The Quiet Mercy of Waking Up Alone

The events of the last night coming rushing back to me when I open my eyes. There is dried blood all over my bedsheets. The cuts over my arms were shallow and are starting to scab over already. My phone lays on the ground. There’s a thin crack running through it, a consequence of its impact with the wall.

Suddenly, I snap up. Lizzie. She said she was coming back. My eye flicks to the door—I didn’t even lock it before collapsing yesterday night. But I live in a one-room unit, so she’s not in here, unless she’s lying in wait inside the bathroom. I listen carefully for a second, and then I gingerly step over my sheets and creep over towards the bathroom door.

I fling it open.

There’s nobody inside. I turn around and lock my front door, and then relieve myself. The sun cuts in from the diagonal slats of my folds, casting my room in an unnatural pallor, and I curse quietly as I touch the lines running down my arms. I don’t keep bandages at hand, and I’m not about to go out and buy some. My account’s overdrawn already. I was relying on this next pay check to clear the balance. It’s fine. I’ll manage, somehow. Rent’s due in three days, but the landlord will only come knocking a week after that.

I scoop up my phone and tap on it, silently praying that the damage dealt to it is only cosmetic. Despite everything, I crack a wide smile when the screen lights up. The phone still works, and more importantly—the Affection Multiplier works too!

I tap into the app. The numbers, across the board, haven’t changed much—I see that the Vicarios have both dropped by a point or two, and I feel a twinge of guilt. Edgar Samuel, the good man, still sits at 30. But then I get to Lizzie’s score: Elizabeth Kestrel, Score: 80 and I almost double-take. The app clearly said that losses in score weren’t going to be affected. But after everything yesterday, that was only a 10 point dip?

It says much more about her than it does me, and in my mind, I repeat what I told Dave yesterday—she’s perfect.

I’m feeling hungry; I haven’t had anything since the bagels yesterday. I amble over to the fridge and open it up. For a (former) professional chef, the fridge looks depressingly bare. There’s a jar of tomato sauce hiding in the back, next to a half-consumed carton of milk and a box of eggs. That… well, that about covers it.

I used to eat my meals after work. Snobby rich folk often sent back perfectly edible food, and combined with the quick dishes we chefs would whip up after work for the rest of the staff, I ended up eating fairly well. As a result, I don’t keep much food at home.

The pantry contains some pasta. There’s a package of oreos next to it and my spice-rack, but neither is real food. I sigh and fry two eggs sunny-side up with a pinch of salt, pepper, and parsley. It goes down fast, and now I’m left with four eggs and a box of pasta. Food enough for two days, at most.

I turn back to my laptop. Now that I’m fed and can think clearly again, it’s time to review the Plan. I navigate to a hidden folder lying deep within a bunch of system files and open it up. There is a single document inside of it. I look at the plain little icon, a white page with the letters AES written over it, and then the text beneath it: A Plan For ****. I pause for a second. It’s been a while since I’ve opened this up. I right click on the file, click the AES Decrypt option, and enter my password.

A moment later, I’m into the word document. This is it.

The Plan.