I rolled face down onto my pillow and made hard-to-breathe noises that Julia interpreted as snoring. 

Mickey recalled reading that snoring is more common in people over forty.

He was forty-one.

Mickey held his arms out, palms forward. “There’s no need for violence, babe. It’s okay, it’s okay. Even if I was snoring—and I’m sure you dreamed it, or it was the trash truck and you only thought I was—I’m sure I only snored while on my back. Not that I’m admitting to snoring. But if I was, the simple cure is for me to always sleep on my side. I’ll slip a pillow in between my legs to anchor me sideways. I can do that. Can you let me do that?”

“No.” Julia sidestepped to the left toward the foot of the bed. Once she crossed into that open space, she’d have a clear avenue to him, and with the door on her side of the room, he doubted he’d survive. Julia clutched their twelve-inch Japanese Gyoto chef’s knife, a long, sharp, and deadly implement they’d purchased on their honeymoon in Japan.

Mickey’s bones hurt.

“You’re a snorer.”

“I am not.”

“I’m legally entitled to kill you. I’m supposed to kill you.”

“You’re joking. You’re my wife.” Mickey held up his left hand and tapped his wedding band.

“I’m not joking. You know the law. Snorers are pariahs, the weeds of civilization who disrupt humanity’s collective need for uninterrupted sleep and who must be permanently eradicated.”

How could Julia turn against me? In sickness and health, that’s how it was supposed to be. Marriage and love should supersede the law and the collective. 

“Babe, you’re not the judge of that. You—”

“The law makes me or any spouse or girl or boyfriend or partner who’s the victim of snoring the judge. Your life is over.” Julia raised the knife and coiled her arm, but instead of pouncing, she stepped to the bedroom door and opened it. She bit her lip. “Leave. Go now. We’ll pretend that you escaped while I was trying to kill you. But if I ever see you again, and especially if I hear you, you’re dead.”

Mickey stepped toward the night table to retrieve his keys and wallet. 

“You’re not going to need your keys, sweetheart, because you’re never coming back. Just go!”

“My wallet, at least let me take that.”

“To what end? Once I report you’re a snorer, the government will put out an alert on your credit cards.”

“Just my cash, ‘k? I’ve got sixty bucks.”

Julia considered that request and nodded. “I’m counting from five. Five, four, three—”

Mickey dashed out of the bedroom so fast that his draft sucked the door shut behind him. He considered his shoes that were beside the front door—do I have ten seconds to put them on?—deciding to scoop and carry them. He bounded down three flights two steps at a time, jumping onto the landing, stubbing his toe in a blaze of pain, and sprinting out the apartment building door into the cold, barren night.

Part II, The Rest of Mickey’s Life

Shivering, all alone, with sixty-two dollars in his pocket, Mickey leaned against the cold brick wall of an apartment building a dozen blocks from where he lived. Had lived. He cowered in a dumpster’s hollow nighttime shadow.

His wife and the world were his enemies.

A skinny, black and white cat jumped atop the dumpster to escape the fat rat chasing it, panting as it surveyed the rodent.

Mickey thought about his grandparents and parents. Were they snorers? He couldn’t remember anyone complaining about snoring in his family. Not that it mattered if his parents had snored, because before 2025 snoring was merely an annoying condition that couples and families usually kept between themselves. Before the Quiet at Home Act, snoring was dealt with through pills, pillows, and persistence, not extreme vigilantism. Non-snoring husbands and wives learned to live with their loud bedmates. Or they got earplugs or slept in different rooms. 

Mickey glanced at his watch: 5:17. From the moment Julia reported him as a snorer to the police, every cop would be looking for him. Armed with forward-facing facial recognition cameras on their jackets and every police car equipped with a roof-top camera, Mickey didn’t anticipate longevity. A cop didn’t even have to see Mickey to find him. NYPD’s network of security cameras and the city’s traffic cameras meant there would be nowhere and no way to hide. Then there were the drones that came out at dawn, swarms of eyes.

The law would return him to Julia, who would mete out his punishment for a condition he could not control—and still didn’t believe he had. His snoring bothered her—supposedly, and for just one night!—and she would be the one to derive justice. Vengeance, but the Quiet at Home Act called it “justice.”

Mickey shuddered. Death by stabbing sounded painful. 

Mickey slinked along the alley. Despite the long odds—no odds, actually—he stepped softly and endeavored to remain invisible, exiting the alley at 82nd Street and Second Avenue. Save for a bodega across the street, there was no sign of human life anywhere. New York City still slept—soundly, too, because of the snorers’ quietus. 

What’s my play? 

Out of the city is my move. But how? Bridge? Tunnel? There are cameras everywhere. Taxi? Not with sixty-two dollars. Taxis had security cameras, but Mickey didn’t know if they broadcasted real-time to the police.

Even if I make it out of the city, the kill-snorer law is nationwide. There’s no escape.

What’s the least painful way to die? Mickey wondered. Assuming he could make it to the East River, what about jumping? Or leaping in front of the IRT? What about touching the third rail? Was there a bar open at this hour where he could drink shot after shot, anesthesia to numb whatever manner of death was soon to come? 

