Creativity: Insomnia

Thinking about writing, I realised I'd written this awhile back and let it rot in my writings folder, so I pulled it out and put it here.

Insomnia

Late at night, early in the morning, in the hours when most sane people are asleep, a certain few are not. While many of these people are forced into this pattern by their schedules, their work, their family and friends, others are not. These are those who are simply sleepless – the insomniacs of our society, who lie, awake, staring at their ceilings, until fatigue drags them under the warm blanket of sleep. They walk the streets at night, away from the harsh judgement of the sun, or stay awake until the grey hours of dawn, working at their desks until their vision blurs and their focus slips. They read, they eat, they find some way to pass the time, waiting until, at last, exhaustion catches up with them and they fall into blissful oblivion.

Ding-dong.

The doorbell rings.

It was three in the morning, and Keith couldn't imagine who would be at his door at three in the morning. With a sigh, he rubbed his nose, pushed his glasses up a bit, and left his computer running at his desk as he went downstairs.

He lived alone, working as a programmer; he built and maintained database programs for large companies. He was contracted out at the moment, a lucrative deal with a shipping firm – he had built them a program (well, taken a similar program he had written a few years back and tweaked it to be up-to-date), and now he was getting paid to come in twice a week to back up data and assure the bigwigs that yes, everything was working fine. So he had a lot of free time on his hands – but he was one of those people who manages to bring their work home even if they don't have any. He was trying to create a more efficient sorting algorithim at the moment.

Scratching his chin – he needed to shave, he reflected - he shuffled through his living room, blinking owlishly at the familiar furniture. His house was comfortable, if a little small, and over the few months he had lived in it had become home. An outsider, looking through the room, may have noticed little things that spoke volumes about the occupant – books, some novels, some weighty coding tomes, stacked in neat piles on the coffee table, no dirty clothes or dishes strewn about the room, the television covered in a layer of dust, and a small analog clock, quietly ticking on the table. Keith liked the ticking sound it made. Little things, little familiar regular things, like the warm hum his computer made, were the stuff that, he thought, kept him sane. Without them, he would snap like a popsicle stick, snapped in half a giant's hands.

He rubbed his eyes. That was a bad simile, he decided. Perhaps he needed to sleep. Shrugging mentally, he pulled open the door, preparing to greet whoever it was.

He blinked. “Lucus?” Almost the last person he had expected to see.

Lucus and him had been great friends throughout primary school and highschool. They had both been geeks, getting together at each others' houses to play video games, striving to best each other or overcome challenges together. As the years passed their friendship had been tightened – they had done everything together, closer than siblings – but as college began and adulthood loomed, they had slipped apart. Keith planned his life out and followed through – hence the comfortable house and healthy bank account. Lucus, on the other hand, had just let life wash over him, enjoying himself thoroughly while he wasn't tied down by a career or a relationship. He had breezed through school on his smarts alone, never working, sometimes learning an entire topic the day of an exam, and managed to score above average in every subject. He was the kind of person who made life seem effortless – and perhaps for him it truly was – always with a pretty girl on his arm, well-built and fit without ever excercising, flashing a grin as he solved maths problems he'd learned the concept behind minutes ago like he had been doing it all his life. Keith had always been a little jealous of him. Nevertheless, despite being almost the polar opposite of a stereotypical gamer, Lucus was very much into video games, playing them well into the night, often entering into competitions and leagues. He was always bugging Keith to play online with him, but Keith hardly ever had time any more, even for just a few rounds.

“Hey man,” Lucus greeted him. “What's up?” He walked in without asking, yawning as he did so.

“The hell are you doing at my house at this time of night?” Keith asked bluntly, too tired to make small talk. Lucus wandered over to a couch and flopped onto it, draping himself over it rather than sitting in it.

“Oh, y'know, couldn't sleep and I was bored. Figured you'd be awake, so I walked over. Why weren't'cha online?”

