Man Vs. Bed
A short film or scene in a movie about a sleepy guy who needs to wake up for work having a face-off with his bed.
As it starts off, we see him asleep, or we see his dream. Then his alarm goes off, and he jolts up. But his head is heavy with sleep, as are his eyelids. He looks at his pillow, which beckons him. He falls back into sleeping position. But a few seconds later he sits up again, determined not to succumb. His body wavers in place, conflicted between waking and sleeping. He looks at the world outside, and he looks at his bed, his pillow, and his comforter. The temptation is too much, and he collapses back into bed.
But he hasn’t totally lost. A small part of him is conscious and determined to wake up. He smacks his pillow - his best friend minutes earlier, but at this moment his worst enemy. He pounds the pillow repeatedly, using his last, most powerful hit to help propel him back upward. In sitting position again, he stares his pillow down in a battle of wills. But the pillow’s elegant, unpretentious simplicity and its promise of relaxation and escape from the complexities of awake life wins him over, drawing him back down.
Yet even as he lays there, he keeps his eyes open. It’s far from finished. He rips the case off the pillow and tears into its vulnerable inner guts, sending feathers flying and ultimately leaving nothing but a limp, powerless piece of fabric in his hands. He tosses the pillow carcass across the room with a victorious smirk. To reward himself, he lies back down on the pillow-less mattress, certain that having lost its most potent weapon of persuasion, this now uncomfortable mattress won’t hold him for long.
But his desire for sleep is too strong, and he find himself almost magnetically attracted to this unarmed mattress. He tries to sit back up into a position where he at least has a chance at consciousness, but the best he can do is slide across the warm and supportive, yet soft, surface.
Desperate, he tries duplicating his pillow-destroying combo against the mattress, pounding it mercilessly. This lifts him up enough to roll himself onto the floor. The jagged junk on the ground of his disgustingly disorganized room keeps him from nesting comfortably there. But looking up at his mattress makes him sleepy and nostalgic for the consequence-free playground of the realm of dreams. His desire is almost strong enough to float him back up there.
He sleepily trudges into the kitchen, grabs a giant knife, walks back to the bedroom, and slices the mattress into pieces, tearing out as much of its insides as he can.
When he makes the mistake of taking a break from the violence, he wavers while standing, dead on his feet and tempted to fall back into the partially-destroyed bed’s suffocating embrace.
With what little energy, will power and self respect he has left, he lifts up the mattress and tosses it around his room, knocking it against every wall and crevice in throwing distance, bruising and battering his foe beyond recognition.
He leans the humiliated mattress against the wall furthest from the bed frame, stabs it multiple times, pulls out more of its stuffing, then blocks it off with a chair, his dresser, and a small bookshelf.
To finish it off, he takes a piece of paper, writes “NO!” on it, and tapes it to an exposed part of the mattress. Though still a little sleepy, the hassle of making this situation sleepable again saves him from even the slightest bit of temptation (to which he would undoubtedly have caved).
Then he gets ready for work.
4 years ago