I'll Sleep When I'm Dead

He knew it was dangerous when he walked through those automatic doors, but dammit, he felt as if he'd been jibbed these last few weeks. The words that screamed out at him from the glass door confirmed as much. You've been paying too much, it derided him, you've been getting less for more. But look here, it suggests, nay, demands, we'll give you more for less. And weak as he is, he concedes, he makes the deal.
It's his standard study kit, a 4 pack of energy drink and a soft pack of smokes. Turbo cans of battery acid and those slim little soldiers of death. He takes solace in these simple pleasures, the bare honesty of them. This will keep you up, and this will kill you. Somehow seductive in their ugliness, the yellow-green liquid a radioactive pallor that washes over a tongue that tastes of ash and tar. Surely, he believes, this is what it must have been like to live at Pompeii when the mountain erupted, when the water turned to acid and the sky was full of foulness that belched forth from that arse-hole of the earth.
He rests his chin on his hands, lit in the pale-blue glow of the computer screen, and silently curses his subject, the cold outside, and himself. He sniffs the lingering scent of cigarette smoke about his fingers, and the nicotine that flows through his veins nags at the back of his mind for more. It won't hurt, it whispers seductively, there'll be plenty left afterwards. And he feels ashamed for a second.
There will be plenty left, he chides, because you just bought another pack.
Couldn't last a night, not an hour, because damned if he'll sit here the whole time, and damned if he'll venture outside without a decent reason. But, fool that he was, he decided to leave his existing pack at home, trudging over to the 24 hour lab with all the noble intention that he wouldn't have another this night, savoring each drag of the roadie that rested delicately between index and middle finger, and missed his usual detour. The servo shone like a beacon to his right, and he passed it by without a second thought. So it was that an hour passed, reading words that soon seemed to blur into one another, random jumbles of letters in groups and patterns, and none making sense. His mind began to shut down, even beneath the blare of fluorescent lights, and as he scrambles for his bag, he realises his mistake, for it is empty, and he is without not only his smokes, but his energy. So he packs up, rugs up, and journeys out into that intolerable cold. Melbourne in late April, he thinks, should not be so cold, even at 1 in the morning. But then, after the Summer they've just had, he'd forgotten what 5 degrees felt like, and without a doubt he was getting re-aquainted now.
So in he walks, the servo warm and inviting, the slightly pleasurable stink of petroleum to his back, and he sees it. He feels cheap after he grabs them, the Mother only $2 less than the Red Bull, but then, it is also twice the size. More for less vs. less for more, who would you think would win? And as he approaches the counter, before he can check himself, he makes the standard order, "a soft pack of stuyvy classics". Now that it's been said, he won't go back on it (a stupid rule if there ever was one, but a man's got to stick to his word, or what does anything mean?) and here he is, stuck with another pack. To think he'd planned on quitting come Sunday morning.
He stands outside, ignoring the cold that pierces through his jeans, and takes pleasure in the billowing cloud that follows each exhalation, all the more impressive with the fog that accompanies it in the cold night air, trying, and failing, to make rings with the smoke. The ground, he notices, is littered with used butts, as he spits like a camel between drags and bobs his head in time to the music. Ah yes, the final ingredient to a sleepless night: speed metal. Hyped up on caffeine and guarana, his arms would flail about in time to the frantic drumbeats, but for the prescence of the other smokers on the boardwalk. Other lost souls determined to complete assignments in the dead of night, free of daytime distractions, secluded from procrastination that so hounds them at home or with friends, or facebook. For this late, even the networking sites remain quiet, their frequenters, for the most part, soundly asleep at these late hours.
He passes more of them on their way out, cigarettes already in hand with anticipation, and he thinks that before it became habit and addiction, they began simply to break up the long hours, just as he, a reason to walk away from the mind-numbing process that waited patiently on their computer screens. And when he cracks open another can of Mother, the snap-hiss reminding him of cigarette lighter, he wonders if similarly he's developing an addiction to the energy drink, begun out of necessity, until he can't function without it in these, the only hours he finds himself able to work. Midnight to 6am are his hours. The only time he can find the motivation, because here he only wants to leave, but wont allow himself, instead pinned to his seat, thrashing at keys to bring himself up to date. More and more he's found himself here on weeknights, into the wee hours and more, returning home in time for a shower, a coffee, and toast, and enough time that he may safely watch a film before class begins, but not enough that he feels comfortable taking a powernap, sure of the fact that he won't awaken till long after his class has come and gone. So the days roll by, so he wonders when it was he last had a full and satisfying nights sleep, so he wonders when he'll next find the time for one. For the weekend appraoches, and that brings with it its own challenges.
The weekend is what he most looks forward to, when he'll abandon sleepless nights to complete work in exchange for sleepless nights to go out. To socialise. To drink and watch the rest of the world and its problems fade into the background before a swirl of music and colour and women.
Sleep can wait, he thinks then, caught up as he is in this reckless abandon.
When the cigarettes rot his lungs.
When the caffeine wears out his heart.
When the liquor finally causes his liver to fail.
When the drugs reduce his once potent mind to a pulp.
I'll sleep when i'm dead.