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A Perfect Sleep, by Bruce Levine

20/3/2020

 
​“See the joy of getting up early,” she said, pointing to the clock. “It’s only eight-thirty…”

“There’s no joy in getting up early,” he answered, sarcastically. “Nine-thirty is normal, ten is better.”

She laughed because she knew he meant it. He never liked to get up earlier than ten o’clock if possible and only got up earlier when he had to. There was even a period that, for ten years, he had to get up at six and he did that, but only because he absolutely had to.

They were both night people. His idea of the perfect go to sleep time was between two and five a.m. He’d actually told her of a period that he’d slept from five a.m. until one p.m. every day and he loved it; he thought that was the only perfect sleeping period of his life.

She watched him working at his computer, struggling to keep the blood flowing through his veins at what he thought was an ungodly hour.

It wasn’t that she loved being up early, but she felt like she was getting so much more done when she did. And today she seemed to be doing that. She’d already finished most of her morning To Do checklist and was on to the next project.

They both had extensive To Do lists daily and they tried to get through everything, but usually ended up carrying things over to the next day. Not because of any lack of effort to complete the list, but because there never did seem to be enough time in one day to complete everything they wanted to do.

Maybe she’s right, he thought as he checked another thing off his list as done. Maybe he would finish everything today – it would be a first… Maybe getting up early was a good idea even though it wasn’t intentional, even today. Today their dog had awakened them earlier than usual. No particular reason it seemed.

He sipped his coffee and wondered if he should go back to bed for a little while. No, he decided, that would defeat the whole purpose of getting up with their dog and starting the day. He’d actually thought of going back earlier and resisted.

The clock chimed nine.

He sat, focusing on his To Do list. He wondered whether completing it was worth feeling his eyes heavy with the desire to be in bed, still sleeping. If he had allowed himself the perfect sleep he would be getting up in about a half hour anyway.

He picked up a pencil and started to write at the bottom of the list – SLEEP…

Now all he had to do was get through everything above that single word and then he could check off the final item for the day.

He’d gotten up early today and was getting a lot done and he was glad about that, but it was not a perfect sleep day.

Maybe tomorrow…

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    Friday Flash Fiction is primarily a site for stories of 100 words or fewer, and our authors are expected to take on that challenge if they possibly can. Most stories of under 150 words can be trimmed and we do not accept submissions of 101-150 words.


    However, in response to demand, the FFF team constructed this forum for significantly longer stories of 151-500 words. Please send submissions for these using the Submissions Page.

    Stories to the 500 word thread will be posted as soon as we can mange.

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    One little further note. Posting and publishing 500-word stories takes a little time if they need to be formatted, too.
    ​Please note that we tend to post longer flash fiction exactly as we find it – wrong spacing, everything.

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