Ticking Away

Rachel Bratt

Ms. Oliver

WLH P2

25 April 2014

Ticking Away

1:46 am. My face is smushed into my pillow, my breath falling in and out of my mouth, cooking the fabric. Hot, so hot. Flipping my pillow over to the cool side does little for that, but I flip it over anyway, pressing my forehead against the slightly cooler, drool soaked cloth. It must be early. Do I dare open my eyes and face the clock? No, if I don’t open my eyes, I’ll fall asleep sooner.  I think I have a math test tomorrow. What have we been learning? All I remember from math class is falling asleep on my desk. I can sleep on a cold desk with penciled-in phrases and crude drawings while the teacher’s lecturing loudly and flapping paper around. But I can’t sleep here. Maybe I’m too hot. I think I’m too hot.

My leg shoots up towards the ceiling, taking a cape of blankets with it. Maybe it’s a little cooler now. I don’t want to deal with people tomorrow. I actually did my homework today. Tomorrow is the day they probably won’t check it. The blanket fort collapses onto my sleepless body as I turn over to glare at another wall. I’m starting to feel sick. I took medicine for my headache before I went to bed, but I don’t think it’s doing anything. Too hot. People are talking outside. My legs are sweating.

I’m suffocating. The sheets weaved in and out of my legs are trapping my body in an infrangible cocoon. The heat is sucking out the oxygen from the air, and my breath only contributes to the damage. And the voices, the voices. Too many voices.

I think I’m supposed to count sheep. Why doesn’t anybody question that “fact”?  Why do we all have to fit into a perfect little box that literally shapes us into who we are; human or sheep? Are sheep supposed to remind us of pillows? The only thing my pillow reminds me of is that picture I saw online the other day where the pillow is a two-slotted outlet and the person’s head has a three pronged plug on the back. That’s how I feel. I don’t fit into my pillow. I don’t fit into a box.

Maybe I can sleep if I shut off my mind.

The clock ticks. The girl is still, except for one foot dangling over the side of the bed. Tick, tick, tick. The leg twitches. Tick, tick, tick. Up it goes, ripping the now defenseless cocoon and forming a fabric wall that conceals the squirming girl from the outside world. Tick, tick, tick. Down the leg goes. The hip swings and the body rolls over. Tick, tick, tick. The sheets cascade to the floor. The girl moans.

Great, now I’ll be cold. Cold? Cold means no heat. Maybe I’ll finally sleep! Something’s on my foot. Oh God, it’s probably a spider. I hate spiders. But nobody likes spiders. Does that make me too conventional? No, I am a human being. I can feel what I want to. This spider is not worthy of me. I have superiority over it. Oh God, it tickles. Okay don’t look, don’t move, don’t even breathe.

Tick, tick, tick.

Is it gone? I think it’s gone. Hot, everything’s hot. Even my eyes are hot. I need my sheets. I’m not an animal, no matter what the personality quizzes say.

I have a math test tomorrow and I didn’t study so I’ll get a bad grade which will anger my parents and the English paper needs revising and I have so many late assignments. My friends probably all secretly hate me, I’ll have to talk to people tomorrow and smile and cover up the dark circles under my eyes with concealer and foundation. I need to walk from class to class in a herd of peppy teenagers who squeal and jump to meet their friends and brutally ignore everyone else—I still have a bruise from getting hit in the face with backpack yesterday—and my friends probably hate me because who would ever actually like someone as horrendous as me? And the clock keeps ticking and people keep talking and my head is swarming!

Tick, tick, tick. I know why my eyes are hot.

The desperation swells in the girl’s sleepless body until it bubbles out in tears that drizzle onto the drool soaked pillow. She’s silent with the exception of a few whimpers and forced breaths. She bends over to pick up the sheets but the rage she’s been secretly fighting gets to her first. Fists pound the helpless pillows. The crusty drool and fresh tears push against her knuckles and fight back. Sit up, lie back, turn over, head on the foot of the bed, nothing works. What is she fighting against? That poor, disgusting creature…

I’m under my sheets like a good girl now. I don’t know what to do. Do I pray now? Pray to recover my humanity? God, what’s wrong with me? My eyes burn and there’s a demon in my throat. I’m hot. I just want to sleep. Sleep, so fundamental yet so grueling to achieve.

It’s probably almost time to get up. I hope it is. I don’t know how I’m supposed to sleep, now. It’s too dark to see the clock. All it’s good for is ticking, anyway.

The blinding light from my phone is anything but heavenly. I have to squint to read the numbers, but more tears arise and I can barely make out the time. 1:58 am.

Analysis

Dignity was a protruding theme in the novel. My story echoes this theme by giving the main character animalistic traits which wipe away her dignity. Solzhenitsyn takes away Fetyukov’s dignity by giving him the animalistic trait of green eyes when he’s envious of Shukhov smoking a cigarette. Fetyukov is deprived of his basic needs and therefore is stripped of his dignity as he is searching for a way to fulfill those needs. “The minute he started to smoke, he saw a pair of green eyes flashing at him from the other end of the shed. They were Fetyukov’s (70). Fetyukov was watching from a distance, sort of stalking his prey, the cigarettes. The moment he knew he couldn’t have them, he sheds his remaining shreds of dignity to shine green, hound eyes.

My main character loses her dignity by being deprived of her fundamental need to sleep. She doesn’t fit into a box, and dangles her legs outside it, showing she doesn’t fit into the norms of society. When the spider frightens her, she has a moment of fear in which she inflates her temporary self-esteem to get her through the moment; it’s a survival instinct. There is also emphasis on the “drool soaked pillow” to give the initial impression that the girl is not very dignified in the first place. Like Fetyukov, all she wants is her basic need: sleep. But the moment she realizes she won’t be able to have it, she lets her repressed emotions lash out and take control. Dignity is frequently lost in the simple need for survival, and the loss of dignity is often regarded as an unimportant mental illness, such as insomnia.