The darkness slowly encroached me, tempting me to step into it. In front of me, a blindingly bright light assaulted my eyes as black snakes came bursting from it, slowly eating away at my mind. My vision began to blur and my eyes started to close. But I shook my head and slapped my cheeks, refocusing my attention on the long paper I was reading on my laptop. I hovered my cursor on my taskbar clock. 12 AM it read. I sighed and picked up the ensaymada resting inside a small bowl and took a bite. “Sweet release…” I thought to myself, as I set it down and resumed reading. As I read, I quickly scrolled down mid sentence to see how many pages I had left. “16 of 32” it read. My head fell in frustration as I scrolled back to the page I was on. “Why am I reading this? Am I even learning anything from this?” I whispered angrily. I reached for the bowl and took another bite from my ensaymada which did little to quell the anger I felt. With a scowl, I set down the ensaymada and planted my elbows on the desk. The words on the screen only annoyed me more as I began trying to read a single sentence only to lose focus midway. I shook my head and reread it hoping to understand it but nothing. I tried again. And again.. And again... In frustration, I leaned in and squished my face as close to the screen as possible and read each word as slowly as I could until eureka! I’d done it! I finally conquered that sentence. I quickly went to read the next. You can guess how well that went. I quickly switched tabs on my browser and quickly typed “youtube” while taking another bite from my ensaymada, its taste now bitter to me.
After a few seconds, I was greeted with the red YouTube logo, now feeling like a safe haven symbol. I began looking through my recommended feed like a scholar looking for the perfect book to read. Clicking something random, I leaned back in my chair and began watching. The comedic antics of this short youtuber got a chuckle out of me as I slowly began to relax. I reached for the bowl again and took another bite from the ensaymada, the taste now sweet and comforting. But as I watched, I couldn’t help thinking about the paper. “You have to read it. You’ll fail if you don’t. Just do it for the requirement. Finish reading it and be done with it!” The screen turned black and I closed the lid of my laptop, taking one final bite from my ensaymada, now tasteless. With the bowl in my hand, I stood up and walked out of my room. “Tomorrow” I whispered as I made my way downstairs.