Creative Piece – The Sitcom fight against Tomorrow

‘I don’t want to sleep.’

Sleep brings on tomorrow. Tomorrow is only a day away as long as you’re awake. Sleep is the harbinger of the future, of tomorrow.  Tomorrow is death. Tomorrow is darkness. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow.

The clock reads 11:56pm. The glare is bright off your laptop. The sounds of Friends are soft in your ears; you barely hear that last joke Chandler made. Not that it matters, your mind is somewhere else, back in that sweet, sweet world of yesterday. 11:57pm. All is black, the only light the glare of the screen, the soft warm red of Central Perk. You reach out and touch the screen. Take me with you, sweep me into the magical world of sit-coms, laughs and endless pleasure. You know it all works out eventually; it must in television. The clock now reads 11:58pm in angry red letters.

You hate their laughter, hate their happiness. Hate their bland, bright outlook on that awful tomorrow. You switch to Seinfeld. Their bitter endings, the broken lives, the lies. It’s perfect. Only you feel yourself slipping away, away into that dark land of dreams. Of screams and deadlines and swirling colours. Of madness wiggling like worm in your brain. No, no, no. You blare the volume up. Take me away, away from this reality, away from the awful feeling of the seconds running past me. The worm moves within your mind. It breathes, death & decay. A metamor – NO! Your hand begins to tremble and your chest tightens. The metamorphosis is complete; your efforts are in vain. George tried and died. You can never win, only feel the asphyxiating breath of the beast of eternal emptiness that sprouts from your decaying thoughts. The monster of the future. The gravestone with your name in it. An empty funeral where one lone friend cries a single pathetic tear. Empty. Couldn’t even afford mourners.

You feel them pile on the dirt, the pressure in the coffin gets stronger. You hear the muffled thumps as clods land on the coffin lid. Your soul screams out, but the dead lips stay shut firmly. Weak, ethereal hands scrabble at the wood. You’re drowning in your own despair, a black substance that rises in the coffin until you gag on it, drowning in the thick muck of your desperate fate.

You wake up gasping. Your hand automatically reaches up to wipe the drool off your face, then stops. That sinking feeling in your stomach, of weighted stones tossed in. That black pit you feel open as you see the bright sunlight bouncing off the wall. Somehow, you hope, you finished. Finished all the essays, all the revision, all the work you put off until it was too late. The sleep button on your laptop is blinking, so you turn it back on. 120 words. An unfinished sentence. Half-remembered facts float up to the top of your head. The sleep deprivation kicks in, the words on the screen rearrange themselves into a black smiley face. Then it begins to melt, its mouth contorts into a cruel grimace that laughs and laughs and laughs at you.

Desperation hits you again. Your knees buckle as you try to stand up from your chair, so you collapse onto the soft, warm floor. Your legs spasm from uncomfortable knots, the beautiful side effects of sitting all day. There, flopping on the floor, you begin to cry. Cry cold and desperate as you feel the gentle caress of the sun’s warmth on your hair. Even that will die someday.

It’s not as if anyone cares, so why should you care. You do more than you should. You could easily get a B, it doesn’t matter. You’ll never be the best, why bother. This whole life is just a shallow existence. Shallow as a child pool, your toes hardly get wet. If only they could see.

You wake up and you’re in the shower, the hot water washing the tears away. AC/DC blares in the background.

“You’re TNT”

If only. If only I could blow this whole reality away, create a new reality that actually makes sense. A human existence worth living. How did I get here? Your fingers freeze on your scalp. The soft smell of the shampoo you don’t remember getting. Suddenly you’re dressed and walking along to school, a coffee in your hand.

Think back, think. A vague memory of a barista asking you if you want sugar. Some blurred breakfast conversation. Soft blonde hair floating right before you. Then you’re sitting in the Piccadilly on your way home.  Home. The day has passed and school has ended.

You blink and its 11:58pm again. It happened again. A whole day just swallowed up. You don’t even know what you ate for dinner two hours ago. I couldn’t tell you what just happened in the new episode of Daredevil you just saw. All you remember is the strange resonance. The struggle. The desire to see through the weird black veil that drapes over existence.

