It was six AM, the sun was rising on Stull, and Carlos felt something strange in his chest as he was drinking from another "juice box". At first, he thought it might be a fly. Being undead meant that sometimes smaller things couldn't be felt, and the stray fly or moth would crawl into his ear, or crawl out of his mouth, and he would feel so ashamed, almost putting a defenseless creature's life at risk.
The strange feeling persisted, he opened his mouth, and then surprised himself, with a yawn. It was a loud, long yawn, causing one to open their mouth, stretch their arms and back, and lean in full with it, exerting the full strength of their body.
Carlos had another feeling that something wasn't quite right, but he couldn't put his finger on it. He stood outside of their hotel room, on the balcony with the rusty fence that did little to keep one from falling over, naked and without decor. The sun rose, and he started to feel tired, and was worried he didn't drink enough "juice-boxes".
He opened the door to get more, and Momo was staring at Gabriel.
Gabriel was sprawled on the ground, his body still.
"Father, Gabriel died."
Carlos thought it was a cruel joke they were playing on him, because yes, they were already dead, yes, very funny, the academy award goes to Mr. Gutenberg and Miss. Yamamoto.
"Father, do something," Momo screamed. "I didn't mean for this to happen!"
"Momo, what did you do?"
Momo started to cry again, confused, and stopped for a bit, a small yawn overcoming her.
"Momo what did you do," Carlos screamed.
He curled his fists, his juice box squirting blood all over the wooden floors, and Momo held her hand up, getting her own various incoming calls. Screams and cries echoed in her head, as signals from siblings all over the globe died out, and the few remaining ones told her don't fall for the trick.
Don't go to sleep.
"Don't ignore-"
"Father are you tired," Momo asked.
"I… yes, yes I am," Carlos said in astonishment. "I can't remember when I was. I mean, I've been tired, when I need to eat, but not like this."
"The family said not to sleep or else we die," Momo told him. "They say they're tired, even the ones who just ate, they go to sleep and die, just like grandpa."
Carlos shuffled over and picked up Gabriel's cold body, and he was scared. He knew that somehow, he would die, that even his family had wounds that couldn't heal, but now he would die alone, with no voices of his siblings to soothe him as he went.
Momo yawned again, and she started to cry, as more voices faded out, and she paced the room, banging the walls and screamed, not ready to die, after ninety-seven years, wanting at least ninety-seven more.
She gave up fighting sleep when she heard her father, Kato, tell her that he would miss her. That he was sorry for turning her in without permission, that he was sorry for not being a proper father.
"Goodnight Carlos," Momo said. "At least you don't have to worry about Gabriel hurting you. At least we can all be together at the end."
Gabriel's head was in Carlos's lap, and Momo held Carlos's hand as she fell asleep. They sat on the floor, up against the bed, and she leaned onto him, no more tears because crying wouldn't change anything.
Her grip on his hand was so strong, that he knew immediately when she was gone, her hand now limp.
Carlos didn't want to be the last one left, so he closed his eyes and went to sleep.
A great many accidents happened during this time.
All the bodies of the descendants of Santos Dominus, just falling over, one after one, all over, holding on as long as they could, was bound to have some sort of effect. While driving they fell asleep, and crashed into others, while walking they keeled over and fell into open potholes, or over balconies, or just crumpled to the ground, frightening people in broad daylight.
The last one to hang on was Nymphadora.
Nymphadora and her sons were relaxing in the park, around 7 AM, just soaking it all in. Getting away from technology, the sound of cars and smog was the only pleasure for them, as they hated every new thing , every new invention, click, whizz, and buzz.
She was sitting in the park, on a lime green bench, watching Dante play his violin, performing for tips, and she giggled, wondering why he still performed for money when they couldn't get rid of it fast enough.
He stood in front of the park fountain, a little crowd had gathered, the pedestrians walking through the park on their way to work, and the sun was shining, and nothing was wrong in the world, as her son yawned, and fell backward into the fountain, breaking his arm, and nose, his blood seeping into the fountain.
