Assortment of Short Stories and Poems

Five More Minutes

"Five more minutes," I convinced myself.

With the flick of a finger, the video that had taken my screen captive was swiped away and I was engorged by the next amazing and profound thing that Instagram had to offer. What was it going to be this time? A group of friends the same age as me living their best lives and posting it onto the Internet for all to adore? Or perhaps, a clip of an influencer flaunting her stunning beach house– that none of us regular mortals could ever dream to afford, or her super rich, steaming hot boyfriend, or an array of her gazillion flashy supercars, or–

I stared at my screen and it stared back at me– the blue light emitted onto my face, accentuating the creases and lines etched under my haggard, weary eyes. The electronic clock blinked in bold, red numbers, '02:36 AM' on my bedside table.

Part of me wished to take part in this repetitive cycle. Swipe, like, maybe if I'm prompted to open the comment section I'll leave a few words– voice my utterly irrelevant and unsolicited opinion to thousands upon thousands of people who'll gloss over my comment that I might've spent twenty tedious minutes on, again– swipe, like, oh hey this one was slightly funny! let me send it to my friends just so they can open my messages when daylight comes around and leave me on that agonising 'Seen', but I don't care– I'll do it anyway! Again, and again, and again. Swipe, like, swipe, like.

A voice whispered in my ear, its tone laced with a veil of threat, What'll happen once you click off Instagram? You'll be bored out of your mind, and even worse, you'll be severed from the stream of constant information being fed to you; you'll be out of the loop. You need to know what's going on in everyone's lives, at every second, even people you don't know!

The other part of me swarmed with the guilt that came with choosing immediate pleasure by partaking in the consumption of this condensed form of media rather than rationality and awareness of the present state I was in. Being completely consumed by these little bites of videos– videos that never even last more than sixty seconds!

This tempestuous loop from hell was no stranger to me. The night waned by, and the passage of time pressed onwards. I looked at the clock.

"Five more minutes," I deceived myself with the all too familiar words.

The clock, with it's increasingly refined attacks to my guilty conscience, screamed at me in its big, bold, red numbers, '03:49 AM.' Yeah, I thought to myself, thanks, that really helps.

Seconds, minutes, hours went by. 56, 57, 58, 59... The constant counting of seconds on the clock jabbed at me in the face and threw constant hooks to my stomach. 3:50 AM quickly morphed into 4:20 AM, which mutated into a nauseating 4:40 AM.

The room around me blurred and mashed together, forming a grey background in contrast to the rectangular modern piece of technology I gripped onto. The only thing in my line of sight was my screen, still emitting the same blue light that it had been emanating for hours. I sank deeper and deeper into the mattress of my bed, it enveloped me, wrapped around my body as if it was hugging me and not letting me go– more comparable to a prison cell than a hug. Trapped in this hazardous stalemate, this warfare with myself– and I was at the losing end.

Scroll, scroll, scroll. Like, like, like. Scroll, like, scroll, like, scro– Beep! Beep! Beep!

The smog in my brain begins to dissipate, and the key unlocks the door to my cell. It's 6 AM in the morning; I have a full day ahead of me and not a second to waste.

Time to wake up.