Sleepless Night

The pink salt rock night light illuminates the dark black, overly decorated room. Posters of all kinds of bands, movies, and books cover the left side of the room. On the right side, there’s a bookshelf lined with records, books, and figurines of all shapes and sizes. In the middle of the room was the queen-sized bed, which covered more than half of the room. Rustling under his white, wool blanket, was Daniel. Daniel had been trying to sleep for about 2 hours, to no avail. He knew he had to go to work in 6 hours, yet he was having quite an issue staying asleep; that being one of the flaws of having such an active mind. 

This wasn’t any new news, but it’s still weird in the first place. He would come back home, exhausted after 8 hours of running around the restaurant he worked at, picking up plates, cleaning tables, stocking up the bar, bringing food from the kitchen, and getting yelled at by his manager, but he couldn’t seem to fall asleep. His body was exhausted, barely being able to get himself onto his bed, but his mind seemed to be running on a backup generator. Daniel kept phasing in and out of dreaming, unable to maintain a steady flow to fall asleep. What was it that kept Daniel up for so long? Could that plate he broke at work? Could it be that light he left on in the bathroom? Could it be the story that he put off writing for so long? Perhaps it was all of these, perhaps it was none of these at all. It can’t be something that happened today, he had stopped caring after the 9th time it happened. It can’t be something as minor as the light, he doesn’t have to pay utility for his apartment. It can’t be the story he hasn’t written yet, he’s been putting it off for 3 months, and his mild insomnia started appearing 1 month ago.

Daniel was now wide awake, staring at the white little stars painted onto the ceiling, feeling as if he were drifting past the stars, having to imagine passing different planets, like Jupiter and Saturn, as they weren’t painted on the space above him. He felt as if he was moving at the speed of light, riding the motions of his soul, burning the passion fuel he holds within. The experience felt so real, too stimulating to be a dream, keeping his mind awake, but his body still. He could feel slight sparks run throughout his body, but he keeps still, not being able to move physically, but speeding across mentally and spiritually.

Going through the adventure of his imaginary dreamscape, Daniel wonders if he still was awake, or if he was in some trance-like sleep. Whatever it was, he held on to this rollercoaster of an experience, feeling that childish joy, just like when he would play with his toys and orchestrate the world inside his mind. Passing a few planets, he sees a come across a battleground of spaceships of two large factions; each side shoots a barrage of lasers at each other, small ships and missiles creating a sort of war dome around the area, the sound of the fighting booming across the little white stars. Daniel sighs, preparing himself to join the fight, thinking to himself in the last conscious spot of his mind: “God, here we go again.”