“You walked from your house to mine at three in the morning because you were bored?” Keith said, deliberately not answering the question.

“Yeah, why?”

“It's a thirty minute walk,” he said, crossing his arms.

“Nyeh,” replied Lucus, waving his arm dismissively. “Not that long.”

Keith blinked. “Well, shit,” he said. “Want some coffee?”

“Mh, tea'd be good, thanks,” Lucus said, sitting up and yawning. “Damn, I'm tired.”

Keith sighed, shaking his head as he walked into the kitchen and started the kettle boiling.

“Oy, Kiko!” Lucas called out from the living room. “You gotten any new games for your PS2 yet?”

“Don't call me that,” Keith replied. “No, I haven't had time for games recently. I've had a lot of work.”

“As if you have,” Lucas replied. “I know you, you finish everything with plenty of time to spare. Bet you're just making extra work for yourself.”

Keith began to rebut, then realised Lucas was right and shut his mouth. The database was satisfactory to his boss, he didn't have any other work, he didn't really need to make that sorting algorithm. Lucas knew him far too well. He made his coffee – black, no sugar – and Lucas's tea – white, two sugars – and brought them back in to the living room, to find Lucas looking at the case for the newest Final Fantasy game.

“You finished this yet?” he said, looking up from the case.

“No, I haven't,” replied Keith, passing him his mug.

“You should. Good game.” He took a sip from his drink, then looked thoughtfully at it for a moment. “Hum.”

Keith raised an eyebrow. “What now?”

“I just had a good idea.”

“No you didn't. You just had a bad idea. Your ideas are never good.” Ignoring him, Lucas reached into his jacket pocket and fished around, withdrawing a mangled Caramello Koala. Grinning at Keith, he unwrapped it and dropped it into his drink. Keith sighed and sipped his coffee.

“And now...” Lucas said, taking another sip. He swilled it around his mouth for a moment, then swallowed. “It tastes like tea and chocolate,” he announced.

“Amazing,” Keith said dryly. “You'll make millions.” Lucas stuck his tounge out at him, then took another, larger sip.

“Owfuck!” Lucas said loudly, putting his mug down sharply and leaning back. Keith raised his eyebrow again. “I burnt my tounge,” Lucas said by way of explanation, making a funny face.

“Correction,” Keith said. “You scalded your tounge.”

“Shaddup you,” Lucas said dismissively. Leaving his drink aside for the time being, he returned to rummaging through the stash of games in the cabinet below Keith's television. “By the way,” he said, “was I right?”

“Hm?” asked Keith, momentarily lost. “About what?”

“About your work.”

“I-” he began, then “Oh, yes, damn you.” Lucas grinned triumphantly as Keith glared at his back.

After a few more seconds, “Ah-hah!” and Lucas emerged, triumphantly holding a game. Keith didn't even get to see what it was before he was had the game in the console and was turning everything on.

Keith sighed and stretched, yawning widely. He did need to get to sleep, and he did want to work out that damn algorithm sometime soon. He opened his eyes just in time for a controller to hit him in the chest, luckily didn't spill his coffee, and sat up, guessing that he wasn't going to get out of this.

“Alright,” he said, looking at the screen of his dusty television. “It's been a while since I kicked your arse at Tekken.”

Lucas grinned. “And it'll be a while yet, Kiko-old-pal.”

“Don't call me that. How do you even get Kiko from Keith?”

About an hour later, Keith was taking his empty mug to the kitchen. He put it in the sink and came back in to the living room – Lucus had fallen asleep in the minute he was out of the room. Keith shook his head with a smile. Walking over, he turned off the television and the PS2, picked up Lucas's mug and took it over to the sink. He glanced at it with a sigh; the inside was covered in partially melted caramel.

Turning off the lights downstairs, he trudged up to his bedroom and looked at his computer. The lines of code somehow didn't seem that appealing anymore. Sighing, he shut it down and prepared to go to bed.

He would play Final Fantasy instead of work tomorrow, he decided.