I got fifty-nine submissions for this week, but unfortunately they were all written in invisible ink (hahahahahaha), so I’m afraid it’s just me. I hope you enjoy it!
The topic for next week is: a well.
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The Morning After
– Ahniwa Ferrari
Brandon woke up slowly, and lay in bed staring at the ceiling for a long time, blinking at the bits of crust rubbing against the corners of his eyes. Finally he threw off the covers, stumbled naked into the kitchen, and opened cupboards to search for coffee. He found some beans, ground them, and yawned as he filled the coffee pot with water to pour into the machine. His eyes drooped a bit, his nose felt all snotty, and he tried to remember what he had done the night before.
The smell of coffee made him smile a bit. He poured himself a cup before the pot was done brewing, making coffee drip directly onto the heating-surface and give off an angry, burnt smell. Some splashed onto his foot, and he shook it off as he and his coffee mug made their way into the bathroom to take a shower.
It took two minutes for the water to get hot, which was ironically enough time for his coffee to cool down enough for him to drink. When he stepped into the shower, he got scalded, and he cursed as many things as he could think of before he got the temperature right. He leaned against the wall of the shower so that the showerhead was right over him, and let the water make rivers down the creases in his skin.
Famously groggy in the mornings, he felt awake after twenty minutes in the hot spray, and turning the water off he stepped out of the shower and reached for his towel. He dried his hair and waited for the steam to let go of the mirror so he could brush it to a fairly reasonable level of control. It wasn’t until the mirror cleared that he remembered; everything that had happened the night before, the week leading up to it, thinking if he just fell asleep he’d wake up and it would all have been a bad dream. But he was awake now – he was fairly sure of it – and it hadn’t been a dream after all.
He glared at the mirror for eight minutes and thirty-one seconds exactly, counting in his head superstitiously, but it did no good. Finally he grunted, turned out of the bathroom and back down the hall, muttered, “Fucking invisible…” as though it were something that might happen to anyone at any moment, and went back to bed.