Feb 2015
The night had already begun before Harold had awoken, and as his eyelids lifted, the sun was slowly sinking like a lifeboat with a gradual but determined leak. He got out of bed and crossed naked to the windows, where he pulled closed the blinds to shut out the last slanted rays of the day from pelting him in the face.
"Hahhh..." He sighed with relief at the reinforced darkness, and lay back down in bed facing the ceiling without bothering to pull the blankets back up and over his body.
He thought briefly 'I'll never fall back asleep now, my body just won't take any more rest, I suppose' he had been sleeping for almost 14 hours at this point. Yet he didn't move from his horizontal position, but instead lied still with his eyes affixed to the ceiling and felt his retinas irising open to greedily take in what strands of light still remained. It was odd, feeling his eyes adjust like that. The kind of feeling you don't notice until you really focus on feeling it.
Suddenly and seemingly without cause his head rolled to the right, and he flinched at the brightness of his digital alarm clock on the nightstand beside him. In a brief confusion he read the clock and thought 'How is the sun setting at 11:37 pm?..' but then remembered it ran 5 hours too fast since the last time he lost power, and he had been too lazy to set it correctly.
"It's 6:37 you numb ****," he said to himself in a voice little more than a harsh whisper, "**** clocks anyway."
Sighing again, he swung his feet off the bed and felt them pendulum to the ground with an unsteady muscle spasm and he was startled briefly by his lack of equilibrium. 'Sleeping for 14 hours at a time will do this to a person, especially a person as hung over as I am..' as he thought, his mind throbbed with every unspoken word and he averted thinking about the previous night.
He righted himself and sat there on the edge of his bed, or his casket as he liked to think of it, and let his head hang limp and buried in his hands. "Another day well spent," Harold's voice cracked and rasped on the words he spoke, and he stood to fix himself a glass of water whilst gripping an unlit cigarette that he grabbed from his nightstand in between his lips.
"Hahhh..." He sighed with relief at the reinforced darkness, and lay back down in bed facing the ceiling without bothering to pull the blankets back up and over his body.
He thought briefly 'I'll never fall back asleep now, my body just won't take any more rest, I suppose' he had been sleeping for almost 14 hours at this point. Yet he didn't move from his horizontal position, but instead lied still with his eyes affixed to the ceiling and felt his retinas irising open to greedily take in what strands of light still remained. It was odd, feeling his eyes adjust like that. The kind of feeling you don't notice until you really focus on feeling it.
Suddenly and seemingly without cause his head rolled to the right, and he flinched at the brightness of his digital alarm clock on the nightstand beside him. In a brief confusion he read the clock and thought 'How is the sun setting at 11:37 pm?..' but then remembered it ran 5 hours too fast since the last time he lost power, and he had been too lazy to set it correctly.
"It's 6:37 you numb ****," he said to himself in a voice little more than a harsh whisper, "**** clocks anyway."
Sighing again, he swung his feet off the bed and felt them pendulum to the ground with an unsteady muscle spasm and he was startled briefly by his lack of equilibrium. 'Sleeping for 14 hours at a time will do this to a person, especially a person as hung over as I am..' as he thought, his mind throbbed with every unspoken word and he averted thinking about the previous night.
He righted himself and sat there on the edge of his bed, or his casket as he liked to think of it, and let his head hang limp and buried in his hands. "Another day well spent," Harold's voice cracked and rasped on the words he spoke, and he stood to fix himself a glass of water whilst gripping an unlit cigarette that he grabbed from his nightstand in between his lips.
