Gratuitous

I open my eyes upon a day that's too long before it's even began. The clock reads 5:29 AM. I steel myself for the onslaught but it does me no good. The bleating lasts an eternity. I lash out in all directions, swatting aimlessly, succeeding only in knocking the alarm under the bed. From there, it's louder somehow.

I roll over and pop a pill.

The road is lousy with bad drivers. I navigate the heathen, dripping, sneezing, sweating, hacking. My eyes are on fire, my brain packed in wool. Twice, I slam on the breaks to avoid imaginary vehicles. The road pays out beneath my car. The world rushes past, an inconsequential blur, a movie.

Blowing my nose on my sleeve, I pop a pill.

My nose is stuffed shut. I stare at the monitor, gasping like a fish, like a predator, like an inexperienced high school lover. My skin is tighter than yesterday, old, clammy, cold to the touch. This isn't my nose. This isn't my skin.

I take more pills.

My ears are too hot and too cold. It's much too hot in here. I draw my coat around myself, shivering. Sweat pours down the back of my neck. My shirt is tacky with it, sticking and un-sticking itself to my skin. This is torture. This is hopeless.

I try not to move and pop another pill.

Vacation lingers just out of reach, a phrase on the tip of my tongue that I can't quit spit out, a name I can't quite remember. I giggle in the awkward silence, pretending to know, praying for the bell to save me. I sit in the library anticipating, hearing the phantom uneven thrum of overburdened teenage hearts, smelling the dank animal stink of finals week stress, the air thick and electric with panic. No one around me knows it but we'll all be dead soon.

I shut my teeth against the truth and take another pill.

"It'll all be over soon," I tell myself as I stumble toward my car, realizing that, no matter what, I'm right. The sun climbs higher in the sky, highlighting the sin of my existence, issuing everything but warmth. It mocks me. I flip it the bird. A young man with a terrible beard mistakes my gesture. He barely summons the energy to say something that sounds like "whatever" before changing course, now heading in the opposite direction. Had he actually seen me? Was that just my ego? I don't care. I cannot care.

I stuff my greedy frozen fingers into my pockets. I am out of pills. No matter.

I am home. I am sleeping. I am on vacation.

Soon.