“Helvetica” by Zander Zhang, XI: flash fiction

Helvetica

At night, I don’t really do anything. There’s nothing to do. There’s nothing I can do.

Some tell me to go to sleep. But like I said, I can’t. It’s not like insomnia, no. I don’t have “trouble” going to sleep. It’s more like I refuse to go to sleep. My mind awakens as soon as the lights go off, like it’s out of sync from my body. So my brain does a couple lines of coke, and immediately a string of thought hoists me up like a puppet.

Questions like, “What the hell is aloe vera?” or “What makes the Helvetica font different from Arial?” are asked. Before I know it, my face is illuminated by that terrible blue light of my phone as I spew my questions out.

“A number of the glyphs are almost identical, and even an expert would have difficulty telling them apart. However, there are a few that stand out as being quite different; namely ‘a’, ‘G’, ‘Q’, ‘R’, and ‘1’,” reads an article on I Love Typography dot com. Below the text, a table comparing the different serifs and uses of negative space captivates me as I carefully cross reference the two typefaces. At some point in the night, I lose control of myself, and the possibility of a good night’s rest is incinerated. I’ve crossed the event horizon of my consciousness, and I squander away the rest of the hours in my night like a person who has too much money to spend at a shopping mall.

When the sun comes up, the marathon is over. The flames engulfing my skull die down mysteriously, and my brain finally crashes. Autopilot is initiated, and like a robot, I peel my blanket off and head downstairs to eat a routinely lukewarm oatmeal.

At school, someone points out that I seem tired.

“What were you doing last night?” they always ask.

- Zander Zhang, XI: flash fiction