Under the door frame, Atlas leaned into the envelope of his own shadow, etching only the sound of silence onto the dusty air. Except for the small bell. It was the bell that was heard.
Virgil sprang up from bed in ascending hiccups, staccato'd by violent coughing. The ability to just "roll out of bed" was made more difficult by the fact that while sleeping on his side, the charged and focused eyes of the power outlet looked down on him like it was on time for class and he had just showed up-
7:51...
8 a.m. class in nine minutes.
Tugging the long USB cable from the occupied outlet across the room, he glanced at the time as it assaulted him in a bright ki-blast that ricocheted him into a rush of pulling on a pair of socks, draping a jacket over his shivering frame, shutting the window, watering the window-side plants, re-hydrating his contact lenses which must have fused with his cornea by now, finding his thumb drive and finally dashing out the door, declining Na's offer for breakfast on the way out to his vehicle, which was frozen over from last night’s cold front.
Outside, the sun bathed the smooth cement parking lot like a piece of fried bologna with even French’s Mustard distribution. The metal beams from the carport seemed to grab fistfuls of sunlight out of cold desperation. He started his car (which also violently coughed to life) and began scraping the windshield in robotic, harshly frigid movements. His stomach howled.
Dropping into the car and looking through the window on the window that he carved out, Virgil thought there must be a shimmering layer of ice on all things beside the sun itself. It certainly felt cold enough for snowfall, but it was only December, and as evidenced by 70-degree weather just days before, there are no such things as logical weather patterns in Tennessee.
Between the rhythm of a small bell ringing and the muffled scream of the heating unit starting up, Atlas watched Virgil back out of the driveway. His stomach howled.
Waiting at the first stoplight, Virgil began his morning prayer ritual, "I go forth on this day with a sense of purpose. I feel focused. Setbacks are lessons. I am infinite. I am creative-"
"YOU NEED GOD!" proclaimed Steve Harvey, joking with his co-workers on his morning radio show.
"You goddamn right, Steve!" replied Virgil, feeling no shame in striking his first real two-way conversation of the day with 101.1’s morning personality. The Steve Harvey Morning show always brightened up his day a bit.
Feeling a bit spent from the exclamation, he turned down the radio and shifted his thoughts to the contents of his thumb drive. He labored awake until almost sunrise, working on the midterm project and breathing in one un-congested nostril full of the scent of cat litter and a fast food dinner wasted to hours of sitting beside him, untouched. He worked hard on the project. Above all, the work was fulfilling, so at this point he didn’t much care about what the professor thought of the thumb drive’s contents. He felt content. Besides, he was used to people telling him "this doesn't exactly meet the criteria, but we'll take it" (because they were impressed regardless, right?)
Virgil had a liking for things that hid in plain sight, their meanings only seeable to the initiated.
As his most recent fleeting thought came, he drifted through the intersection, the sounds of car horns peppering his suddenly crowded and panicked brain. Darkness followed in a jolt, like a dream.
“Well lately life has been sucking my index finger on the hand that I try to write down my thoughts with, and nothing that I’ve learned about capillary refill can confirm that there is still life swirling around in my worn vessel.
Plus, pulling the imaginary trigger on my right-hand finger gun is doing nothing to shun off its cruelty.
Unknown Mortal Orchestra told me that isolation can put a gun in your hand…
Well, instead isolation has put a three-month-old kitten in my lap amongst the many distractions to help console me in my solitude.”
This kind of dream rarely happened. A dream full of reverbed voices that were no other than his. Virgil sprung up from his bed in ascending hiccups, staccato'd by violent coughing. Atlas was startled awake right after, stretching out of the blanket beside his new friend.
"Thank goodness that was just a dream," thought Atlas. His stomach howled.
it was 6:51...
Virgil had an 8 a.m. class in 69 minutes.
Both drifted back to sleep, free from the sun that had yet to rise.
