Night Train

Empty Pizza Boxes and Text Books

    The sound of cars rumbled through the window. Their headlights caused elongated shadows to dance over the furniture in the dimly-lit room. A tinny rendition of Moonlight Sonata blared through earphones, one bud in, one bud out.

    "Psychodynamic psychology is an approach to understanding human behaviour that focuses on the role of unconscious thoughts, feelings, and memories," Eloise muttered under her breath. "Wait, I just read that..."

    She looked back at her laptop, at the open word document. 1,374 words. So close to the 2,000 word minimum. Maybe it'd be okay if she got to at least 1,500 words. It's not like the teacher would check, right?

    "How am I supposed to write any more? I've covered everything." She dug out the task sheet from under pizza crusts and a crushed can of diet soda, and for the millionth time, she looked over the questions she needed to answer, in depth.

She had answered everything, throwing in as many filler words as possible to bulk up her essay more. Her eyes burned and her head felt heavy. She checked the time. Just passed midnight, which had now started feeling early to her.

    "I can't keep doing this..."

    She opened up the Internet browser on her laptop to message a friend in her class.

    "Hey you know the essay for tomorrow?"

    She idly looked around her room until she heard the notification chime.

    "Yh?"

    "How many words did you get to?"

    "Uhh, about 3,000ish, why? You?"

    Eloise ran her hand through her hair and took in a deep calming breath.

    "About the same. Still worried I've not done enough tho, what kinda stuff did you write?"

    "It don't matter it's not that good lol, yours is probs better you'll be fine, Miss likes you haha."

    She bit down hard on her lip and decided to let it go. "Hope so haha, night."

    "Night. X"

    "I should probably sleep," she mumbled to herself, closing down the Internet browser and, without thinking, the open word document that she was yet to save.

    Panic slammed against her chest the second she realised. "No..."

    She opened up the word application. Blank. She checked the saved drafts. She checked her desktop. Nothing.

    She hated this old laptop.

    Time froze for a few moments. This was the breaking point. Tears threatened to spill over her eyes. She felt her body tense up, and her chest felt like it was on fire. She screamed and slammed her laptop closed before throwing papers and textbooks to the floor. She tore out her earphone bud and resisted the urge to destroy everything within her reach. Silence filled the room again, bar the quiet sound of tinny beats coming from the earbuds dangling off the desk, holding onto her laptop by their wire. Her muscles loosened up. She sagged slightly. Her anger subsided. The tears that had threatened to spill before couldn't be held back any longer. She buried her head in her arms on her desk, sobbing like she was a child again.

    She couldn't do this; it was too much. She was probably going to fail the course anyway. But she couldn't get held back another year. She just wanted college to be over. It should be over for her.

She scoffed at the idea of moving on. As if university would be any better, if she couldn't even manage this.

    She just wanted to disappear.