In hindsight we should have been better prepared for the zombie apocalypse. People tried to warn us that the end of the world was nigh but we laughed them off as crazy naysayers, doomsdayers, or Jehovah’s Witnesses. We too easily dismissed the words of those friends and family we should have trusted and we should have spotted the early signs that all was not as it used to be.

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment it started, it crept up on us so gradually and was nothing like the films where one brain hungry monster’s bite induces instant cranial cravings of your own. But if I had to give a date I’d say somewhere around the start of August, around the same time of the arrival of the little being.

The little being came to us on the day of the Swiss national holiday and its arrival complemented the Swiss festivities for indeed it was a joyous occasion that warranted celebration, even if the advance preparations were a little traumatic for all concerned. The minute thing seemed so helpless and innocent that we were lured to it and felt an instant connection and bond that blinded us to what was coming. Perhaps we were naïve but perhaps under these circumstances no-one could have had the ability to foresee the great power that it already wielded over us now bound us in inescapable bonds. Whatever the truth of the matter our lives of servitude had now begun and there was no escape.

As I said, it came on so gradually, it wasn’t perceptible at first. It was only natural that after the little being’s grand entrance into the world I should want to zealously watch over it to ensure that no harm could befall it. Innocuously it passed the night in peaceful slumber and as the beard returned home and I was left alone in the hospital room I volunteered for the first watch, not knowing how long this watch would last.

When the man returned the following morning, I was only too pleased to report how well the small one had reposed. When left alone for the second night I eagerly anticipated another restful eve for the little being and thought it may be permissible to take my sensory leave and recharge my, by now slightly weary, human cells, but unwittingly I had made a fatal error.

It seems my mistake was in continuing to believe my life was still my own, to do with as I would like. I had not understood the full extent of the invisible contract I had entered into, in accepting the little being into our lives. It was our master now and it exercised its supremacy during the witching hours of that second night when demonstrating rest was an abstract concept that it alone could deploy or remove at will. Apparently it could do without sleep to teach me this valuable lesson.

I felt my humanity drifting away but I clung to a hope that some part of me still remained in the skin I managed to shuffle around in and that I could still recover my senses and return to the fully operational version of myself that had existed before the advent of the teeny creature. The cure seemed so simple, all that was required was a good night’s sleep, but was already now far beyond my reach.

When the beard and I took the little being home I hadn’t realised that the malaise I suffered from was infectious and that soon, he too, would be contaminated by the same dreamless machinations contrived by a titchy master that demanded our attention at any waking or attempted sleeping moment. As the days and nights blended into one interminable mess of hours we were dragged further and further from the mortal selves we had previously known. We became shadows of ourselves, barely functioning automatons that lived to service the being’s needs. We survived off the scraps of repose it may casually toss our way after duties had been fulfilled before its insatiable hunger loomed again.

In the battle of our will to sleep and its will to deny us that luxury it had the advantage. Its micro proportions meant that it could easily recharge and function on the short snippets of sleep it allowed itself, but two formally functional grown adults could not possibly reboot their necessary systems within these short time spans, even if they could turn themselves on and off in synchronisation with the tiny pest.

Even now we were so under the little being’s spell that the exasperations that should have rightly been laid at its door were misdirected at each other. From time to time emotions would erupt and accusations of deliberately avoiding duties along with occasional packet of nappies were hurled at each other as missiles of our snooze-deprived frustration.

We never thought we’d be the kind of people to cave so easily to terrorists but in the early hours of the mornings we begged our miniscule captor for release from our doze-divested state. In our attempts to negotiate with the petite extremist we promised it everything under the sun from limitless food provision, all the toys it could handle, 24-hour viewings of ‘Frozen’ on repeat and a free choice of naming any future pets or siblings no matter how ridiculous the consequences. But the little being was unmoved.

Secure in its domination over us, that we no longer had the capacity to resist, the little being allowed itself slightly longer rest periods, even as long as four and a half hours at times! Slaves that we were we rejoiced in its generosity as it gave us back a tiny fraction of that which it had forcibly taken from us at our initial subjugation.

And still the diminutive organism continued to toy with us. Whenever we thought we found a pattern to its strange dozing habits that we could adapt to in an attempt to recover a small semblance of our conscious selves, the little being would change the rules and intersperse new variations on its slumber(less) patterns.

The beard and I vaguely remembered that we had once had names and souls of our own as we shuffled past each other, dragging our feet and groaning in the early hours of the morning. If we had been given the opportunity we would have dreamt of sleep, but denied even this we continued to devote ourselves to the micro ruler’s will.

The zombification has overcome us and we are fully enslaved to the will of the little one. I fear there is no hope for a remedy that will return us to earlier days where we could lounge in a blissful siesta state for half a day or more. The best we can hope for in the immediate future is a six-hour snooze, should the little being allow us that we would be as happy as the walking dead at an all you can eat brain buffet.