The Heartland Documents: Noklai

I wake up struggling to make it through another meaningless day. It’s the same every day, wake up, breakfast, work, shower, dinner, tv, and sleep. This hasn’t changed in years and I don’t expect it to change any time soon either. I am 24 years old and live in a one-bedroom apartment barely making rent and recently not even sleeping all that well.

I pull it together for another day of pushing papers. Of course, this is after eating my daily eggs and toast. I get to work and slowly walk to my cubicle knowing nothing I do today will have any importance. I sit down and do nothing but stare at my desktop for the first half hour or so. Most of the day passes pretty quickly as I copy number data from one spreadsheet to another.

Finally the time comes to 1:00 P.M. for my lunch break. As always I sit alone in the corner eating whatever pasta dish I brought for that day, today fettuccine with pesto and chicken. I finish up eating and head back to my desk for another eternity of numerical entries.

The day is slowly winding as the last hour always drags the longest. It is now 4:30 P.M. and I’m back to doing what I started at the beginning of my shift, staring at my empty desktop. I open my email just to check the spam and delete.

Opening spam messages is always my favorite. You always get stuff like “$1,000 waiting in your bank account CLICK HERE now to accept!” as if anyone ever actually looks at those headings. Today had an interesting one headlined “HEARTLAND"

“Welcome to the world of Heartland! A place of escape and wonder accessible only once by opening this email you have accepted! We will come to collect you tonight and bring you to the all beautiful, all mysterious HEARTLAND!”

This one didn’t try to get me to click anything or put in any personal information. No scam here not even anything to do with it. With 15 minutes left in my shift I decide to run my virus scanner just in case opening that email gave a virus. I watch as the scan bar fills over the next 10 minutes or so to show me the exciting news of no viruses.

I continue just sitting at my computer watching the clock on the screen 4:57....4:58....4:59....5:00. Finally, time to clock out and go home, not like anything more is exciting there though either.

Leaving the parking lot from work is frequently the happiest part of my day. I get the sweet sense of freedom as I travel towards home but then as I enter my driveway it’s gone as I know my apartment is just as boring as work. I’m thinking of cooking but then I just chuckle knowing I’m going to order. I can’t do anything for myself anymore and it’s starting to get a little pathetic. I sit down with my phone and open up a random delivery app and find the first thing that sounds good. Too lazy to go out or even call for an order, it’s just much simpler to use the phone and have them drop it off at the door....no contact is the best.

After eating and cleaning everything up I sit back down on the couch and turn on the TV. I watch some psychological and crime thrillers for a couple hours wishing I could be as creative as the people who create these shows but where some of these ideas come from, I can’t even guess.

Wednesday night now and I’m done with the TV, I’ve got my apartment cleaned up and it’s time for bed. 10 P.M. is a standard time to lay down for me, I just hope tonight I can actually fall asleep. I lay down and look at my alarm clock 10:12 P.M. I close my eyes hoping to slip into a sweet dream.

Still can’t sleep so I open my eyes seeing the clock read 11:22 P.M. was a little surprising. It was only an hour but I seem to have been exhausted enough to have gotten that hour of sleep. If I try again maybe it can actually last the whole night or at least a few hours are all I really need.to feel good. Anything to help get any rest it’s been 2 weeks since I’ve got a good nights’ sleep and 4 days since I’ve slept more than an hour.

Clock still reading 11:22 I watch it as it feels like an eternity passes before it finally flips over to 11:23. I close my eyes hoping to get back to sleep. I feel like Im lying here forever with nothing happening. As time seems to continue passing nothing sits in my head but silence.... darkness.... calm as I could be and still can’t drift into that sleep.

I start to feel a small pain slowly drift up my right leg. I open my eyes trying to remain calm. 11:55 P.M. The pain continues slowly up my body and arms until I’m lying flat on my back unable to move. I hear the clock ding it’s hourly ding for midnight as I drift into a dream but I don’t feel asleep.

As I begin walking around everything seems vaguely familiar but nothing I fully recognize. I wander the streets aimlessly just seeing mostly houses, a gas station, and a strip mall with just a few businesses. It’s night and clearly everything is closed but I still decide to go look at the strip mall to see what is around. A cell phone shop, a tobacco store, a grocery store, and a sandwich shop. This town seems just as boring as my life.

I start to head to the gas station hoping it could be a 24-hour gas station maybe there will actually be something I can do in this dream. Before even walking to the door it is obviously closed. Only the emergency lights on no one inside. I sigh as I walk around and just decide to take a stroll through this make-believe town. I take a right and head down the alley by the gas station.

As I walk my shadow doesn’t seem to follow me appropriately and so I stop under a light. I watch it as I start dancing. It follows but seems a split second behind what it should be. I start to sprint towards the next light as I approach the center, I make a fast sliding, falling stop but my shadow is no longer under me. I stand up and start to look towards the shadows as I hear my alarm go off awakening me from my dream.