The prompt is to write for 30 mins. Describe your morning.
My alarm didn’t wake me this morning. Which was weird, as usually the cell mp3 of what Tmobile deems as cascade, would go from barely audible to deafeningly annoying. Instead I was awoken with extreme images of Amityville Horror vs me and the ensuing anxiety, panic, and fear that would go with a demon house trying to kill me. So I am awake ten minutes early and off my normal morning pace.
Which is, wake up and immediately check my phone for the blinking white light, which lets me know I have texts. One or two is normally from Ben telling me to wake up and that I’m a slacker for sleeping in – quite annoying as I don’t have an eight to five work schedule so when I don’t get home till ten at night, and needing a couple of hours to wind down, sleeping in till eight or nine makes sense. Its easier to just ignore him. Which is usually how I deal with most things.
This morning, it’s apparently stock day and Jonathan has explained that he has to negotiate with the vendors to make sure his store is properly stocked which means nothing to me as the only negotiating I know how to do would be the ones I make which involve customers who are 120 days past due and yet I have to convince that today is the day to make us as a priority and make a payment. I respond wittily back to Jonathan, before launching into a reminder of my first day of school and needing to also finish my presentation today on third party messaging for my ELP interview tomorrow. I then crawl over the smelly corpse-like body of my ex-boyfriend who hasn’t bathed in three days, which is recent to him. As I move, my foot hits Zoey, the black, white, and brown colored corgi, who lapses into the vicious I’m-going-to-bite-your-face-off dog, before falling back into unconsciousness. I’m too busy trying to not look at Sam to scold her, but am unsuccessful. His red hair is stuck up in all directions, large clumps in “horns”, from his constant anxious twistings. The hair, if touched, is not greasy as much as it’s forever damaged from the trauma of being twisted over and over. Five o’clock shadow covers his face, even though he last shaved when he woke up around ten pm. Long red bristled hair sticks out his nostrils, and even though disgusting, he won’t trim it. Not sure what I ever saw in the disgusting troll who resembles the stereotypical nerd who lives in his mother’s basement except that he’s really skinny. Disgustingly skinny. And all he does is eat junk food.
The bastard.
As I get up, he rolls onto my side of the bed, and I think about burning the sheets, my pillows, and bunny who his arm has fallen on. Bean, my tan and white corgi, perks up immediately upon my foot touching down on the thin carpet. He jumps off my bed, his tags jingling on his neck, excitedly anticipating walk time. As I walk near my shoes, his ears perk, brown eyes widen, his back legs crossing, but I don’t stop. He watches my drunken staggers towards the bathroom. His brain switches from pee time to shower time, and he follows me into the bathroom, his nails clicking on the white tiles. Licking water off the floor, the walls, and after I step out of the shower, my bare legs, is far more exciting.
I decloth, throwing my nightshirt and underwear into the sink, before pulling back the dingy shower curtain, and find that my gray and white coon must have exploded the night before in my shower. Tufts of long cat hair cover the crème colored plastic walls and floor of the shower. Disgusted, I turn the water on, thankful that – today – left turn gets hot water instead of cold as it seems to daily alternate. Instead of the hair getting washed down the drain, I am greeted with ankle-deep hot water, which soon reaches my calves with floating gray fur tufts in the water. I stare at the drain hopping there isn’t a rotting dead mouse, swollen with water, clogging my drain. I mentally note to pick up a bottle of Draino and check if it declogs mice from drains.
Jamie Provencher 