Maybe it’s just that you want to hit someone really hard, and keep hitting them. You want to feel something. Feel rage, despair, soul-crushing loss. Emotion is what you need. Emotion. You switch to Good Will Hunting. You watch that one heart wrenching scene where Matt Damon cries, some real emotion. Then you hate yourself. You don’t have it bad. You’re fine. There are people out there with real problems and you’re sitting here bitching about your boring life.

Boring. Is my life boring? You think about that. The tube pulls up to Earl’s Court. Someone you know gets on the tube and waves at you. Nothing. Well that was probably rude of me to ignore him. Especially since we just walked all the way to school. Look, he’s still glaring at me as we leave school.

Am I home again already? These feet operate alone. My brain and mouth divorced so long ago.

‘My day was fine, thank you for asking. What did you guys get up to today? Am I going out tonight? No, why would I. Oh right it’s Friday. Yeah maybe then.’

Your phone buzzes. Your friends are asking where you are as you get changed. As usual you’re late. You text them on my way, then look up from your phone at them, from where you are in the corner you can see the whole party. There’s a stack of bottles by your right hand, but you don’t feel anything, you’re not sure you drank them. Some girl comes over to talk to you, probably saw you sitting alone and thought you were doing something. Do you know her? Oh, yeah, right, we met at that thing a while back. You remember thinking she was cute.

‘I don’t want your pity. You’re hot but you’re empty, we all are’

Where did that come from. You’re sitting on the couch with your friends, staring at the wreckage of the night. ‘I can’t believe she actually left once you showed up.’ Apparently, she was still offended at what you told her two weeks before. You don’t care. It’s late so you’re going to sleep.

Then it’s Monday again and your teacher is complaining about the work you’re five weeks overdue. That’s right six weeks you haven’t done it. Wait, is it Monday again already. It must be, this time you have the work. You can’t for the life of you remember when you wrote it.

Stop. Stop. Stop.

Its 11:59pm now. On a Tuesday. Ten weeks later. You’re not sure what has happened for the past month or so. You know you need sleep, but there’s a movie still playing. You’ve just discovered Scorsese’s Vinyl and its masterful. You love the music most of all. What if I’d been born back then? A time where people were free. Free to ruin their lives and die young. Slip into a world of acid induced hallucinations of mystical creatures and soft fuzzy pavements ten stories down. The fuzziness is real. The modern world has stripped you of your ability to live as you wish. You can no longer choose to die. Emergency response saves you on time. The police should take you in alive. People around you should help you. I hate society. Let me rot away in peace.

You imagine going out into the wilderness. A dark, deep jungle. Just walking endlessly into the darkness. The insects bite. Poison courses through your veins. Your clothes are torn off by a million branches scratching, tearing, whipping you. You run out of supplies. Your ribs stick out, hunger and feverish conditions set to work. The last drop of water dries on your tongue, yet the moisture soaks through the skin. Two big round eyes stare at you from on high. What remains at least. The crawling stick is so pitiful the eyes don’t bother. A bug would be more nourishment.  So you laugh, and laugh and laugh. Here is life. Life without all the money, cars, clothes and glamour to cover it, to mask the true wilderness of it all. You’ve found the secret to life. The secret is death. It’s to crawl to your grave bloodied and alone. The secret is to just keep going no matter what. In the end, nothing around you matters, just the constant, forward direction into the dark oblivion.

You wake up, its 7:30am, so you’ll probably be late. The sun shines on you as you wash your face and brush your teeth. After getting dressed, you go down to breakfast and have two eggs, with a slice of ham and a piece of toast. Then a coffee, one of the Nescafe capsules, you’re sure it was an envivo lungo. That rich, smoky flavour lingers on your tongue, and you relish the calm, but it’s time for school so you grab your bag and head to the door. On your way out you stop to check your reflection in the mirror. There, you’re standing, weakly supported by a tall branch amongst the dense jungle. You wink at your mirror self and adjust your tie. He smiles weakly back. Then you head out into the sunny day.

Back in the mirror, another you finally closes his eyes to sleep. It’s no longer his concern.