Meditations

You close the app. Well at least she probably got an orgasm out of that...

You stand up, stretching. You don't want to be in your room anymore. The app isn't even really a distraction. Porn wouldn't be a distraction either. So you walk to your door, opening it soon after closing it.

All of the doors are closed. You'd guess Olivia's is probably locked. You don't know about Sephora's. And you don't even want to think about Rebecca's. But you don't want to go into any of their rooms. You walk to the living room.

You don't know about anybody else, but your roommates had always had a bookshelf. It was full of textbooks that the damn school bookstore wouldn't give you a decent amount of money for at the end of the semester. "Sorry, there's a new edition that's come out, we'll pay you $3 for what cost you $90 to buy used." Assholes. Maybe you should've wished that such people got their just punishments instead of to control your life. You can't help but chuckle to yourself. Try to twist that stupid evil gods.

You look through the bookshelf. Some graphic design textbooks, some history textbooks, some big chemistry textbooks, Organic the most terrifying of all. But as you look, you see one that is smaller, almost bullied among all of the others. You pull out a book from a philosophy class taken long ago.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

Isn't this book about how to live a good life? A self-help book before those even existed? Maybe you could afford to be a bit more stoic, after blowing up and hurting any and everybody. You go to the couch, and open the book, starting at the beginning.

You leaf through the book, as people showed up, slowly. First was Erica. She walked up the stairs with a bucket and the scraps of her phone in her hand. You didn't want to talk with her, you were already trying to cool off your anger. And surprisingly, she doesn't want to talk to you.

In fact, her eyes are downcast, afraid to look at you. She moves quickly, almost jogging as she dumps the water down the drain, the slight hint of her smell filling the air quickly, before disappearing. She throws her old phone in the garbage can, though who knows if the powers that be would get rid of it. She washes the bucket, before she dumps it again. Filled again, she walks down the hall with it, toward the bathroom.

You hear the slight shuffle of something, and you look up to see Rebecca at the corner. She sprints away, and you don't attempt to follow. You bury your head in your book, convinced that now your relationship with her is in tatters. Good, you'll only hurt her anyways. Then Erica comes in and grabs the vacuum from the corner, before quickly jogging away.

Sephora is next. She comes out, and starts cooking dinner. As she finishes preparing the food, leaving it to cook, she comes out to you. "What you reading?" "Philosophy book. It's either that or try to become a doctor like Rebecca's trying to be after her gap year." Sephora laughs. "Any wise philosophy come up yet?"

You stop. You paraphrase something repeated over and over in the book. "It is best to only concern oneself with what one can control directly. Try to bend your circumstances to your best ends, but know that concerning oneself with things out of your control will only leave you unhappy. Build grain stores for famines, but know that the great one may come despite your preparations."

Sephora looks at you, amazed, before she playfully shoves you. "Come on, it doesn't say that. No big statements about how humanity are a bunch of bastards? Or how you think therefore you are? How about how god is totally dead?"

You can't help but smile. "You know those are other people right? But nice selection. Last two are Descartes and Nietzsche. The first... actually doesn't narrow it down too much. There's been arguments since the very beginning of if people are assholes naturally or not."

Sephora laughs, "Mark me on team asshole." The both of you laugh, and you can't help but feel the last specter of anger and sadness disappear. So you look at her, and notice something. "Your clothes go through the paper shredder or did you get in a fight with a pair of scissors?"

She is wearing a normal set of clothes, a set of jeans and a shirt. Except the shirt has a massive hole, revealing the lower band of her bra. Her jeans are half jean shorts/half normal with a hole in the knee.

She laughs. "Yeah, blame it on my new roommate. The pussy is great, but you have to watch out for the claws." You look at her baffled, as she laughs at her joke. "Regis, Regis Philbin? Did you forget about your little furry friend?"

Oh... The cat of wardrobe malfunction. Yeah, your old sins keep on moving.

"He eats very little, and he only goes into your room every couple hours, mostly when you're gone. Hope you have a litter box hidden in that closet, because I'm not going to help you wash your clothes after you realize he's been using your closet as a litter box."

"But yeah, he basically has camped out on my open drawer. I must have lost 5 shirts. And he seems to just be drawn to the crotch of my pants too. I'd say help me cut his claws down so they're not so sharp, but you need special scissors for that in order not to hurt them."

You finally answer her. "Wait, his name is just Regis, not Regis Philbin. Though knowing you, that was probably a joke. And if he's really destroying your clothes one scratch at a time, you can just lock him out of your room."

"And miss him using me as a cushion? He always purrs so loud, like a fuzzy vibrating bra."

You can't help but cringe a little. They seem random, until you know he's a cat with a mission. And that mission is to get her naked, one scrap of clothing at a time. Like the Terminator of nudists.

Sephora goes back to the kitchen. "Hey, I have to check on the food. Chicken Marsala tonight. Might as well live it up, before the world ends."

"Yeah, you never know what tomorrow holds."