Pat fidgeted with the hem of his shirt as he descended down the marble stairs. He had taken the same passage for months yet the sinking eerie feeling in his gut never failed to drive him to the brink of restlessness.
The stairs stopped in front of a brick wall. To an outsider it might seem like a dead end but Pat knew very well what he was supposed to do next. He placed his left hand on the low roof above him. The sensor on the roof detected his fingerprint causing a lower portion of the brick wall to push back and reveal a smooth metal plate near his feet. He placed his right barefoot on the plate allowing it to detect the ridges and grooves on his feet.
With a hushed click the wall sunk into the floor, revealing a massive twelve feet tall room as wide as an average music studio. The motion sensor lights flicked on blinding him for a second.
He opened his eyelids to be greeted by his stash of pennies. They twinkled as the artificial light rays kissed them. The heap in front of him was not any ordinary pile of pennies. They were magical and the source of his constant headache. He was guarding them, always living in fear of them landing on to wrong hands. He had been asked to keep them safe until the right time arrived.
Pat sat in front of the pile feeling like a majestic dragon protecting its treasure. Folding his sleeves he walked towards the lonely trolley in the corner and brewed himself an early morning latte. Truth be told, gulping down coffee had helped him get done with the secretive task of his every morning. He, however was becoming more tolerant to the caffeine level and was thinking of shifting to stronger brews.
Sipping in the hot liquid, Pat grabbed a pair of tweezers and used them to began counting the twinkling stash like every other day. A total of five hundred and five pennies should be in the pile.
He had been using the tweezers for as long as he had those pennies as instructed. He had never touched them. They needed to be left untouched. Shiny. Shiny and untouched.
Honestly, the tedious task of counting the pennies was not a necessity but if he didn't do so his paranoia would have reaped his life long ago and he also could not afford to anger the true owner of those pennies.
1… 2… 3...
(๑♡⌓♡๑)(๑♡⌓♡๑)(๑♡⌓♡๑)
Back in her quarters, Addy was sprawled on her belly hugging her single bed like a clingy starfish. Still damp from her quick shower, her wet hair rested on her bed sheet like slimy slugs as she inhaled the artificial sweet fragrance of cheap detergent and old perfume from her pillow case.
"Everything okay?" Celine came to her, placed her half empty latte cup in Addy's bedside table and took a seat on her bed in concern. "You still upset with the bunny?" Red sirens had started wailing in Celine's head as soon as she noticed that Addy had arrived at their quarters at 8 a.m. whereas her shift should have ended at 6 and the walk back to the staff quarters took only about ten minutes from the Galápagos enclosure which Addy mainly looked after.
Addy shook her head denying Celine's assumption. She couldn't bring herself to elaborate even though she could sense the worry in her roommate's eyes. Instead Addy slumped deeper into her bed wishing she could sink into its bottom until all her problems would vanish. How naïve was she to once want this life for herself? If only she had a time machine, she would have run back to her past self and forced sense into her until she stopped being a dumb f*ck. She mentally counted how many stupid problems plagued her and most of them had arose from her being dumb and nosy. Then again, would the time machine take her back to her past self or to the past of the body she was currently in? She would never know.
"What is it then? You can share with me." Celine tried again. Her voice was soft and careful- just the right amount that urged Addy to speak up without making her feel like she had to.
Addy sneaked a peek at her roommate with one eye before going back to smashing her face on her pillow. She had been referring to Celine as a roommate for the six months they had been sharing the room since she had a hard time believing that the people around her were real, but deep down she knew Celine had somehow become more of a friend than anyone else in this world. In the span of a few months, her roommate had cared more for her than anyone ever had. She understood Addy in a way no one had. In a way, Celine was the first close friend she made. Addy, before she found herself inside this boring book had had friends in school but all her friends had better friends and after graduating she lost touch with them.
She decided to blurt it out. "Everything went wrong." Said Addy, her voice muffled by her pillow.
"Wanna talk about it?" Again Celine's voice was soft and caring. The voice of a concerned friend.
Sighing, Addy slipped her phone from under her pillow to show her roommate. An ugly giant crack had settled on her phone screen and the front camera seemed to have been destroyed.
Celine gasped with a dramatic flare. "My Gosh! I didn't notice before!"
"I know." Addy sighed with a heavy heart mourning over her injured phone. In this world, her phone wasn't the best source of entertainment for her since the same hundred or so people would recycle around in social media platforms and every video, news and shows that circulated around were bland and boring- just like the book she was trapped in. Worst of all, their internet culture did not include memes! Nevertheless, her phone was a comfort to her, a reminder of the life she had left behind and seeing cracks in its screen had cracked her heart.
"You have baby hands!" Celine exclaimed as she grasped her hands in awe, completely ignoring the damaged phone that was in her 'baby hands'. "They're so cute!"