I. He lies awake in his bed, head cushioned softly atop his pillow, staring drearily at his ceiling. Above him floats several balloons from his 30th birthday party from that day, a slowly rotating ceiling fan and a spider so timidly crawling from one side of the room to where he now lies. He became so incredibly anxious now, with his life flashing forward quicker than he could ever imagine and having no worthy accomplishments to show for it. "Thirty," he kept repeating in his head. "Thirty short, short years. And in another I am sixty." The spider timidly walks towards the man, who is staring directly at it unfazed, and starts to spin a web to drop down towards his face. "How did I become this old?" he reflects, still staring at the dropping spider. "Look at him, so majestic and strong. Building and constructing his dreams, his hopes and his strength. And he is probably not even a few months old." The spider continues to trickle down, forcing the man to finally gets out of bed as he notices how close the spider is getting to his face. He grabs a pencil from his desk and places it right below the spider who gently lands on it. With pencil in hand, he walks it to the front door and tosses it out into the bushes. He walks back to his bed, puts his head on his pillow and looks at his 30th balloons dangling closer to the fan. "Thirty..." he whispers as one of the balloons hits a fan blade and pops.
II. "Pencils down," the proctor says, with all of the students exhausted from the exam. Terry, a straight A student, puts down his pencil and waits for the test to be collected. "I'm sure you all did a great job and you worked really hard for this," the proctor says as she collects their papers. When everything is collected, the students are instructed to leave and not discuss the test. Terry walks out of the exam and hops on his bike to go home. He contemplates some of the questions in his own head, still not satisfied with some of his answers. Becoming increasingly depressed, he parks his bike in front of his house and walks into his house. "SURPRISE!" a burst of excitement and balloons fill the room, as Terry looks nonplus. "You did it sweetie! You took the exam!" Terry's mother says. "Yes, but I do not even know if I passed..." he retorts. His mother, completely delirious with enthusiasm, pulls out a cake from the kitchen. Still befuddled and slightly agitated, he yells, "Mother, I just want to go to sleep now! Leave me alone!" His mother, still excessively proud, runs into his room and grabs a pillow and hands it to Terry. "Here is a pillow, rest your head on that couch over there but you are not leaving this party." He reluctantly obliges as the rest of the guests cut into his celebratory cake.
III. The light flickered on, and I, with nothing but the clothes I was wearing, sat in immense confusion about what had just happened. I was walking my dog Sir Barks-A-Lot in the park when he ripped the leash out of my hand and then my memory goes incredibly fuzzy. And then I woke up, sitting in a room full of pillows with no idea what to do. The room was completely and entirely covered in pillows like some insane asylum, except there were no doors. It was just me in a room of pillows. I figured I was doomed to this until I had no energy, since I was not left food nor water. I looked up for a second to realize there was a balloon floating close to the ceiling. There seemed to be an object inside of it, but the balloon was too opaque that I had no clue as to what it could be. Immediately, with my stomach growling, I thought it was food and quickly tried to get whatever I could to get the balloon. The pillows however were firmly cemented to the wall and there was no way to rip them off or use them to my advantage. So I sat back and looked at the balloon taunting me with its height, and began to figure out what could possibly be done to obtain it. I feared, too, that this could all just be a diversion and really nothing beneficial would come out of the balloon, but I had no other option at that point. So I jumped, climbed and screamed to try to get the balloon but to no avail. I threw my clothes at it but nothing knocked it out of its high and mighty place. Finally, out of what I believe to be sheer luck, my shoe hit the balloon in such a way that the pencil inside of it popped the balloon from inside out. Then I realized, I just spent so much time trying to get a pencil out of a balloon. I began cursing when a piece of paper also followed the balloon. I looked at the piece of paper trying to see if there was any clues as to what I can do to get out of this room. It was just a simple white piece of paper, just like the white pillows that filled the room, and I sat down and wrote this story.
IV. She smiled, looking into his tired smile filled with hope and optimism, seeing their wedding day coming up in a few days... and he slept, drooling uncontrollably. She woke up early and concocted a breakfast for him, still sleeping. It was a simple breakfast; bacon like pencils, rigid, slightly burnt and thin; two eggs with yolks like balloons filling up the plate; and a glass of milk as white as the pillow he was drooling on. She smiled and went back to bed to hug her future husband. When they both awoke, he rolled over, looked at her and said, "If I could write you a love letter I would, and throw you a party write after and finally end up in this bed, I would..." and she became confused, "but we have no bacon anymore and it is hard to pay this rent, and then we want to have children right after? I think we spilled the milk here, and I am unsure if we can clean it all up and marry." She was in a bewildered state, barely awake and upset at what was just said. "You didn't need to write me anything or inflate my ego or comfort me when I go to sleep... you just needed to say I do..." and she sat, sobbing uncontrollably.
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