July 1st, 2014.
Well, only just the beginning of July 1st 2014. As of a few minutes ago, the clock ticked over and you were in a new day. A new day and a new month. Half way through the year now, how time flies. You remembered when 2014 began and, to be honest, not a whole lot had changed. You were out of a job in January and you’d been out of a job ever since. You know that was terrible, but what else can you do about it? You’d heard that people waited ages to get jobs but fuck - you had no idea it’d take so long. Not to say you didn’t work. Temporary stuff every so often, but nothing special. Nothing big, nothing permanent, just a regular old-
Wait. What are you going on about? This shit wasn’t important now. This shit was the mundane, the boring, the regular Earth life for a regular Earth human. A opposed so a Martian Human, or some shit like that.
Okay, let’s start this again. It’s July 1st 2014, and just gone past midnight, and you are in your home. The home that you had lived in for the past 20 years of your life. Sat at your desk with your hands on a keyboard and mouse, in the room that you had slept in for most of your life and around the possessions that you had... Well, no, most of that was new. In fact, almost everything about this room had changed in 20 years. The furniture, the tech, the constant switch between paint and wallpaper, paint and wallpaper, paint and wallpaper. The only thing that was the same was you. And even then you had changed so much in 20 years that if you ever went back and met your… Well, meeting yourself when you were just born wouldn’t be a very good use of your time would it? Maybe your 5 year old self? Yeah, your 5 year old self you would probably hate him as much as you hate all annoying, young children.
Hmm… That’s slightly better, but still less important.
You’re an average guy - by ‘guy’, of course that is ‘human male’. You’re an average weight, average height, you live with your average parents, average siblings, in your average house and surrounded by your average friends whenever they did have some free time from their work. It’s almost as if someone took the most common aspects of the human race and compiled them all into one human being.
God, you’re so boring. It’s not like you don’t ever have any fun in your life, but you’re just so… Average. Painfully so. That doesn’t mean you play by the rules or don’t ever get yourself in trouble, but it did mean that if society said that you (as a teenager, or an adult, or an out of work youth) did a certain thing… You most likely did it once in your life. Thus, you were average.
Okay, still not important. The important part is coming though, promise. The important part always comes.
There was maybe one thing that wasn’t normal or average about you. Something that isn’t really ‘average’, that you won’t find that many people your age do or that you . You’re a fan of My Little Pony, specifically the Friendship is Magic kind. Yeah, okay, it’s 2014 and over the last four years the public have grown on the idea…
Well, at least they’ve reached a point where they just couldn’t care less. Not necessarily a point where the public are in open arms about adult males in their teens to 40’s watching a cartoon aimed towards little girls. That’s the sort of shit that no one will ever get used to. To be honest, you never really got used to it.
You have to admit, it’s pretty weird but the best thing you can do is laugh about it because it’s weird. Laugh at yourself, the show, the fans and- Oh, yeah, most importantly the fans. Some of the funniest shit you’ve seen has come from this fandom. Not intentionally funny of course, but funny shit none the less. You couldn’t honestly get a group of people and watch some of the hilariously terrible videos online and make an evening out of it.
Not that you ever had, of course. That’d make a pretty terrible evening.
But that wasn’t important either. Your friends, family, whatever couldn’t give a shit what cartoon’s you watch in your spare time. And quite frankly, neither could you. What you did in your spare time was your business, no matter what that was. You wanted to watch kids cartoons? You did. You wanted to play video games? You did. You wanted to browse the internet for… Nonsense? Then you pretty much did that too.
You just couldn’t help yourself, could you? Unimportant detail after unimportant detail.
What was important, the most important part of the first hour of July 1st 2014, was that you were tired. Unusually so, and anything unusual was unusual for an average guy such as yourself. Was that clear enough?
You were contemplating whether to stay up just a tad longer, just do one last thing before you got to bed. Which would, no doubt, turn into ten last things and you’d find yourself looking out the window at 5am to see the sky turning blue. Well, perhaps not blue but a shade of grey with a glow of orange over the near horizon-
Okay, now you were just distracting yourself to avoid thinking about sleep. Your eyes craved to be shut close. Your neck ached and your head hurt. Maybe you should just head off now. The early sleep could do you some good, for once. In fact, you should embrace this chance to get some early sleep. ‘Early’ being midnight, of course, compared to your usual sleeping pattern.
Finishing up everything that you were doing, you turned off your computer. The humming noise that you had grown accustom to over the last few hours or so faded and the room was silent. You always liked this, the moment before sleep where you could lie and think to yourself in bed. You would always think about… The next day. Maybe not just the next day, but the next week. The next year. The rest of your life. When your eyes had very little to look at as the darkness overtook your room, what else was there to think about?
The problem was that whilst you thought about things like what you were going to do the next day, it wasn’t exactly often that you pulled through. What’s that? Go out for a walk tomorrow? But you do kind of need to find a job… And then you don’t want to be looking for jobs all day. Why not have some fun? Some you time? TV? Computer? Video games?... A book, on the very rare occasion. One of the three or four would do.
The longer you lingered on it, the more tempting the idea of sleep became. Just go to bed. It's not a problem, it's not like you need to stay awake. Go to sleep. Sleep welcomed you, not like a child when you thought that you could stay up all night and the idea of sleep was something you had to dreaded every night. You got changed into something more suitable, just a set of pyjamas. Hmm... The whole hog tonight. Trousers. T-shirt. The whole hog wasn't really that much, but you were unusually cold so the extra clothes could do you good.
Light off, under the quilts, head on pillow and... Sleep.
~~~
You lived for night’s like this. Cold night. Nights where you spent more effort on trying to keep yourself warm than anything else. Nights where the very act of trying to warm yourself up made you tired enough to fall asleep. Oh, and of course, you can’t forget to flip over your pillow. Or your whole quilt if you really needed to.
You’d been led in bed for… A few minutes? Half an hour? Anywhere between the two? You’d lost track, that must’ve been a good sign. Not long enough to actually fall asleep, but enough time to start drifting. You could just… Turn over your pillow. You had enough consciousness - enough strength, even - to just turn over your pillow. But you lift your head and-
You notice something. Something odd. You’re not in your bed, you’re just floating.
Floating... Huh.
Well, maybe you were asleep already. Maybe you didn’t really notice. Although now you did notice. Which was strange, because you never usually noticed dreams. And in your expertise knowledge of dreams and dreaming, you know that was usually the part where you’d wake up. Or you’d stop ‘floating’ and feel like you’re falling.
But you’re not. And you know what, you’re still pretty darn cold too. And it’s pretty dark too. And you’re still tired. You still want to fall asleep. But right now, you couldn’t. Because you weren’t just cold, you weren’t just floating, you weren’t just out of your comfortable bed. You were in water. And a quick, sharp, intake and a mouth full of water confirmed this.
