The Anti-Climactic Return Of Third Person Thursday

"Daddy?"

He opened his eyes to the dark wood veneer of his desk.

"What, buddy," he called groggily. This was exactly the word he thought in his head to describe his voice and cringed to himself at the awkwardness of it.

"The movie's over," called his six-year-old from his bedroom.

He straightened his back and tried to stretch the pain from his neck. As he did so, he noticed that as he had fallen asleep at his desk, his hand had come to rest on his keyboard. The word processing document on the screen held a few sentences of substance and then seventeen pages of the letter "c".

As he rolled his chair back from the desk, he rubbed his forehead, imagining the red mark he would see were he in front of a mirror.

"I need to stop doing this," he said out loud to himself. "Sometimes I can just skip the writing and catch up on sleep."

He shuffled into his sons' room. One was asleep and the other almost was. He turned off the television which now played the DVD menu screen of Phineas & Ferb over and over again and kissed them each on the cheek.

"Goodnight, guys," he said to the already sleeping boys as he walked down the hallway to his own bed.

Tomorrow would see more writing. So would the next day. But tonight would see sleep.