No Sleep After Dark

Story 10: Recession Survival

I was sixteen when the world started crumbling in 2008. Not in the dramatic, movie-apocalypse way—just the slow, grinding kind that turns everyday life into quiet panic. Dad lost his factory job in late summer. Mom’s part-time shifts at the grocery got cut to nothing. The bank took the house in Ohio by Christmas. We packed what we could into the back of Dad’s old Ford pickup and drove south until the money ran out.

We ended up in a forgotten corner of West Virginia, a place called Hollow Ridge. It was one of those dying coal towns where half the houses were boarded up and the other half looked like they were waiting to join them. Dad had inherited a tiny cabin from some great-uncle nobody remembered—two rooms, tin roof, outhouse fifty yards down a deer path. No running water after the well pump died, but there was a woodstove and a creek nearby. We told ourselves it was temporary. “Just until things turn around,” Mom kept saying, like a prayer she didn’t quite believe.

The first winter was brutal. Snow piled against the door. We burned every scrap of furniture we could break apart. Dad hunted rabbits and squirrels with his old .22, but the woods seemed empty. Mom foraged what she could—dandelion greens, wild onions, cattail roots—but it wasn’t enough. My little sister Ellie (she was eleven) started losing clumps of hair. I could count her ribs when she changed shirts. We were all so tired we stopped talking much. Just the crackle of the fire and the wind rattling the windows.

By March, the food stamps ran out early because of some paperwork error nobody could fix over the phone (no cell service up there). Dad drove thirty miles to the nearest food pantry once a week, but the lines were endless and the shelves emptied fast. One night he came back with nothing but a half-loaf of moldy bread and a look on his face I’d never seen before—like something inside him had cracked open.

That was the night he started going out after dark.

He’d wait until we were asleep, then slip out with the rifle and a flashlight. He’d come back before dawn, usually empty-handed, smelling of pine and wet earth. Sometimes he’d have a raccoon or possum slung over his shoulder, but those were rare. More often he’d just sit by the stove, staring into the flames, hands shaking.

I asked him once where he went. He said, “Scouting new spots. Game’s moved deeper.” I believed him. Why wouldn’t I?

Then the neighbors started leaving.

Hollow Ridge had maybe twenty families left when we arrived. The Millers lived a mile down the ridge—old Mr. Miller and his wife, their grown son Tommy who drank too much. One morning their truck was gone. No goodbye, no note. Just the house dark and the dogs barking themselves hoarse.

A week later the Garcias vanished. Their trailer still had laundry on the line, frozen stiff.

Dad said people were smart. “They saw the writing on the wall and left before it got worse.” Mom nodded like she agreed, but her eyes stayed on the floor.

Ellie started having nightmares. She’d wake up crying, saying she heard someone screaming in the woods. I told her it was just foxes mating—something Dad used to say when we were little. She stopped asking after a while.

April brought mud and false hope. The creek swelled with meltwater. Dad trapped a few fish, but they were bony and tasted of mud. We were down to one meal a day, usually oatmeal thinned with creek water. My stomach growled so loud at night it woke me up.

That’s when Dad brought home the first real meat.

He came in just before sunrise, face streaked with dirt, a heavy burlap sack over his shoulder. He dropped it by the stove without a word. Inside was a haunch—dark red, glistening, bigger than any deer leg I’d ever seen. The muscle was thick, marbled with fat. No fur, no hide attached. Just clean cuts, like someone had butchered it with a sharp knife.

“Venison,” Dad said. “Big buck. Got lucky.”

Mom stared at it for a long time. Then she started cutting.

That meat changed everything.

We ate like we hadn’t eaten in months. Mom pan-fried it with salt and the last of the wild garlic. The smell filled the cabin—rich, almost sweet. I tore into my piece so fast I burned my tongue. Ellie giggled for the first time in weeks. Dad watched us eat, smiling in a way that didn’t reach his eyes.

After that night, the hunts got more successful. Every few days he’d bring back another cut—roasts, ribs, ground scraps he called “sausage meat.” Never the whole animal, never antlers or hooves. Always wrapped in burlap or old feed sacks. He said he field-dressed them far from the cabin so predators wouldn’t follow the scent.

We didn’t ask questions. We were too hungry.

By summer the town was almost empty. Only three other houses still had smoke coming from the chimneys: the Widow Hayes at the end of the ridge, the Reeds (a quiet couple in their forties), and old man Pritchard who lived in a shack half falling down the hillside. We avoided them. They avoided us.

