Instinct

Chapter 1 -- Crimson

The pale sun parted my eyelids through its weak rays bleeding into the curtain along my window, welcoming me to another semi-clouded morning. The stillness of frigid air that hung in the room brushed up against my exposed skin, making the micro hair follicles along my arms stand up in a frenzy and my skin to take up in arms the bumpy flesh reaction of coldness. I could half-mindedly tell that my blanket was mostly, if not entirely, launched off my body due to the coldness I felt. And the known fact that I was a restless sleeper that seemed to not care of the security of a blanket.

"Crimson?" a voiced beckoned from outside the room, it's voice a tinny echo that crept into my ears making no useful recognition of what I just heard. "She better not be sleeping through today of all days..." the voice whispered to itself, frustrated, before saying "Crimson get up, you're gonna be late". It must've been my mother, no one else would be calling out like so this early in the morning.

That's if it was still early...

'Late...' the faint voice in my head repeated to itself, as if it was trying to get clarification on what late was exactly. Or what I was gonna be late for. All these efforts despite just waking up from what felt like a deep sleep.

I rotated onto my side emitting a lazy 'huff' to look at a white porcelain box on top of an end table next to me. Digitized red figures holo-projected upwards in a 3D figure that said '10:00, 23rd of Syra'.

I murmured the projection's message to myself, trying to recall what was happening, or the significance of that recurring late that was stuck in my head. I raised my hands to my face, rubbing my eyes in a rhythmic motion to remove any sleep that still hung onto it. The room fogged up with black pin pricks that dissolved slowly as I removed my balled up fists from my eyelids. I looked around the materialized room to observe the immaculate neatness that I took time and effort into. Without that effort, it was usually a pigsty of clothes and unnecessary personal belongings not being where they should be. But the shocking neatness that I forgot about brought a half smile stretched into my cheeks.

Unwillingly, I shifted out of my bed and onto the white carpeted floor. My bare feet skimming over the shaggy ground beneath, using all my strength to levy myself off the mattress. My vision became weary with black pinpricks dancing around the aura of color that rippled throughout, my heart thumped profoundly against the insides of my chest. I had to stop moving and place support against the end table next to my bed as I regained myself, hoping not to fall suddenly. Surely blacking out from a sudden blood-shift wasn't the best way to start my morning, or even good in general, but I disregarded the one instance.

It took a moment before I could stand on my own and be left with loitering in the middle of the room with no idea of what to do next. I took a slow double take of the room again, receiving a weird pang of depression as if I was never going to see the place again. The feeling felt so randomized and out of place that I couldn't help but to focus on it. Surely the stirring in my mind from waking up must've had some reason to this. That or the weird dream I could vaguely remember upon waking with mixed drunken images of lights, movement...

...deep dread of loss and

"Crimson!" my other shouted again, more annoyed this time. My mind jerked suddenly back to reality from whatever I had fallen into. I didn't realize how long I was standing there for staring at the picture of my father and I absentmindedly. His smile seared back at me with a warming welcome that I needed for the morning.

"I'm coming mom" I responded to her irritated calls with a shocking grogginess that snaked up my throat. All of the enthusiasm I had going to sleep seemingly flew out the window the moment I woke up this morning. It was going to be another one of those fluff days where nothing happens, same as any other, and I'd have to drag my unwilling body around for all of it.