My fever broke while I was sleeping. The time on my phone is reading ten 'till eleven. I can hear Victor from the game room across the hall playing World of Warcraft. The loud clanking, banging, yelling, and growling wreck havoc on my tranquility. Feeling gross but better than this morning, I made my way short across the hall into the spare room. A futon in couch mode covered in dirty laundry across from our double desk taunts me to dump them in the wash. We both have our own custom gaming computers. His is a three-foot black menacing tower in the perfect shape of a square. One side is plexiglass making the inner workings of the machine visible flashing blue. My ATX sits on the opposite side of the long cheap plastic table. A pink, girly tower, at a typical size with red trim, also housing flashing red and pink through the red-tinted plexiglass. I like the front of it because it reads the temperature.
Victor taught me how to play World of Warcraft after about four years of playing it all wrong. I was a blood elf rogue wearing spirit gear. I wanted robes because they looked badass and this was way before transmogging which allowed you to have any gear appearance while keeping your stats. Since Victor and I have been together, I've played other massively multiplayer role-playing games like; Rift, Star Wars The Old Republic, -- which are WoW clones, Guild Wars 2, and Final Fantasy 14. No, not big into competitions like raids or huge Scenario groups. I'm the collector type so my quest runs are usually to get a piece of gear or to unlock a specific item. Sometimes I do a little bit of role-playing in a group if boredom ensues hard enough. These days, I've been so depressed that gaming doesn't feel like a joy anymore. Victor and I hate playing together because he's super competitive; a sore loser and he has no patience for me. He's always yelling to keep up with the group's DPS. There's only so much I can pull with the low-level gear among the others with higher stats. It's so annoying. Years putting up with that has jaded my enjoyment of killing things for fun. If I wasn't so bad at first-person shooters like Call Of Duty or Left 4 Dead, I'd be killing Nazi zombies right now pretending every one of them were Marcus and the managers from work. The game freaks me out because of the whole zombie thing so I end up killing my team or getting killed myself a million times.
I've been standing in the doorway for about ten minutes,"Um, hello?" He's in a dungeon. Probably an epic, but he can take his eyes off for a split second where there is a pause or cutscene. They came out nearly every five to ten minutes.
Victor keeps his eyes on the computer screen, fiercely clicking away."Oh hey, hi there boobie." It's a term of endearment derived from a family nickname of which I won't say. At least right now and you just started reading. Let's move on shall we?
"Uh, I'm going to put my doctor's note in your bag." I ripped the paper off the dining table and slipped it inside Victor's leather messenger bag leaning against his computer. "Hopefully the sickness will transfer to Marcus' hands." It wouldn't work. The man boasts about having a steel immune system because he eats his fruits and is up at 4am to the gym. Who fucking does that? I return to the doorway. Odin struts by my feet and hops on to the pile of dirty laundry.
"They had us reconfigure the network and repair some of the older systems." Finally a break from the game and into real life. He stays seated crossing his arms. I'm not sure what I was waiting for. I feel like part of him resents me for staying home while he tries to act like an adult.
"Anyone notice I was gone?", Now I cross my arms. He's not going to ask how I'm feeling? Nothing?
"Morgan and a few of the girls wished you well." Victor shrugs and returns to his game. His group had disbanded so he was in que for another epic.
What did I ever see in him? Victor's really let himself go. He used to be thin, had long black hair, used to be funny, and he knew I was alive. I had hope that maybe one day he'd propose. We have careers and make good money. It would have been great. Now our friends one by one are getting married and having kids. I feel like for the last seven years, I've been lying to myself. I've only tolerated him because it looked like he had something. He told me he was going back to school for his Bachelor's in Information Technology. So far he's had just a certificate that apparently expires. He thinks he can rely on luck to get the job he really wants. Life doesn't work that way. Whatever happened to his plans? Was he just telling himself those things or was he telling me just to make me happy? He also said he'd work-out with me but every time I go, there's always something wrong with him or an important event in a game he couldn't miss so I went on my own feeling like this whole relationship is a lie. We're roommates who occasionally fuck and when we do he gets off while I frustrated, by go to sleep. It never bothered me though. I've never really enjoyed sex. I would take a sleep aid or in this case now, my medication so I could crumble away into dreamland.
