It's Beginning to Smell Like Spring & Something in Between

The Ringing of an Alarm: A Wake-up Call (a short story? essay?)

 It's so loud. Please just turn off that blaring sound!

 Her eyelids begin to flutter open, her skin glowing perfectly under the sun's rays. Her petite form folded in a fetal position, like she's cold and scared and delicate. Like she has a knack for resisting on instinct.

 Oh, it's another day. She thinks blatantly. But, I don't want to get up. I just want to stay here like this and not get up. Yeah, what if I did that instead?

 Her alarm is still ringing obnoxiously. She slowly unravels herself to turn it off, her hair flowing elegantly down her back. She sighs and groans; she doesn't want to go outside—doesn't want to get up today. She stays like that for a moment, thinking and rethinking—trivial things that probably won't matter til later or even ever. She just stares blankly at the singing phone, wondering, "When will it stop?" Whether she's referring to the alarm or everything else. Her dad, school, relationships—this life.

 Her dad has a very limited vocabulary. He has a special ability that makes everyone feel like a loser and weak and dejected. He knows no other word other than idiot. Cars aren't cars, they're idiots. Prices are idiots. Both fake and real people are idiots, including his own daughter. He's money-run. It's all he ever thinks about. Stocks are his other language and other wives. It's the only thing he respects but hardly succeeds at speaking.

 Then there's the ethereal balance and routine of day and night. The circadian rhythm that follows it like the beat of a drum or the pattern of a heartbeat, tells her when to wake up for school and when to rest her eyes and mind to prepare her mentally for the next time she has to visit purgatory.

 The alarm stops. Her foggy, disoriented mind slowly processing her surroundings, the time, the ceased alarm, the fact that her day would be as busy as a congresswoman booking three flights that are scheduled for the same time but different places, in which she has to encounter people she has no desire to see or meet, and by the end of it, how tired she'll be once she opens the door to her room. Her room that's messy as hell. Her room that her parents call a pigsty. Her room that she has no effort or motivation to clean.

 Instead of getting out of her heavy sheets, she turns around to look out her window that's left open, the curtains swaying in tune with the rhythm and dynamic of the wind. She stares into the abyss, wondering, "Must I? Must I really?" She just sits there, up straight at a 90-degree angle, appreciating the breeze tickling her cheeks and the smell of morning dew and mist frizzing her hair and listening to the cars rushing by to get their kids to school or driving to unknown destinations or deliberately driving without a plan or place in mind to go to. She lays back down, sighs, closes her eyes, wishing upon a faraway place—perhaps an escape—and thinks aloud: "I'll call it catching up on some long-lost sleep," for when she has to tell the girls why she didn't show up when really, she thinks: I'll wake up another day.