the brain project [1]

3 1

aidan

he can't sleep. again. his anxiety keeps sneaking up behind him and pouncing, and it's already late and he has school tomorrow...

he stays in bed for a solid fifteen minutes, and finally gives up, getting up to grab a jacket and sneak out of his room.

once downstairs, he picks his car keys up from the counter and walks out the back door to get to the driveway to his jeep.

turning on the engine, he pulls out and onto the road to drive to the small convenient store nearly ten minutes away. a song plays softly on the radio, and aidan wants to close his eyes. he wants to sleep.

but he can't.

he can't because every time he closes his eyes, he thinks.

about who he is and what he should do with his life. always there like hunger in your stomach, always rising up at unexpected times to bother him, and it makes him want to vomit.

he pulls into the vacant parking lot and stops the car, sitting there for a few seconds until stopping the engine and getting out to enter the store.

he takes his time, making sure to look at everything in each aisle. he's pretty sure the one worker there thinks he's a nut case.

he finds what he needs: vanilla ice cream, nyquil, and some romantic comedy called the proposal.

once he gets back to his car after receiving a weird frown from the cashier, he drives back home, setting all of his items down on his nightstand.

he opens the cd player in his laptop and puts the movie in. he's always been a small fan of rom-coms. he sits back, popping two nyquil in his mouth and swallowing them down with ice cream.

he ends up falling asleep in the middle of the movie, the ice cream half-eaten.