One afternoon Ellie and I were fetching water when we passed the Miller place. The front door hung open. Inside, the kitchen table was set for dinner—plates, glasses, forks laid out like they’d just stepped out for a minute. A calendar on the wall was still flipped to February.

Ellie whispered, “Do you think they really left?”

I didn’t answer.

That night Dad brought home liver. Thick slices, dark purple, heavy in the pan. Mom cooked it with onions we’d found growing wild. It tasted iron-rich, almost metallic, but we devoured it.

After dinner Ellie said, “This tastes different from the other meat.”

Dad looked at her sharply. “It’s just fresher.”

She didn’t push it.

I started noticing things.

Dad’s clothes always came back clean—no bloodstains, no tears. His boots never had mud past the ankles, like he walked the same path every time. Once I followed him at dawn, staying far back. He didn’t go toward the deep woods where the deer trails were. He went straight down the old logging road toward the abandoned houses.

I turned back before he saw me. I didn’t want to know.

In September, Widow Hayes disappeared.

Her dog showed up at our door one morning, whining, ribs showing. Mom let it in, gave it scraps. Dad watched the dog eat, expression blank.

Two days later the dog was gone again. Dad said it probably went looking for its owner.

The Reeds left next. Their car was still in the drive, keys in the ignition. Dad said they must’ve hitchhiked out.

Only Pritchard remained. He was half-crazy, talked to himself, shot at shadows. One night we heard a single gunshot from his direction. Then silence.

Dad went out the next evening. Came back with a full sack—shoulder, thigh, a whole arm’s worth.

That was the night I found the watch.

I was helping Mom sort the meat, separating fat from lean. In the pocket of an old flannel shirt Dad had used to wrap the cuts, I found a silver pocket watch. Engraved on the back: To Earl, from Mary. 1978.

Earl was Mr. Miller’s first name. Mary was his wife.

I stared at it for a long minute. Then I slipped it into my own pocket and said nothing.

That winter the hunger came back worse. The meat lasted longer now—Dad was efficient, boiling bones for broth, rendering fat into jars. But the portions shrank. Ellie’s hair grew back thin. Mom’s hands shook when she cut.

One night I woke to voices. Dad and Mom whispering in the next room.

Mom: “We can’t keep doing this.”

Dad: “We don’t have a choice. You want the girls to starve?”

Mom: “There has to be another way.”

Dad: “There isn’t. Not anymore.”

Silence. Then Mom, softer: “Pritchard’s place is empty now. Nobody will look.”

I pretended to sleep.

Spring 2010. The recession was “over” on TV, but not for us. We stayed in the cabin. The town was a ghost—houses collapsing, roads overgrown. Nobody came looking for the missing. Who would? People left small towns all the time.

Dad stopped pretending it was deer.

One night he sat us down after dinner. The cabin smelled of woodsmoke and copper.

He said, “You’re old enough to understand. We did what we had to. The world left us no choice. Those people were already gone—starving, sick, ready to die. We just… helped nature along. And we survived because of it.”

Ellie started crying. Mom stared at the floor.

I asked, “How many?”

Dad looked me in the eye. “Enough.”

I didn’t cry. I just felt something cold settle in my chest.

After that, we kept eating.

I turned eighteen in 2011. The economy had “recovered.” I got a job in Charleston—minimum wage at a warehouse. I moved into a rented room, sent money home when I could. Ellie stayed with Mom and Dad. She was quieter now, eyes always down.

I never went back to the cabin after 2012.

Last year—2025—Ellie called me. She was twenty-eight, living in Pittsburgh, working as a nurse. She sounded calm, too calm.

“They found bones,” she said. “In the old Pritchard place. Human. They’re digging up the ridge.”

I asked if she was okay.

She laughed once, short and hollow. “I’m fine. I just… I still taste it sometimes. Don’t you?”

I hung up.

I live in a one-bedroom apartment now. I work nights. I keep the fridge stocked—steaks, roasts, ground beef. I cook every meal myself. I never eat out.

Last month I drove past a billboard on I-79: West Virginia—Almost Heaven.

I pulled over and vomited on the shoulder.

The hunger never really left. It just learned to wait.

Sometimes at night I dream of the cabin. Dad’s silhouette against the stove, carving. Mom humming an old hymn. Ellie’s small hands reaching for seconds.

And in the dream, I’m always hungry.

I wake up tasting iron.

I don’t know how many more years I have before someone knocks on my door with questions. Before they trace the disappearances back to Hollow Ridge, back to that winter, back to us.

But I know one thing.

If the money ever runs out again—if the shelves empty, if the lights go off for good—I know exactly what I’ll do.

I’ll go home.

And I’ll bring my own knife.