I keep my eyes screwed shut, groaning as I lift my hand to my forehead and rub it, as if that would stop my brain from pounding against my skull. My mouth is bone-dry, my throat isn’t faring much better, and my lips feel like they’re ready to simply peel off my face, leaving me to do nothing but curse my nose for being so blocked that I’m forced to be a mouth-breather in my sleep. 

I stretch my arm out blindly towards my bedside table, knocking over bottles of antibiotics and packets of painkillers, trying to find the tiny tube of lip balm to ease my suffering just a little. My back screams with pain as I reach further and further across, my hand eventually meeting the opposite edge of the table with no luck. 

“Fuck,” I groan to myself, forcing my eyes open. The dim light of the clock assaults my eyes and I quickly avert them, but not before seeing the time is 2:33am. 

Exactly forty-seven minutes after I last woke up. 

I just want it to be tomorrow. It feels like I’ve been rolling around in this bed for eternity, waking up every single hour and taking at least thirty minutes to fall back asleep again, only to awaken shortly afterwards to repeat the process. 

I scoot myself to the very edge of the bed, reaching down and feeling around on the carpet for the lip balm. I look for it too, but it’s nigh impossible to see without a light, and there was no chance I was going to turn one on. My hand brushes past a number of discarded tissues, some pills that fell out of the dropped bottles, the bottles themselves and their caps, but no lip balm. 

I grit my teeth and pull my arm back into the bed, rolling onto my back.  

I frown. 

There were painkillers on my bedside table this time. 

They weren’t there when I was looking for them last time. Did I just miss them? 

I roll over again, the rustling of blankets like sandpaper in my ears, but I push through and reach onto the carpet again, feeling for where I dropped them. I can feel the antibiotics, a tube of lip balm, but no painkillers. 

Wait; lip balm. I was looking for that before, I think. 

I reach back to the spot where the lip balm lay, but my hand finds nothing. 

“Oh, piss off,” I mutter, rubbing my head with my free hand again, cursing the hallucinations that have been fucking with me all night. First, it was the sounds of my windows and front door opening, a mere hour after I went to sleep. That was when my last dose of painkillers was still affecting me, so I went to check, and of course, everything was fine. 

Then, the next hour, I kept seeing these dark figures appearing in the corners of my vision. Turned on my phone’s flashlight, and of course, nothing again. 

The next few hours, after my painkillers wore off, it was whispers in my ears, things appearing and disappearing like my lip balm, these little pushes and pulls on my body. 

It’s exhausting. 

I just want it to be tomorrow. 

I gingerly open my eyes a crack after falling asleep again and look at the clock. 

3:01am. 

Not even thirty minutes. 

My mouth is bone-dry, my throat isn’t faring much better, and my lips feel like they’re ready to simply peel off my face. I stretch my arm out blindly towards my bedside table, knocking over bottles of antibiotics and packets of painkillers, trying to find the tiny tube of lip balm to ease my suffering just a little. 

How are the painkillers and antibiotics on my table again? 

Didn’t I tip them over last time? 

I must have just hallucinated that entire thing. 

My fingers wrap around the tube of lip balm at the very edge of my bedside table and I sigh with relief, flicking the cap off and bringing it to my lips. 

I feel the rim touch them, but no balm. 

It’s empty. 

I swear it wasn’t empty last night. 

Almost crying with frustration, I toss the empty tube at the wall, twisting the blankets around myself and trying to get back to sleep. 

I open my eyes and look at the clock. 

3:24am. 

My mouth is dry, my throat is as well, and my lips might as well be made of chalk. I stretch my arm out to find my lip balm. 

I just want it to be tomorrow.