Memory 006

When we were kids, Monster had always wanted to stay up the whole night. Something about that idea sounded really fun back then.

Usually, our parents were strict when it comes to our sleeping schedule. We would always have to sleep before 9 PM, else they would drag us and strap us onto our beds with our blanket.

One time we had decided to not sleep at all during a weekend’s night. We wanted to see how it feels to be up and about when everyone’s asleep.

Before the fateful night, we would prepare ourselves with everything that we could think of as fun which would help us stay awake through the night.

The first thing we did was gather snacks; a whole week of scavenging came with us storing: crisps, chocolate, and biscuits into our wardrobe. We stored them underneath the pile of clothes inside as to hide it from the all-seeing eyes of our parents.

Next, we decided that we would game the whole night. At the start of the school week, we had asked one of our friends if we could borrow their gaming console for the weekend, this was because the only console we had was the handheld consoles that only played those simple 2D games.

We had always wanted to have those consoles that could play those cool 3D fighting games since back then we were addicted to playing them; whenever we had a chance we would barge into our friend’s house and ask them to turn on their game console so that we could play.

Of course, borrowing something like a console wasn’t going to be easy, he wouldn’t give it for free so we offered him that we would do his homework for him for the whole week. Since that friend of ours was the lazy type of person that hated to do any sort of work, he immediately agreed to the conditions.

With the negotiation being completed, we started our path to our dream by overworking ourselves to the bone in order to achieve our paradise— this was because for some odd reason that week was one of the worst weeks we had in school.

All our teachers had moods that would give the craziest of girls in our class a run for their money. They had somehow all became demons spouting out flames from their mouth pointing out at any slight mistake that we’ve done during class, it was to the point where some kids cried during break time.

We had thought we were safe after school had ended but the great demon army started shooting with their machine guns as they gave out exercises non-stop that we had to complete the next day. With our souls battered and our minds in fear we had comforted ourselves into thinking it was only just a bad day, the next day wouldn’t be that bad right?

Oh, how we were wrong.

It was a long week of struggle but when the weekend came we could finally breathe out a sigh of relief and cry out from the school gate shouting together with our friends, “We’ve survived!”

Looking at our classmates besides us we would then hug them for being one of the survivors that went with us through hell, we then gave a momentary silence to those who pretended to be sick for the week in order to escape from the madness.

At the end of the day, we proudly went to our friend who had the face of someone who didn’t suffer at all as he smiled at us lending away his console for us to use.

Our souls in pieces, but our dreams… our dreams were there within our grasps.

At the night of our plans, we slipped into our beds at the usual time of 9 PM. With the light of our room turned off and our desk light being the only one on, we snuggled in our bed acting as if we were asleep. We had to waste time somehow until our parents fell asleep— usually, they would do so at 10 PM.

So just like that me and Monster rolled about in our bed for an hour or so until our ears picked up signs of our parents going to bed. Waiting until we were all clear after we guessed that they had fallen asleep, we began to start silently executing our plans for the night.

Taking out the snacks in our wardrobe we laid them onto the floor of our room where we quietly turned on the small TV we had nearby and we carefully connected it with the game console.

Gently we placed the game inside the console and switched it on. When the game appeared on the TV the sudden noise from the TV gave us a fright but with quick hands, we turned down the volume before it got out of control.

Opening our ears to listen to the surroundings, we tried to check whether our parents heard the noise next door to them, we were relieved that we didn’t hear any signs indicating we were caught.

With our heart beating so fast we couldn’t help but feel nervous and also excited to have done something that could be considered disobedient.

Throughout the night we let our demons take over as we enjoyed ourselves with our games as we kept on playing in the dark. Whilst gaming we would grab the snacks on the floor and open them up one by one as we savor them each with delight.

We didn’t really remember much that night besides enjoying ourselves to the max, but I do remember that we never did stay up the whole night as we fell asleep before the sun even came up.

When morning came and our mother saw us sleeping on the ground with piles of rubbish around us and the TV on with our game still playing, she was furious after understanding what had transpired in front of her. Waking our sleep-deprived self she lectured us endlessly as we tried our best to stay awake.

With our body feeling like as if it was dead we stood there in front of our parents until they realized how tired we looked, with nothing else to say they told us to go sleep. Dragging our own corpse we crawled onto our bed and slept throughout the whole day.

When the last day of our weekend came we were on our way to our friend house to return his game console. When we had met and returned his possession he looked at us and blatantly asked us, “Where’s my weekend homework?”

At that time we were confused and had thought we had already done our part, but this little cunning friend of ours reminded us that the weekend also counted as part of the week which we negotiated at. Flabbergasted we couldn’t help but feel cheated by him.

That memory served me and Monster well as to not try to negotiate on anyone who was known to be lazy, as they would always often find ways to push the trade towards their favor.

When I got older I would often remember how excited Monster had felt in staying up the whole night, and because of that memory, I would often tease him about it whenever he had a night shift for his work.

I would go pick up my phone and message him late at night, “Remember to store some snacks and games at your workplace!”

He would always reply with an angry emoticon: (╬ಠ益ಠ)