Sleepless

         Her glassy eyes looked over the papers; long eyelashes framed her tired grey eyes.

FM radio transmissions squeeze and expand electromagnetic waves without changing their height. FM radio transmissions squeeze and expand electromagnetic waves without changing their height. FM radio transmissions squeeze and expand electromagnetic waves without changing their height.

         She had read the same line from her book over and over, for what seemed to be over an hour. Her eyes half closed, she finally allowed herself to yawn, giving into the tiredness that had crept up on her. She’d stayed up for more then forty-eight hours before, but there was something this day that had made her far more aware of her exhaustion.
         It felt like her body weighed a thousand tons, as she pushed herself out of her chair. Lifting one foot and then the other, as if her feet were made of cement. The seconds that it took for her to walk from her desk to her bed were agony. She collapsed on her bed with a thud; she was too tired to care about not waking the others up. A loud snore erupted from the back of her throat; she was instantly asleep when her head hit the pillow.

         Sitting in the white chair in the middle of the room made her nervous, she clenched the wooden arms her finger nails scratching at the white paint, picking off loose flecks of paint. Scritch, scritch, scritch. The room was utterly silent except for the scraping of her nails. This made her more nervous. She was waiting. Why were they so late, why was she waiting for them? Her palms were getting sweaty, the back of her neck was getting sweaty.
         She blinked, two, three, four times, her eyes were drying up. There was no air in the room, no window to open and no fresh air. Just the same thick warm air that she was breathing in and out. It was suffocating. There was just a door, a chair and her. She kept looking back over her shoulder to the door, wanting to leave, to go and find them, they were suppose to meet her, why weren’t they there. She just wanted to leave. “Ariel” she heard her name, faintly, it sounded far away. “Ariel” she heard it again this time it seemed closer. She looked over her shoulder at the door again, but didn’t get out of the chair. Then it came again, “Ariel!”, whoever it was, was on the other side of the door.

         “Ariel!” Ariel’s left eye opened, she blinked once or twice, before pulling open her right eye lid which had become glued shut during her sleep.