When the sun could finally be seen peeking over the edge of the sleepy horizon, I remained entirely oblivious; for my room in the basement had no windows.

It was Saturday.

I threw my blankets aside and sat up, allowing my legs to dangle off the edge of my bed for a moment while my toes searched stealthily for my slippers (which they found within moments of their little campaign) and then proceeded to trundle across my room to the mirror that stood in the corner opposite my bed.

I blinked as I stared back at myself through the glass. My dark brown hair was messy and stuck out in all directions, bordering my face with unruly little morning wisps here and there. My deep brown eyes peered out from beneath my thick forelock, each rimmed with dark circles, clearly evident of a sleeping disorder that I was all too familiar with. I smirked at the boy in the mirror, who immediately smirked back. Despite the little monkey wrenches that life enjoyed hurling at people as if we were all miniature dartboards with legs, today was going to be a great day and I was to make sure that everyone knew it.

I turned from the mirror and trounced across my room in my Buzz Lightyear pajamas like a space worm before flopping onto my bed and grabbing my cell phone from my bedside table, dialing numbers as if each one was a piece of candy that I had to eat if I touched - given, I’d probably have wanted to eat them all.

“Hello…?,” said a groggy voice on the other line.

“Yo, Tony,” I said excitedly, “You still up for hangin’ today?”

There was a slight pause before I received a response.

“Adam…? Oh, yeah… just give me a few minutes… I’m like not even dressed yet,” Tony replied slowly, sounding as though he was trying to stifle a giant yawn before continuing. “Just come over in like half an hour, I’ll leave the door open for you…”

“Sweet, see ya’ in a few,” I said before ending the call, grabbing some clean clothes from my closet, and dashing down the narrow hallway towards the downstairs bathroom.


Before I knew it, I was biking down the road on my way to the Johnson house. Tony and Andy Johnson were brothers, and I might as well have considered myself the third sibling seeing as most of my weekend hours had been spent at their house since we were all little nippers. On an average day, when we weren’t playing Nintendo or coming up with something crazy to do in our boring little town of Owatonna, Minnesota, we could often be found in the basement playing around with the likes of guitars and drums and keyboards and anything else we could find and turn into music somehow.

“Wake up, party people!,” I yelled as I let myself into the house through the back door. I knew Andy and Tony’s parents were away that week, so barging into their house in the morning and yelling at people to wake up wasn’t going to be much of a problem. Normally I’d be a polite little quiet boy, knock lightly and then wait for one of their parents to answer and kindly allow me to step inside. But not today.

I ran down the stairs that led to the basement, two at a time, before I skidded to a halt on the cold stone floor. Taking one quick glance around me in the dark, undisturbed room quickly made it clear that neither of the two brothers had managed to pull themselves out of their cozy beds yet to greet the day.

“Happy Saturday!,” I hollered as I went and grabbed two drumsticks from the drum set in the corner and proceeded to perform a brief drum roll on each of my lazy friends’ closed bedroom doors. “It’s time to wake UP!”

The first door opened shortly and Andy peered out of the room, squinting at me with an extremely tired expression on his face.

“Will you have some patience?,” he said with half a smirk on his face. “I’m obviously not a morning freak like you are!”

“Yeah Andy, you dork! Time to wake up!,” I heard a third voice echo from the next room as Tony swung his door wide open and stood in the doorway with a devious look on his face.

“Hey Adam, gimme’ one of those drum sticks,” he said in a much lower tone as he took one from me and dramatically kicked Andy’s door, which went from being slightly ajar to wide open in one quick motion. It was a good thing Andy had stepped back first because if he hadn’t, the door probably would have decked him clear across the face.

“Okay, okay, I’m up!,” Andy shrieked as Tony pointed the drumstick at him as if it were a magic wand from the Harry Potter series. “Sheesh!”

Tony and I both laughed and gave each other high fives before the three of us turned and walked back into the main room. Once the lights had been turned on, the room looked much more welcoming than it had merely moments before. In one corner stood a drum set (to which I went and returned the two drumsticks,) and next to it were several effects pedals, some of which were already hooked up to the two amps that stood against the back wall. Three guitars, two electric and one acoustic, leaned against the same wall next to the amps. On the other side of the drumset stood a cheap keyboard and stool (my personal favorite part of the room nonetheless,) and next to that was a computer. In another corner not far from the computer stood a widescreen TV, across from which was a small couch, and between the two lay several video game controllers all tangled up in a giant mess of cords. A few random posters adorned the otherwise blank walls in a random fashion. This room was pretty much the closest thing to absolute paradise to me, even if it was composed of equipment that wasn’t necessarily what you’d consider ‘high-end’.

“So have you guys worked on any of the mixes since I was last here?”, I inquired casually, glancing from the computer to Andy, then to Tony as he knelt down a few paces away and began trying to untangle the mess of controller cords.