Numbing his body sounded like a great idea. Sixty-two dollars would translate into a lot of cheap whiskeys. 

A weight pressed on his shoulder. He turned his head slowly, anticipating an enormous New York City rat. 

Instead, a woman with long, straight, black hair wearing a gray cap stood beside Mickey. Her jeans flared into bell bottoms that hid most of her cowboy boots, and she wore a thick sheepskin coat over a yellow v-neck sweater. “I’m here to save you.”

When Mickey didn’t reply—he was too dumbstruck to say anything—she continued. “I’m Michelle Louise.”

“How did you know—?”

“It will be light soon, and there will be time for explanations later, but suffice it to say that I’m in the underground, part of a network that saves snorers. There are dozens of us patrolling the streets from midnight until dawn, looking for people like you, who appear to be on the run for their lives.”

“Yeah, that just about sums it up.”

“Wife?”

Mickey nodded.

“Let’s go.” Michelle took Mickey’s hand and fastened a broad smile to her face. 

Mickey smiled, too. They were a couple, camouflage for a snorer on the run. 

When Mickey tried to ask a question, Michelle pressed her finger to his lips. 

As the first hints of blue peeked over Manhattan, Michelle directed Mickey into the still-deserted 50th Street Station. She handed him a single-ride MetroCard and guided him to the far side of the platform, where they stood in silence as an express train passed through at fifty miles per hour, creating multiple tornadoes of dust and paper. Out of instinct, Mickey stepped back lest a vortex suck him onto the tracks.

For the first time since Julia tried to kill him, Mickey felt hopeful. 

After the train passed, Michelle lowered herself onto the platform and then to the tracks. “Come on down, but be careful of the third rail.”

When she noticed the hesitation in his eyes, she added, “Now. We only have twelve minutes until the next IRT, and it takes eleven minutes to reach the escape point.”

“To Canada?” Mickey asked. Canadians didn’t murder snorers. 

Michelle retrieved a dented metal gas lantern from her shoulder bag, struck a match against the tunnel wall, and brought the lantern to life with a whoosh. 

A golden glow illuminated a sphere around and in front of them for several yards.

Cold, damp air sapped away Mickey’s body heat as if he’d plunged into a frozen lake. 

“Faster,” Michelle directed as the faint echo of distant trains reached their ears. 

Moisture falling from the tunnel’s ceiling drip-dropped onto the tracks. A slight breeze rustled the hairs on Mickey’s neck. Was it a pigeon? A bat?

The further into the darkness they walked, the less illumination Michelle’s lantern provided. 

This is tunnel vision, Mickey thought. 

With each step, he saw less tunnel and more darkness, and at one point, he slipped, his foot landing on the metal rail. He held his breath for the inevitable. 

Not the third rail because I’m still alive. 

The approaching train was louder now. Mickey could feel the air compressing, the pressure against his ears increasing. Now he wished he’d been walking faster, running even, as risky as that would have been in the dim tunnel. 

The air reeked of horses. 

“Here we go,” Michelle said just before she twisted the lamp’s knob, plunging them into pitch blackness. “Lantern out so we can better see the train’s lights.”

“It’s coming.” Michelle yelled over the approaching train. “I want you to understand what’s happening. We're at the inflection point, which appears as a steep bend. Although the tracks look like they curve, it’s not a real-world twist, but a result of the space through which this section of track passes. Something about this part of under-Manhattan, perhaps an intersection with another universe or a fusillade of tachyons. Put another way, the track is straight and not straight, an anomaly that’s consistent with—”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know. There’s a lot of physics to assimilate. All you need to know is that the train has to slow here—much slower—to under seven miles per hour, making it possible for you to jump on board. When the train arrives, grab hold of the bar on the front car, hoist yourself up, and go inside.”

“What? You can’t get on board a moving train. There’s no way.”

“Trust me, you can.”

“What about you?” Mickey’s voice ratcheted up to full throttle. “Will you have enough time to get on?” 

Michelle shook her head. “I’ll hide until the train passes and rescue somebody else tomorrow.” 

“When will I see you again?”

“You won’t, you can’t.”

The train was almost upon them. The tunnel vibrated, nearly knocking them off their feet. 

Michelle exhaled and pressed herself against the stone while Mickey tensed his legs, ready to leap to life or death. 

A high-pitched cry, like an animal in distress, replaced the deep, guttural thunder that Mickey was used to in the subway. 

Several tepid light bulbs along the train’s roof reflected off the wall, revealing a red, wooden train car. An open platform like a balcony protruded from the front of the train. 

The train chug-chugged in slow motion. 

Michelle’s right, I can get on board.

The train was seconds away.

What comes next? Where do I go? I need to get out of New York, get out of America, but she hasn’t told me yet! 

“Wait! Where am I escaping to?

“To 1904. Go!”

She shoved him forward and up. Mickey grabbed onto the vertical metal bar at the front of the train and hoisted himself onto the train’s veranda. He glanced into the cab—a hat covered every passenger’s head—and shouted to Michelle, “Who are you?”

He thought she said,  “...from 1967.”

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If you enjoyed this story, I think you’ll also like my story, The Train to Nowhere.

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