For years a woman sat in the next room and watched strangers sleep on a monitor. She saw every minute of every night. She wasn't allowed to tell them a thing.
Her name is Joanne, and she's telling you now. Every evening she sends you one thing your body does in the dark, with the clock time on it.
At 6:40 you sit up in bed, and the night is already gone. In the lab the patient sat up too, wires still on, and asked her how it went.
Joanne knew. She'd watched twenty four channels all night from the room next door. The reading belonged to the doctor, though. So she said the line she was trained to say. Then she drove home with all of it still in her head.
Last Night is the answer she drove home with.
Each letter takes one thing and runs the clock on it. This one went out on September 18, about the first night in a hotel.
Lights out in a room you have never slept in.
You go under, later than you would at home.
A door shuts two floors down. One side of you hears it.
You get up sure you barely slept.
This one is just the body doing its job.
the night before
Get there a night ahead and let the first one be the throwaway.
Every door is a letter still in the drawer. Tap one.
tonight
You'll still come up in the night, more than once. With the clock turned away, there's no number to start the math with.
Tomorrow evening there's a letter. Leave your address and it will find you.