The edge of sleep

Jared sat at his computer, the bright glow of his monitor drying out his eyes, and pushing through his eyelids whenever they closed - which was more often than it should have been. He had been listening to music while he was writing, but he was far too tired to register the fact that it had simply stopped playing some time before. His head lolled back to front, side to side as he tried in vain to keep himself awake. His eyes were unfocused, creating two blurry images of the screen before him, and the words on his document swam around in circles, confusing him if he dared try to read what he had written.

He had been writing for hours, working on the novel that he had promised himself months ago would have been done weeks ago. The plot was slow and grading, trying to go in a multitude of directions and falling short on them all. He was losing track of where it was even going to end up. The longer he had spent writing, the slower the story was coming out of him, and the worse its quality. He was increasingly frustrated, but it only made him want to write more, in an attempt to make it better.

But the question of how long he would be able to stay awake was beginning to come to the front of his mind. He wanted to write something that he felt he could be proud of before he went to bed, but the longer he kept writing, the less likely it seemed that he would be able to accomplish that.

He didn't even realize that he had simply passed out in his seat, the screen eventually going to sleep as well to allow him a more relaxed state. He dreamed of his characters and their adventures. He watched them galavant in lands he would never permit them to reach, watched them come to life in ways he had never before imagined, and witnessed them crawling directly out of his screen.

He was surprised to find himself still at his desk when he woke up. It took him a long moment to understand what had happened and hat the images he had seen were little more than dreams he had intended to put the words of down on paper, but had already been long gone by the time sch thoughts made it into his brain.

He read what was there, expecting to find garbage that had so clearly understood it to be th day before when it came out of his finger tips. And while some of it was utterly terrible, other parts were better than he anticipated. They made him want to read more of what was coming. He hardly even remembered writing them. They must have come nearer to the end of his writing.

He wondered if perhaps he wrote better when he was on the brink of falling asleep. He didn't particularly want to test it to find out.