Everything seemed to move slower as people shouted for help, as an ambulance was called, and the ambulance was useless because they were never alive, to begin with. Nymphadora was touched by complete strangers crying over the sudden death of her son, but she told them that it was fine.
"It's just a little nap, he'll be fine," she said.
The onlookers cried even harder, believing that her grief had made her mad.
Kato stood next to Dante's body, laid out on the stretcher, and stifled a yawn, thinking that he didn't want to be alive if his brother was not, and everyone started to tell him that there is so much to live for, but then there were fewer and fewer voices to tell him so as his siblings all started to fall asleep as well.
So he gave up right there, and Nymphadora could not pretend that it was just a little nap in the dirt any longer.
Hysteria consumed the park as two healthy young men fell over in broad daylight, without warning, people thinking that the drinking fountains were tainted, or there was a chemical weapon, or whatever theory their paranoid brain could come up with to rationalize what was happening in front of their eyes.
Nymphadora had lost all her children.
All gone, in the blink of an eye.
The voices became quiet, and she was all alone, and they took her sons away, and they took her life away, in black plastic bags, and she was the only one left, and she couldn't be alone, it was impossible, implausible, yet it was.
She wanted to get into the coroner's van with them, but they wouldn't let her.
She declared that no matter what she would be leaving with her sons.
Everyone at the park was convinced that a pregnant woman had given up on life the moment her sons had died before her, as some deep innate power of maternal affection, and in a sick way it was.
Nymphadora traveled with her sons in the coroner's van, because she always got what she wanted, always proud and stubborn, collapsing to the ground, causing more shrieks, and a few people ran, not wanting to catch whatever phantom curse took them at once.
All three of them were all carted off to the nearest coroner's office, for the cause of death to be reasoned, and all the emergency personnel at the scene were so curious as to how three healthy people had just died, given up on life, and it was a shame, such a shame, as the woman looked like she was about ready to deliver as well.
Her body was the first to be examined at the office, a woman with no discerning identification, with the label Jane Doe , on a little tie, wrapped on her big toe. The coroner looked down at her naked body as a medical curiosity, a woman who died at once with her sons, at least, she claimed to be their mother before she died.
There was no way possible they could be her sons, he told himself. She looked too young to be their mother, but you never know these days.
Doctor Nassau took out a scalpel and cut vertically down her large, distended abdomen, and mentally prepared himself for the only sort of coroner's report he dreaded; a child's. The knife went down, and then it stopped, hitting something hard.
Doctor Nassau then assumed that it must be an overgrown tumor and the young woman was mistaken to be pregnant, so he started again from the top of her abdomen, and he pushed hard, but not too hard as to not desecrate the body, but it wouldn't budge.
He set off to find another tool, and when he returned, her body had healed, not a scratch on her.
Doctor Nassau was annoyed, as many astrals after death had strange side effects still emitting from their bodies, so he paid it no mind that Nymphadora's body had healed itself in the time he had left. He just knew it would take an extra pair of hands to perform a proper autopsy.
Doctor Bangura was annoyed because he had to end his lunch break early to help Nassau, but was ready to help once the details of the strange death were told. He sterilized his hands, put on the standard latex gloves and mask, tied back his hair, and went to work.
Doctor Bangura liked to call the tool they were using Not Your Mother's Scalpel.
It cut right through the skin of Nymphadora much deeper, but it still bumped into something hard. Nassau held her skin open while Bangura stuck his hands inside to search for the fetus, but instead he felt something hard.
He grimaced, and pulled lightly, also thinking that it might be some sort of calcified tumor, vestigial twin, or odd side effect of an ability. With a wet shlick, he pulled it out, and his heart beat fast in his chest as it was… a rock.
A rock.
Doctor Nassau and Bangura had seen many odd things in their time as coroners, but a woman's body filled to the brim with large rocks was not a thing that medical school had prepared them for.
