Sleeping in the Daytime

Sleeping in the Daytime is the first of three novellas that chronicle the deterioration of a Gen X punk growing up in the 1980s and 1990s in the Pacific Northwest. Jack is the byproduct of the music scene and accompanying drug culture present at the time. He's the part of the culture that MTV didn't turn into a teen idol.

Jack was never "right," but that's a lot of what made him magnetic to other people. When he was younger, he was that guy that girls wanted to be around. People were drawn in by him. Even later on when there wasn't much of him left, that magnetism never fully disappeared. Most people never understood that. He never really put a lot of energy into grooming and maintaining relationships with people. When the world sees someone that is content entertaining themself, it creates a vacuum and people flood in like water choking a storm drain.

Even as his deterioration became apparent, people threw him lifelines. People wanted to flood into that vacuum. The tragedy of Jack was that he always seemed so close to salvageable. If you loved him, and many did, you could never stop trying to pull him back into the lifeboat, but you just couldn't. He was always just out of reach. It would have been easier to cut him loose if he was just an obvious lost cause. The fact that the world left him behind is no reason to ignore his existence. It's the opposite. The fact that the world left him behind is the reason someone needs to tell his story.

Sleeping in the Daytime only sets the stage, the stage that Jack inevitably implodes on in parts two and three of the series. Have a look through drunken fatigued eyes at a PNW that only now exists in the memories of people that were there. Pull up a chair at the crack den. Pick out a bed at the psychiatric hospital. Jack will be more than happy to be your guide.

Transgressive author Christopher J. Stockwell's absurdist and satirical take on transgressive fiction goes beyond the confined by norms paradigm and into the gutter. Enjoy!