I roll my eyes and about-face back to the bedroom. Being in the dark is my thing. I have a small light on my nightstand next to my "I don't like Mondays" mug. The tiny light doesn't illuminate the whole room. Time to take another Tylenol. My head is starting to pound as a clear reminder that I'm still sick. Victor had at least left some NyQuil next to the lamp. I don't bother to measure yet instead take a big sip of the tangy blue shit to target my sinuses.
"Yeah, come on!" Victor is apparently enjoying his game while I'm about to enjoy a movie.
Flipping through Netflix, the one movie that caught my eye is In your Eyes. It's about two people in opposite parts of the country who have a sudden telepathic connection. Hm! That sounds cheesy and yet interesting. I watch the movie clutching to my pillow accompanied with a roll of toilet paper. It really is good and the ending I dare say made me choke up a little bit. The bed is covered in snot-filled ass wipes. I lay back with my watery eyes on the ceiling, thinking more that the movie was pretty neat. Wouldn't it be cool to have a friendly voice in your head like that? Shit, like, that doesn't happen and happy endings? We all know happy endings are only what you get at shady "massage parlors". There no such thing as real happy endings. Especially not for me. Not for a screw up like me who can't seem to do anything right.
I grumble gathering the tissues and toss them a little at a time in the toilet. "Fluuushhhhh...Fluuuussshhhh...Fluuuushhhhh..." Behind me, I hear Odin prance on the bed for his usual estate at the foot of the left side, which is my side. It's bedtime I suppose. On the way out of the bathroom I decided to at least brush my hair. The hair tie is caught but with determination and the scissors out of reach, I was able to free it in about an hour. The Denman brush or the brush designed for curly hair sits on the counter full of dead tangled dark brown strings. It contained a giant mass big enough to be a softball. With a little bit of water and conditioner, I was permitted to tame the beast that is my hair making a simple side braid to the left just reaching the mound of my breast.
I was blessed with "good hair". With that advantage, most of my life I've kept it long. Then my first ever mental breakdown happened my senior year. I shocked everyone with a choppy ear length cut. My mother was at a loss for words so she herself cried for the loss of my waist-length hair as she did her best to even out the boyish hairstyle which gave me an afro every time I stepped into the swampy humid air. It was new territory for me, this new hair. I hated it so much I wore wigs until it got long enough to tame at my shoulders. My friends slowly forgot about me, having been tired of my insisting on having emotions, god forbid. Not to mention the rumor about me having contracted herpes caught from basically a pedophile from Alabama who I trusted, spread around of course, because bad rumors are better than a reputation for being clumsy and having acne that bad. Herpes Girl became my name. On my face it was really acne mostly from leaning on the right side of it. To ignorant people, it looked like herpes camped out there.
For my mom, never mind why I cut my hair. To her, my hair was her crown and glory. I kept it short for a few years until I met Victor. 2012 was the year I decided to grow it out and not let my emotions take over the length of my hair. I fasten about two inches off the bottom of my braid followed by wetting the end with coconut oil to protect it while sleeping.
A sneeze creeps up as soon as I get comfortable in bed. With a wry groan, I reach for the roll of T.P now about at half of its mass. My stomach then grumbles as I've not eaten a thing. Perhaps some soup would help. I look past the open door and across the short hall to the game room wide open as well. It wouldn't kill Victor to make me some soup, would it? I take another swig from the blue bottle. Or, I can get drunk off this stuff?
My throat is still parched and scratchy."Victor!...Victor!...Babe!...Hel--"
Victor snaps with the sound of a child in the middle of a kids show,"Whaaaat?!"
"I am sick. Could you heat up a can of soup for me please?" Now, I'm annoyed.
"Well I'm tired. We are sick and tired." He pauses while spamming a few clicks."Yeah, I'll make you some soup."
I sigh,"Gee, thanks''. Sitting up now listening to Victor clunking and banging cabinet doors. He doesn't know how to not make noise. There's a bit of humming out of key parts of the game soundtrack that can be heard under the banging and creaking.