“Not really, we don’t really like messing with that stuff unless you’re here - we’re all in this together afterall, it just doesn’t seem right somehow,” Tony said without looking up from what he was doing.

A couple of years before, the three of us had come up with the idea to create music together as a result of a rainy day when the power had gone out. We called ourselves ‘Windsor Airlift’ because it just seemed to flow with the sound we ended up accomplishing that day. Most of our music was instrumental, some of it had vocal overlays or spoken word, but most of it was ambient. It started out being completely acoustic (we couldn’t do much more than that when the power was out) and then branched off to being more digital as time progressed. As a college student, I used the opportunity of education to learn more about what we were doing through Music Theory, and eventually I wanted to aim higher and get our name out there for the world to hear. But for now that was merely a pipe-dream, and considering I was still only in my first year of college - not to mention Tony and Andy insisted that college was a waste of time and preferred teaching themselves how things worked - we still had much to learn.

“Let’s warm up with a bit of gaming, and then we’ll get into the heavier musical stuff,” Tony said as he finally managed to unwind the last of the tangled cords to reveal three individual Nintendo controllers. “Adam, you call the shots today - if it weren’t for you, we’d probably still be sleeping right now,” Tony added as he tossed me the main controller, a mixture of sarcasm and sincerity in his voice as he raised an eyebrow at me before sitting down on the couch. I smiled stupidly as Andy and I joined him.

Silence.

It was all that surrounded me.

I stared blankly at my bedroom ceiling as if waiting for it to do something spectacular. But ceilings weren’t very good at doing spectacular things, or at least not from what I had seen. I’d been in this conundrum many times before now and it was always the same.

White. Slightly textured. Adorned with moons and stars that glowed in the dark.

I sighed heavily and shifted my weight, allowing myself to roll over onto my side as I pulled my blankets up around me more snugly and closed my eyes.

Nothing.

I opened my eyes again, observing the bright green numbers on my clock that shed a dim light across a few of the ripples in my bedsheets. It was placed neatly on my bedside table in between a pile of books and my lovely lamp that had little tropical fish all over it. The numbers read 3:01 AM.

I sighed again and rolled over onto my other side so that I was facing the wall.

When I was about fourteen, I had been clinically diagnosed with chronic insomnia. Being nineteen now (about to turn the big twenty,) you’d think I’d be used to this silly routine. But I wasn’t. Every night I found myself doing the same types of things - staring at the ceiling, staring at my clock, staring at nothing at all, thinking about trains, thinking about the unfortunately short lifespan of a mouse, contemplating sleeping, contemplating life itself and the eventual lack thereof, commonly known as death - basically anything you could possibly imagine someone doing if they should ever encounter the unfortunate event of lying awake in their bed for hours upon lengthy hours each night with no ability within them to fall asleep. Everything but actually sleeping, of course.

I rubbed my eyes and sat upright before looking slowly around at my familiar surroundings. Four blue walls adorned with several posters enveloped my scrawny being. There were a couple of Toy Story posters, an old movie poster of The Secret of NIMH, several drawings that I had done myself of various places and objects, and of course - owls. I simply loved owls.

I guess I’m kind of like an owl, I mused thoughtfully as I stared at a particular drawing of one that I had done many years ago when I was in elementary school that hung neatly next to a large photo of a snowy owl in flight. The scrawly lines were done with crayon, and underneath my depiction of a branch upon which the owl was perched was an even scrawlier mess of crayon which vaguely spelled out the words ‘Adam’ and ‘Young’ - which, when sandwiched nicely together, made up my silly name. I smiled. My sleeping patterns were definitely comparable to those of an owl, at least - except for the fact that I didn’t really sleep much during the day, either.

I flopped back into my pillow and resumed the supine position as I made funny shapes with my lips in a sad attempt to amuse myself. Perhaps I was crazier than normal sometimes, but I never really understood the meaning of the word ‘normal’ - likewise, I had also never been granted the shiny privilege of meeting someone with the knowledge of how exactly to define the word, either - so consequently I remained unenlightened and simply decided to pretend that I knew exactly what it meant in the form of making up my own definition. As a result of this, I became normal, and suddenly it was everyone else that was oddly fascinating and utterly thought-provoking to me. Why? I guess life just seemed better somehow when running in 256 color mode instead of your average 16-bit.

I reached over to my bedside table and selected a book from the stack of them next to my clock, which now read 3:08 AM. I figured I might as well make use of all this free time of mine and commit myself to reading Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH yet again. I wish I could tell you how many times I had read that one, but to be honest, I believe I lost count long ago after about the third or fourth.

‘Mrs. Frisby, the head of a family of field mice, lived in an underground house in the vegetable garden of a farmer named Mr. Fitzgibbon…’