The nightlife.
"Cha-chunk...cha-chunk...cha-chunk..." the gears on my aging wall clock shift menacingly. I'm not quite sure what or who it aims to terrorize on a normal day, but on this particular night that clock has targeted me and has excellent aim.
As I sat scrawling in my marble composition notebook by the flickering light of late night television, the only thing I can hear is that incessant, monotonous ticking. The man with the large chin is introducing an indifferent indie band behind me, but I can't hear their tambourines or tom-toms. My sister is warbling loudly on her cell phone, to yet another "old friend" obsessed with homicidal clown music, about how she "just can't take it anymore", but I can't hear that either. All I can hear is the ticking.
Some time passes and my favorite nighttime personality, the Irish one with the blue styrofoam backdrop, begins his monologue. But I can't appreciate his lesbian jokes because all I can hear is the ticking.
The noise flies against my eardrums and rings nonstop in my cerebellum.
"The only thing to end it will be sleep," I suppose. But I can't slip into that so easily. And I'm stuck with that relentless ticking and my insomnia.
My eyes are straining from searching for the wide-ruled blue lines in the low 12" television glow. They're straining and they're tired, but they won't give in to slumber. In the back of my head, I recall that I haven't taken my medication tonight. But I can't bring myself right now to extend my arms and take two puffs of life in the form of compressed air.
Morgan Freeman's voice seeps momentarily into the pauses between the clock's ticking, and I vaguely hear the page of my notebook flip over to the next. I can see there's a commercial on the glowing blue screen for the newest, and surprisingly heartwarming, Disney/Pixar film, but I can't focus long enough to recognize the robot's futuristic wailing. I can't sleep, I can't hear, and I can't puff the steroids that may add an extra thirty seconds to my life when I'm 76 and my husband is passing away of heart disease. I don't mind the latter two, but the insomnia is just damning.
The book I finished reading just this morning slips off the nightstand and startles me. This is a result of my feet kicking madly in an attempt to rid myself of my confining bedsheets. My notebook is filled with comma-less run-ons, and I really need to rest.
So I stand on my navy blue bedspread, reach towards the ceiling, and pluck down the source of my sole and relentless irritant. I fumble with the battery pack, but eventually emerge victorious with two double A's resting in my palm.
As the house band butchers the Clash's "Rock the Casbah", I surrender to my eyelids' plea for sleep. And all sound ceases; the gears shift no more.
As I sat scrawling in my marble composition notebook by the flickering light of late night television, the only thing I can hear is that incessant, monotonous ticking. The man with the large chin is introducing an indifferent indie band behind me, but I can't hear their tambourines or tom-toms. My sister is warbling loudly on her cell phone, to yet another "old friend" obsessed with homicidal clown music, about how she "just can't take it anymore", but I can't hear that either. All I can hear is the ticking.
Some time passes and my favorite nighttime personality, the Irish one with the blue styrofoam backdrop, begins his monologue. But I can't appreciate his lesbian jokes because all I can hear is the ticking.
The noise flies against my eardrums and rings nonstop in my cerebellum.
"The only thing to end it will be sleep," I suppose. But I can't slip into that so easily. And I'm stuck with that relentless ticking and my insomnia.
My eyes are straining from searching for the wide-ruled blue lines in the low 12" television glow. They're straining and they're tired, but they won't give in to slumber. In the back of my head, I recall that I haven't taken my medication tonight. But I can't bring myself right now to extend my arms and take two puffs of life in the form of compressed air.
Morgan Freeman's voice seeps momentarily into the pauses between the clock's ticking, and I vaguely hear the page of my notebook flip over to the next. I can see there's a commercial on the glowing blue screen for the newest, and surprisingly heartwarming, Disney/Pixar film, but I can't focus long enough to recognize the robot's futuristic wailing. I can't sleep, I can't hear, and I can't puff the steroids that may add an extra thirty seconds to my life when I'm 76 and my husband is passing away of heart disease. I don't mind the latter two, but the insomnia is just damning.
The book I finished reading just this morning slips off the nightstand and startles me. This is a result of my feet kicking madly in an attempt to rid myself of my confining bedsheets. My notebook is filled with comma-less run-ons, and I really need to rest.
So I stand on my navy blue bedspread, reach towards the ceiling, and pluck down the source of my sole and relentless irritant. I fumble with the battery pack, but eventually emerge victorious with two double A's resting in my palm.
As the house band butchers the Clash's "Rock the Casbah", I surrender to my eyelids' plea for sleep. And all sound ceases; the gears shift no more.