In just ten minutes, I smell the chicken noodle soup with wild rice. My stomach feels as though it's being stabbed from the inside. I stare up at the ceiling fan making its way around and around hastily collecting dust. It's Tuesday morning now. Do I really have to go back to work in less than a week? What if I call out dead? I close my eyes at the thought of never having to work a day again. What would I do? I spent about three years jobless a long time ago. That was a different and difficult time back then. Way worse than the falling apart of 2006.
I hear stomping coming from the kitchen getting louder. With one hand Victor flips on the light. Like a vampire, I hover my right arm over my eyes screeching at the burn coming from the bulbs above. He sits the bowl on the nightstand. In shu-ing him out, I hissed at him to go away and to take the light out with him. My eyes burn into my skull as it takes a few seconds to adjust back to the comfortable darkness.
"I don't know how you eat in the dark." Victor shouts across the hall returning to his game, "Yo, I'm back. I had to make my girl some soup!...Yup...Okay que up. I'm headed to Orgrimmar to stock up on supplies." I try to imagine him with an Italian accent and nearly spit out a carrot. The Fonz playing a video game.
Victor's Italian mother, Normal, is typical. She loves her son so much, it could be considered toxic. Norma calls her son every single day. She only talks to me if Victor is sick, which has been happening a lot, -- to give me directions on how to care for him as if he's a complete invilid. When I met her she interrogated me about my intentions; where my family was from, my educational background, and asked if I wanted to marry and have kids. Victor was fresh out of rehab for opiate addiction. Freddie, my previous ex, shared the last name of a well-known mob boss, Capone. He claimed to be a recovered Opiate user too, but he only traded one drug for another. Victor seemed to have done very well when his mom fired question after question at me from the dinner table. Thinking back on what happened so many years ago, there were red flags I failed to acknowledge because I was desperate to have a roof over my head. Like when things between Freddie and I got real sour, he picked up drinking towards the end. He'd start needless arguments. Silly things like how much attention I give to the cats in comparison to him, how I have guy friends, how many hours of work I have; petty things like that. I overlooked all of those things. Until one night after hanging out at my boss's house right behind the dollar store I slaved at, Freddie said he wanted to party. We got in the car with no direction. He took us on to i-95 on such a dark night that I couldn't tell that we were on the wrong side of the road. Then, cars off in the distance were headed our direction! Freddie was visibly drunk rambling now about what, I didn't know, because I was trying to get out of the car. With the door wide open as he turned the car around, my right foot in sandals scraped against the coal-like fresh pavement. The pain of it wasn't noticed being that it was a matter of life and death. Freddie pulled me back inside and forcibly reached further to slam the door shut with his left still on the wheel. The cars once facing us, flew past headed west.
What happened the rest of the night was a blur. I woke up sleeping in bed with a massive hangover. Freddie was sprawled out on the black couch watching Futurama. No apology. I knew our relationship was over. It didn't matter anymore. No amount of sorries, poems or meaningless sex could make up for what he did to me. Victor was a good man. He took me in after I told my story over dinner. We met at a karaoke bar I had started to go to alone since Freddie didn't like karaoke bars. Victor wanted to take care of me and I was desperate to leave the growing toxic environment that was stewing around my ex. For Victor, being homeless in my condition wasn't an option. However, there was more about my relationship with Freddie that made it seem like it was a giant waste and I began to have that feeling again last summer.
A tear began to roll out of my right eye wondering if this was another mistake. There was something going on with Victor he wasn't letting on. The once caring, thoughtful, and funny man that saved me from an abusive relationship was gone somehow. Something has definitely changed. Maybe this is the result of a long-term relationship. It's been five years and five years is quite a long time to be with someone. This unexplainable feeling which started to creep back into my life is like a haunting. A few tears mingled with the little contents of my bowl left next to a few bowtie noodles and small pieces of celery and carrot. I sit the bowl on the nightstand. As a chill came over me, I burrow myself into the blankets. Maybe this is all in my head but I can't stop myself from crying.