The world that her mind built (Redo)

Chapter 1 - Doneness

I'm so done with everything.

Why? Let me present my analogy: 

A tennis ball is thrown off the top of a roof, plummeting down 30 floors, only to smash into the ground, hitting a car, rolling off to the side and pummeling a poor man's head, only to burst his major vessels and effectively put him into a coma, and soon after, his grave. 

In this case, I am the tennis ball and I just killed a man. Great. 

I don't want to normalise this - killing somebody is definitely a heavy crime that comes with its emotional burden, heightened guilt, responsibility, etc. but alas I killed a man. I can't really change that fact so why bother. 

*If you're wondering why I was falling down 30 floors and managed to bounce on the ground, that is because a few scientists essentially fused my consciousness with a literal and actual tennis ball. Whoopee for science.

To be quite fair, this is a scientific breakthrough, right? I mean, fusing your consciousness is a giant leap into the field of cloning? AI? I forgot. 

To sum it up, I'm a university kid who needs to make a quick buck and decided to fuse her soul with a tennis ball, only to have that tennis ball fly hilariously out of range and kill a man, therefore obviously pissing me off and by extension, done. 

Fusing my soul with a tennis ball. That must be a fun story to tell your family about when you sit around a bland, cardboard-like Thanksgiving dinner with cranberry sauce that tastes like a horrible glomeration of Jello and canned fruits that glowed oddly. 

Whatever. 

Now I was walking back to my small teeny apartment, a room like a thin file in a storage cabinet, made to squeeze as much as possible so as to save more space. It was like a neverending cycle. A room locked in an apartment locked in a city locked in a country locked in a continent locked in a planet, locked in a solar system, locked in a universe, and so on.

The apartment was a sharp blade that poked out from the dense concrete jungle that was my city. It would sway dangerously with the wind, looking like a seaweed underwater. The apartment was actually dubbed the city's "weather forecast". Whenever it was about to rain, the tower would dance and sway to the rhythm of the rain, and depending on how much it would sway, that would be the signal to find shelter immediately. 

It had a ''unique'' architecture style, many bricks held together by a brush of cement on the first few floors, and beyond that, wooden poles tied to steel ones to hold up its enormous structure. It was probably what gave its "extraordinary" bend to it. 

Nevertheless, I was thankful for the cheap rent. 

It was about 8 pm, the sky was already cast with wide strokes of navy blue and black. I was carrying a paper bag filled with resources from the recycling bin and a half sandwich left at the science lab. (I needed the paper to burn and keep me warm because nobody cares about fire hazards when you're freezing, and I needed the sandwich. I don't think I need to justify that.)

Following the street lamps that were like fluorescent mandarins, I finally arrived at the upsized version of an antenna. 

There was not much change to the apartment ever since I moved in. The front desk was still managed by a man in his mid-twenties sucking on a lollipop and blissfully reading a magazine, the lobby still had three various ornaments - A pathetic plastic "Merry Christmas" cursive mold with peeling gold film, a jack o'lantern that had a face carved out of it from the time the main desk manager decided to DIY it by watching a video that gave empty promises that it was easier than it seemed (and from what I've heard is where the key to the apartment's main safe is), and lastly, a heart that had the words "From your baby xoxo" written on it. It was hard to read considering the slash marks all over it. 

Three ornaments for three holidays. Innovation at its finest. 

The man at the desk was not a bad person; just a weird one. He had his own quirks I guess but most of them were ranging on the more psychopathic side, one that I intentionally avoid at all costs. (I raise the slashed heart as substantial evidence) 

He gets unusually chatty when he's on a rage spree so I tend to avoid him during those moments. 

Maybe he should be the one fusing souls with tennis balls and putting people into a comatose instead of me.