After a lot of heavy lifting, sweating, and bewilderment, they counted twelve large stones in total, all inside her stomach and several parts of her musculature, which all looked like it had been long decayed.
Many pictures were taken, many whispers and looks of disgust thrown, and Nymphadora's body was slid back into the tray, between her two sons. The two doctors drank coffee together and didn't know how they would report this, what form to use and if it was even the sort of thing to publish in a medical journal.
If so, would anyone believe them?
After a short break, around 7 PM, they told themselves they should work on the two young men next, as the rocks led to more questions than answers, and maybe their corpses could lead to the opposite. They suited up and pulled out the freezer drawer that held the corpse of Kato Dominus.
He slid out, feet first, and his eyes were wide open as he looked at the both of them, causing Doctor Nassau to jump, and Doctor Bangura to laugh.
"I hate it when they look at you," Nassau complained.
"They're dead, there's nothing to worry about," Bangura laughed. "See?"
He held up Kato's hand, and he grinned, but then it twitched, and he screamed. They screamed as the thin layer of ice cracked off his body, bits of skin falling off along as well, and he groaned, stretched his arms to the sky, and cracked his neck.
He scanned his surroundings, and a small smile crept upon his face when he stood up, having slept for this first time in his life, now understanding why the meat-suits spent so much of their life doing it.
His smile turned into fury when he saw the pile of rocks on the table, covered in the blood of his mother.
Rattles came from various drawers in the room and Doctor Bangura and Nassau tried to leave. Bangura swung the door wide open, but another naked, undead person met him, fangs bared. Drawers clattered to the ground, naked men and women crawled out of them, icy and angry, their mother's body defiled.
Nymphadora's children circled the both of them, and the doctors stood in the center, back-to-back, swiping their scalpels wildly in the air as if that would be enough to stop those who had defeated death itself.
"You took her baby," Dante said. "You shouldn't do that."
"My body, my choice, " Nymphadora snarled.
"There was no baby in there! It's impossible! Your body cannot bear-"
Kato tore off Doctor Bangura's head and handed it to his mother as a present. Kato tore into the back of Nassau, and they all ate, after a wonderful dirt nap, the best thing to do after a nap, of course, the taste stronger, the smell more fragrant.
Kato smiled as he sat on the floor, naked with family, hearing their voices flood in, and sighed, crying tears of relief, because he had been alone for such a short while, and it was so frightening. He couldn't understand how the meatsuits could always be so alone.
His daughter told him that she forgave him, and a little feeling, in his stomach, indescribable, made his cheeks turn red. Kato burped, a little blood came out, Dante rubbed his back, and Kato promised that he would be a better father from now on to Momo.
Momo told him it was fine, that she was fine without him, a grown woman, long on her own.
She awoke holding Carlos's hand, and Gabriel was staring up at the both of them.
"Why do you guys look so scared," Gabriel asked.
"We, we died, " Carlos whispered.
"No. I took a nap," Gabriel replied.
Gabriel got up, his cheeks turning red at the sudden skin-ship, now that his brain wasn't clouded as before when he and Carlos shared everything. Memories of it all came back to him and his entire body went warm.
"Oh my god, has it been so long we fell asleep we forgot what it felt like," Carlos asked.
Momo hung her head in embarrassment, and the others let out a collective sigh and blush, that soon turned to confusion. They had no need to sleep, they found it impossible to sleep when they tried, and then the confusion morphed into terror once more.
It had been almost five months since Santos died, and now they needed to sleep. If time continued, what else would change? George suggested that maybe if they continued on without a leader, they would lose their special ability to be able to walk in the sun after forty years.
Everyone panicked.
Momo panicked as she relayed the information to Gabriel and Carlos, all the children panicked as the idea of them losing their standing as the most powerful family was a very real possibility, and the world panicked as multiple people who died had come back to life.