It's Like Rain (Orlando Bloom/OC)

Chapter 11: It Ain't Over Until

"Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer,

rather than remain a dupe to illusions all one's life."

Cookie's POV

5:00 am the alarm of my clock radio starts to scream next to my ear with the tone of a highly popular radio show.

Good morning, bloody Vietnam! Or in this case, bloody Australia. Well, fuck the reference, this ain't movieverse.

I turn to look at the clock radio absentmindedly, with an almost empty look in my eyes. Forgot to turn it off last night. After a night of no sleep what so ever, I think I've lost the ability to understand the digits I see on the screen of the clock radio. So, no, it is not the alarm that woke me up, since I was already awake. Bleary eyed and not so bushy tailed, looking like a baboon's behind.

I squint my eyes to look at the clock radio, and then I jerk from the pain that shoots from my arm to my side and back to my arm again when I reach to smack the radio shut. Sliding my right hand difficultly from underneath and rolling to my stomach, leaning against the pillows, I groan. Not a good position. I shift again and push myself sitting up and settle myself into the pillows against the headboard of the bed. A week and the pain hasn't subsided much. Well, fine, that's a kick in the ribs for you, I guess. I didn't expect to be gone by now, anyways, just making an intelligent observation here. Painkillers, excessive eating of them, doesn't offer much but a completely new problem altogether, but still, one might really hope for a break from all the crap the life has to offer.

My old, tattered T-shirt that I've learned to wear here to remind me of back home - and for some comfort, during the cool nights - is twisted around my upper body, but I'm too lazy to straighten it out. So, instead, I stare at the twisted and stretched logo of the Grateful Dead's '72 Europe tour.

Sometimes I think it would have been a blast to see them play live. This shirt of mine I got from a web store and it's not the original tour shirt, but a damn good replica. And I like it. It's probably the one thing I'd save from a fire now. Well, if this house happened to burn.

I return back to the reality when I try to shift position and a twinge on my side makes me grit my teeth, with a deep sigh, yet again. I definitely deserve a break for this. I'm so not going to go anywhere dromedaries ever again, end of this one-on-one discussion of the matter inside the tired head of mine.

Not that it makes any damn difference in this down spin, but I should be worried over the fact that I may have evolved past any sleep. And hence, the slight bruising on my side is the least of my problems.

What creatures do not sleep at all?

Mayflies. Yes, mayflies.

I've turned into a mayfly that just waits for the end of it after some sex and eggs. Although, I haven't produced eggs, or babies for that matter. And hopefully won't start sprouting out either of them.

The amount of sleepless nights I've had recently is truthfully speaking, just obscene. It is not even a wonder anymore how I haven't yet lapsed into a psychotic episode with all the lack of sleep, or why I haven't yet picked up a gun and blown my own head off, or anyone else's head for that matter.

It is a miracle.

Miracle of biblical proportions!

Well, no matter, the miracle is really being stretched by another sleepless night passing, several more to go. How many will it take for me to just drop from exhaustion, I wonder? I'm starting to hope that it is not that many, since I already feel like I'm going to fall down if I so much as stand up from this bed. But eventually, I will have to get up and do something constructive. I seriously need some help.