Life in Lockdown

Coming into the last semester before summer, the last for many seniors, finishing up at Heathrow, a state wide chaos through everything for a loop.

The pandemic had **** American states into lockdown, Mark and his friends at college were of course included in that. The campus had imposed some strict rules and restrictions which meant Mark wouldn’t be having his regular classes online and wouldn’t be allowed to hang out in certain large gathering areas around campus grounds.

The week seemed to go by slowly and the impact of lockdown had an immediate effect on Mark.

Maybe it was just the effects of lockdown but Mark had certainly had enough of everything about living with Dale.

Every day of the week was the exact same.

Be woken up by Dale smashing buttons on his keyboard.

Online classes on his laptop, finding someone else’s room to take them in because

Come back to a messy room because the man was of course, a very lazy slob.

Listen to him yell at the computer playing with his friends online while Mark was trying to fall asleep.

It was unfortunate but there was nothing they could do, they were trapped in their halls and dorm rooms for the next couple of weeks. But it was enough to push him away, at dinner time one night, he had enough.

“Nope, fuck this,” he said, getting off his bed after listening to him scream at a computer for the last half hour.

Dirty Dale looked behind at him, wondering if he was talking to him.

“You’re impossible to live with dude!” he said while packing up his stuff, “Seriously…”

He didn’t even say anything, just went back to hitting buttons on his keyboard. There was a part of Mark inside that wanted to pick up that keyboard and smash it on the ground. Instead, he decided just to get out of there once he was all packed up.

At first, he didn’t realise where or what he was going to do. Once he had made the decision, it was final, there was no going back now.

Then he thought to himself, he remembered a conversation he had with someone not too long before the mid week break. As he rushed down to the common room, he found exactly who he was looking for.

“Matt! Hey Matt!” he called out to his ex-roommate in the common room.

Matt turned around, nodding his head up with a smile.

Was this a bit weird? A sense of de ja vue? Who knew, it was surely going to be better than his current daily life with Dirty Dale…