Young Writers Society

I was still lying on the mattress that reeked of Nicholas’s body odor, due to him being of European descent. Our bedroom was just a large closet that led to the “living room” and “kitchen.” They were both clustered into one large room, yet the area closest to the front door had kitchen appliances, so we designated that area as the kitchen. The living room was just empty space we couldn’t fill with furniture. Not because there was a lack of space more so a lack of money. In-between the two “rooms” were the closet/bedroom, and the bathroom was located near the front door. We only had one window which was located in the “living room,” so our only sources of light were our iPhone, the window, flames from the stove, and a couple of flashlights located next to the mattress. (Surprising, right? That broke people can afford iPhones. It’s not necessarily that we can afford them, we just blew what little savings we had on them.)

Nicholas had gotten out of bed, and I could smell that he had made eggs.

“John! Wake up you bum we have to work.” He yelled from the other side of the closed closet door.

“Ugh… why?” I slowly moaned from the mattress.

The space between us was so small that he could hear my complaint, so he screamed in response: “Because America is now an aristocracy you little dip. We get taxed equally so old men can continue to drink hundred-year-old wine while I’m forced to drink freaking pruno in a glass bottle with a cartoon French man on the front.”

“No,” I said before letting out a small grunt as I partly lifted myself up from bed. “Why are you up when it’s still nighttime?”

“What do you mean?” We were still talking through the closet door.

“I heard the hostesses come back with their dates about a half hour ago so it’s still night.”

“You sure?” He asked with a slight tone of confusion in his voice.

“I don’t know. Check your phone,” I said lazily, still in the dark.

“It’s dead”

“So is mine.”

In the rooms above us were the bar hostesses. If you heard moaning and pounding for a solid five minutes, then it usually signaled that it was night time. Somewhere around midnight or one in the morning. At five in the morning, angsty men in their twenties would wake up and complain loudly about having to work so early or maybe they were continuing an argument they had with their girlfriends. It’s really hard to tell. Overall, our neighbors were our alarm clocks and clocks in general. We didn’t have any clocks of our own, aside from our phones, and we always woke up before the sun would rise. We assume we wake up at around five in the morning since that’s around the same time our neighbors wake us up, but we really don’t know. All we know is that it’s the time we need to get up at anyways to have enough time to get ready for work.

“How do you know that they returned a half hour ago?” Nicholas asked.

“Insomnia you dick, you know this already,” I said slowly laying back into a sleeping position, reassured that I didn’t have to get up anytime soon.

“Well, I guess I’ll just eat and go to bed.” He said, ignoring my last remark.

For the next few minutes, I heard the scraping of metal and a few loud gulps here and there. Still lying the darkness of the closet. For a moment there was the sound of rushing water from the sink and then it stopped. Nick’s feet made a single thump before he entered and jumped onto his side of the mattress. We shifted for a short while to find a comfy position to sleep in. After doing so I put my arm over my eyelids and Nicholas became still.

“Hey Nick,” I asked groggily as I began to feel my conscious being taken away by drowsiness. “Why did you wake up so early?”

“What do you mean.”

“You never wake up before the neighbors do,” I explained.

“Things shift every now and then. People sometimes wake up early or go to bed early and it’s just something that happens.”

“Yea but. you’ve been doing it more often lately.”

“As I said, it’s just a shift, no biggie.”

The conversation ended in silence, and I was finally able to sleep. 

Keep in mind that I wrote this at around midnight for an hour. If you actually read this then... I'm glad to say that you wasted a quantifiable amount of time. Now get out of here you little scamp.