The alarm shrieked from somewhere in the darkness.
Ahsira's hand clawed across the nightstand… empty space… the cool edge of a forgotten water bottle… nothing. His fingers dragged over the chair's plastic arm, then scraped across the desk's cluttered surface. Still nothing.
"Ugh! I'm such an idiot!"
The memory surfaced through the fog of half-sleep: that video he'd watched, some productivity guru on TikTok with a too-bright smile. "Put the phone across the room," he said. "Force yourself upright. And by the time you silence the alarm, you're already awake." And Ahsira had believed it... for about 6 hours.
He peeled himself from the mattress, limbs heavy as waterlogged wood, and stumbled toward the cupboard. The alarm's shrill cry burrowed into his skull. His fingers found the phone, and blessed silence flooded the room.
6:00 AM glowed accusingly on the screen.
His bed lay behind him. Unmade. Still warm. The pillow held the impression of his head like a promise. "Five more minutes," he told himself, "just five." His body swayed toward it, like a compass finding north. The sheets reclaimed him like a debt, and the video's promises dissolved like sugar in rain.
You could drag a horse to the river's edge, could stand it in the shallows until your arms ached, but you couldn't make it drink. Wanting had to come from within, and Ahsira wanted nothing more than the dark.
When he woke again, sunlight slashed through the gap in his curtains, and a voice detonated through the door.
They were sharp, furious syllables that crashed against his consciousness without forming words. The sounds warped and stretched, vowels bleeding into consonants, meaning drowned beneath the sheer volume.
It was his mother. Screaming at him for waking up late… again.
The clock on his nightstand read 12:07 PM.
Five minutes. Definitely.
But his brain, still fogged by disrupted sleep, couldn't parse language from noise.
He blinked at the ceiling, neurons firing slowly, synapses struggling to connect.
"Ok maa," he replied with a sigh.
He shuffled to the bathroom — his eyes half-closed — and let muscle memory do all the work. He slicked soap across his palms — five seconds, maybe less — before the water washed it away. The toothbrush waited on the sink, green fuzz creeping up the bristles. He scrubbed anyway. Thirty seconds. Forty-five if he was generous.
"Done," he said unbothered.
Motions of maintenance stripped of any conviction to care.
Downstairs, the kitchen still smelled of cumin and tomatoes.
"Maa! Can I have some shakshuka?"
Her response came like a thunderclap. "Who do you think I am? You drag yourself down here at one in the afternoon, after I've cleaned everything, and ask me to cook for you? Make it yourself!"
"Damn it," he whispered.
His throat felt dry, his stomach hollow, but "you know what," he thought, "there was an article I've read once... maybe two or three months ago... something about intermittent fasting... about how breakfast was a social construct invented by cereal companies. Lunch is only two hours away, anyway. Water should be enough for me..." So he chugged a glass of water and retreated upstairs...
Freshly hydrated, he pressed a button, and his PlayStation hummed to life. His library sprawled before him. His cursor drifted past the usual escapes. Then it stopped.
Children Can't Die.
Even though he had played this game before, something about the title made his chest tighten; maybe it was the letters, the colour of dried blood.
His finger, warring with the particles in the air, hovered over his enter key. "Eh… might as well," and pressed it.
But then it hit him. The bed behind him was still unmade. The sheets were tangled, the duvet was half on the floor. If his mother came up and saw it the thousandth time this week, especially as a grown 18-year-old adult, she'd kill him. So, he lurched over, wrenched the corners into place, smoothed the wrinkles, and smirked as if he'd conquered something meaningful.
The screen had loaded while he worked.
He sank back into his chair, vaguely trying to remember where he left off. It was in the middle of a battle, still level 1.
But his tongue still felt thick and heavy. He looked at the three plastic water bottles on his desk, which he'd collected after being too lazy to throw them away, and gazed into the soul of the bottle with some water left in it — he picked it up and drank it. But it was only a sip. He looked at the door, but laziness overcame him; he sighed, "I'll just get another bottle later."
"Come down! I need some help with the vacuum!"
It was his mother's voice knifing up through the floorboards. He exhaled through his teeth and slapped the air with his left hand weakly, "Yeah… one sec maa..." he muttered.
A mother can respond to their child's call instantly, but when it's the opposite, the ingratitude to their service towards them beats all. But in his defensive… he just wanted to begin his game.
Finally, he pressed play. The world cracked open and swallowed him whole. A light flickered into existence, a momentary ghost of a health bar in his peripheral vision. When his eyes opened again, they belonged to someone else.
They belonged to Slade.