Seeking Lethargy

A boy struggles with sleep.

“F**k I hate the warm.”

As the highly insulated room reached it's peak in horrid smell and stuffiness, the eighteen year old Mexican boy lying on the stack of dirty and bumpy mattresses began to feel a little unrest. Just like everyone else in his family, he himself knew and acknowledged that he had class at the local community college later today, but still found himself wide awake at the deeply depressing hour of three in the morning. Ever since around ten the previous night, he has been going through this cycle of putting on an episode of the television show Scrubs on at a low volume while also setting his television set's sleep time to ninety minutes from whenever he was setting it at. He would then lay his pudgy head down on his thin but comfortable pillow, while shoving a bigger pillow in between his thighs, and closes his eyes in order to attempt a good night's sleep. About twenty-two minutes later, the average length of an episode of Scrubs, the boy would accept that he is nowhere near the state of actual slumber, so he gets up, puts on his slippers, walks to the bathroom, attempts to urinate despite not actually having to go, returns to his room, and repeats the same cycle as before. After about repeating this set of cycles about three times, the boy would then break the repetitive nature of his actions by booting up his laptop, launch Google Chrome with incognito mode, and surf the internet for pornographic material to self-gratify himself too. This particular night he happened to be in the mood for some videos involving pale Japanese woman having their breasts massaged, so after about twenty minutes of searching, finding, and then executing his desired task, the boy would once again put on an episode of Scrubs, and repeat the exact same cycle as before. He ended up repeating this entire routine three times tonight, hence why the boy was still up at three in the morning. Nearing the completion of his fourth routine, the boy realized that, despite possibly being physically able, he did not want to watch another naked woman being pleasured for his own pleasure once more. No. He started thinking of another solution. The warm. He decided that it was the warm temperature of the room that was causing his insomnia, so he quickly got up, walked over to the black standing fan on the far side of his bedroom, plugged it into the nearest power outlet, turned it on full blast, walked back to his bed, and once again put on an episode of Scrubs and repeated the same cycle as before.

It is now four in the morning and the boy has still had no luck in finding sleep within the confines of his bedroom. He began to think of the consequences that his lack of sleep will bring upon him. He might be late for his Intro to Computers class tomorrow, a fact that he actually does not care much about considering he has become quite disenchanted with any form of an educational institution over the past couple of years. No. The thing he did happen to somewhat fear were the feelings of disappointment he would evoke from his friends and family:

“Weren't you suppose to be the smart one?”

“I always thought you were going to do great things!”

“So what if you're illegal?”

“Other people have been in worse situations and come out successful despite them!”

“They'll never really understand how it feels.” he said out loud to himself. For the next twenty minutes the boy just laid there, motionless, but unable to reach that state of unconsciousness he has been ironically daydreaming about since ten the previous night. He started to wonder whether all the angst that seems to be contained within himself happened to be the culprit behind his unlikely attempts at some shut-eye.

“No. It's definitely the cold. F**k I hate the cold.”

Author's Note

Something I typed up around four in the morning. I have been reading a huge amount of flash fiction lately, so it's obvious that this was hugely influenced by that. If you have some tips on how to get the flash fiction format right, I would very much appreciate it.