Keep a glass of Coke by your bed. Watch the red lines click to 02:00, then 03:00. When it comes, it will come like a mosquito, whining close-by when you’re just about to drift off, making you thrash about, slapping your head. Your ears twitch like a cat’s. Thoughts are the precursor to dreams: when your mind drifts, it’s prone to drift off. Getting too comfortable could spell the end. As you get up, your feet crunch on the drinks cans that surround your bed. Your pupils shrink back from the light, you feel the seat sapping your warmth, you rest your face against the tiles. In the mirror, your eyes are a shepherd’s warning. You creep back to bed, lay your head on the slab of rock you dragged up the beach, pull the pebble-filled duvet over your protesting legs. It’s 05:01. Light is beginning to creep in from behind the curtains. You get up to fling them open and cast your eyes to the brightest point in the sky. In doing so, you step on a crushed can, cutting your foot open. This is good: pain is staying alert. You bandage the cut with a cloth soaked in salt water. When the sun has fully risen and your wound has stopped throbbing, you step into the bathroom. Yours is one of those showers with a built-in ice machine. You turn it up to maximum and stand under it in your pyjamas. The ice sticks to your clothes and the clothes stick to your legs. This is good: cold is staying alert. You get out and dry your feet, so as not to slip on the tiles. You walk to the fridge and with shaking hands, open a bag of fresh chilies. You take a single red finger and slice it up, seeds and all, then chew it down. The tingling starts in your lips, your tongue, your gums. Then the burning starts in your throat. This is good: burning is staying alert. Who needs to cook when you can sustain yourself on caffeine and capsaicin? Food makes you sleepy. You have hacked food, extracted the essentials for attention. Maybe, when this is all over, you’ll move to Silicon Valley. Start an app. You ponder that, as you sit still on the sofa all day, hands between your thighs, eyes and ears roaming the room. See all evil. Hear all evil. Fight all evil. Your hand slips from between your thighs and slaps you in the face for thinking. Stay alert, idiot. It’s watching. It’s waiting. Any sign of weakness will be punished. Your brain must be a white wall. You pick up a paint roller in your mind and start sanitising your insides. Your stomach rumbles. This is good: hunger is staying alert. Outside, the sun is starting to set. It is time to do battle with the force of night again. You walk over to the fridge, your mind already anticipating the taste of sugar and caffeine and ice cold fizz. As you pull open the door, the thing erupts from within and grasps you by the throat. You were not ready. Your mind slipped, and now, it is banging your head against the tiled floor. Pain is good, but this is not good: falling into a coma
is
not
staying…