I've been there. You've probably been there. For all I know, you're
there right now.
I'm talking about the Wrong Side of the Sunrise. This is the time of day, just before dawn, when the sky is lightening and you realize that you've been online all night. The time when you suddenly realize that you're very tired and fairly thirsty, and haven't eaten for hours. You try to move, but your muscles have all gone stiff from being in the same position all night. You blink and your eyes try to stop halfway so you must struggle to open them again to at least shut down before hauling your tired body off to the warmth of your blankets, and in some cases, a significant (sometimes merely important) other.
For those who have the fortitude to last past sunrise, it's time to close the curtains against the overly bright and piercing rays of the sun. I have yet to find a curtain strong enough to keep the morning light at bay and will admit my defeat to the sound of my shutdown theme and my feet dragging across the carpet to my bed.
What follows is my original post, written after a long night of reading the newsgroup alt.fairs.renaissance and the sun was just rising...
Oh,
no!
I waited too long...
It's coming; I'm trapped...
It's *gasp* The Wrong Side Of The Sunrise!?
Normal human (all right, that isn't entirely accurate) by day. Late at night, my vampiric tendencies take over. However, unlike other vampires, I gain sustenance not through the biting of other and partaking of their lifeblood, but from the light radiation coming from a computer monitor. I need only occasional sips of water to keep my heat down (having no internal fan).
But I waited too long and now it's coming. In darkness, I am as a vampire; in the light, I am (mostly) human. But in the space in between, the dawn itself, I'm am both and neither. As the sky turns pale blue and the clouds turn a delicate pink, the sunlight strips away the vampire in me and I am left with a need for sustenance beyond monitor light and water.
I must flee the windows, the kind with curtains as well as the ones with icons. I flee in search of substance! I must break my fast.
Barring that, I must burrow deeply within my bedding and shut my eyes to the evidence of the morning and surrender myself to blissful sleep.