"Seize" by Alex Le

     It’s not common to get cramps every night, it just happens every now and then, but having multiple cramps in one night is not the exactly one’s idea of having a good time. By the time you’re awake, nothing is really left but a sore aching sensation of excruciating strain that one might tend to ignore if they will. 

     It was around 2 A.M when I woke up that morning, I didn’t exactly think much of my surroundings other than how warm it was, it was still summer season and I didn’t really mind it being a little warm. I reached out for my phone and grabbed it in order to check the time despite how tired I was. I didn’t want to take the risk of assuming that I still had time to sleep, however, the fact that I still had a few more hours to sleep, left me rather content and was ready to indulge myself in said acts. With that in mind, I stretched out my limbs in order to achieve the perfect optimum level of comfort and slowly, steadily, and quite delicately.... felt something off. This was a feeling one couldn’t quite explain, the “buildup”, I mean... and no I’m not talking about THAT. If I were to vividly describe this in detail, it’d be rather highly questionable to our current generation’s train of thought, so I’ll try and keep it to the point and tell you that what I felt was a gradually growing horrible, unimaginable pain that rested within my left calf. The ordeal itself doesn’t require a lot of dialogue of what went through my mind, aside from the endless amounts of cursing and tears. 

     It was similar to having my left calf muscle deciding to tie knots within my leg on its own and then setting itself on fire, and this didn’t last just a few seconds, but almost several seconds and possibly minutes. Even if it didn’t last that long, it felt like a handful amount of years. I didn’t exactly know what was going on at the time, since I was so deathly tired at the same time, but finally the whole ordeal ended as the knotted muscles in my calf began to release themselves from the uninvited tension, leaving a soreness behind as a souvenir for my troubles. Relieved, I laid sprawled out on my bed, sweating and honestly quite scared, but it was finally over! Upon silently celebrating on my deathbed, with dried tears on my cheeks, another feeling that one would describe as wrong began crawling along in my RIGHT calf. 

“Oh.” 

     The dialogue that rippled through in rapid successions in my mind this time was more clear and somewhere along the lines of; “no no no no no”. Although I thought I was slightly more prepared for impact this time, the pain was much more different from the previous one. It felt as though my right calf was eating itself right out from the inside and this was much, much worse. In a series of violent spasmodic movements and incoherent screeching, I managed to bang my head on the nightstand that stood right next to my bed, this occurrence kept my mind off my right calf for quite some time, putting me in a bit of a daze as the pain that I felt merely a few seconds ago was perhaps long forgotten... and like the last ordeal, after a few more seconds unknowingly, the pain has finally subsided. 

     I don’t think I was even that sleepy anymore afterwards, every bit of sleep in me has left my body and was replaced with utter confusion. Never in my life have I had such horrible things done to me. I thought to myself what I did to deserve such as I did, but in all honesty, I was rather indifferent to what happened and why it happened after that. Not only did I face abuse

from my very own body, but so did my bed, all the pillows were thrown off the bed and the bed covers themselves were bedraggled by the time I finished. I found out that what had happened were known to be nocturnal leg cramps and that they were the result of inactivity while being awake at night.. Aside from that, it was about time to get out of bed, the temperature of my surroundings has rose above boiling since I’ve been thrashing around so much and I felt an uncontrollable urge to get up and get some water. Having agreed to myself to get up out of bed, my legs, on the other hand, refused.