November

NOVEMBER 1, 2022: REALITY

1

Emma Hawkins woke up at 6 A.M. She immediately went over to the coffee pot and got it ready. She put in her one creamer and one spoonful of sugar. She stirred the cup. Her Corgi, Winnie, put those little legs up on her pajama pant leg, begging for anything at all.

"It's coffee, Winnie. You don't drink coffee. You have way too much damn energy already." Winnie went down from her pant leg and appeared to have a smile on her face. Emma had yet to ever meet an unhappy Corgi. She was not sure that they existed.

Her husband, Matt, came out of the bedroom wearing only sweatpants. "Mornin' honey. I'm. So. Fucking. Tired," he said with a sigh of frustration. He would have to go sit in an office for many hours. He would have to drive to and from the office. The days would always be long and a bit dull. That was the reality. Nobody really liked it yet here we were.

"You want a cup of coffee?" Emma asked with a smirk, knowing it was a stupid question to ask.

"Of course," Matt said as he grabbed the box of Frosted Flakes from the top of the fridge.

"You know you're going to have to stop eating Frosted Flakes eventually. We're like, how old are we?" She pretended to count on her fingers. "You're 32. I'm 30. I think we have to eat Raisin Bran or something now."

"But Tony the Tiger says they're great!" Matt exclaimed in his best impression of the orange, black-striped tiger.

"That was an awful impression," Emma said plainly, "but it was an...attempt." She handed him his cup of coffee at the kitchen table. He always drank it black.

"Thanks. For the coffee...and the compliment?"

"It was a compliment I think," Emma said with a smirk. She grabbed two bowls out of the cabinet and two spoons out of the drawer, and then sat next to her husband at the breakfast nook.

"I thought we weren't supposed to eat Frosted Flakes," Matt said.

"Sometimes, I don't actually give a shit." Emma kissed Matt on the lips and then slid onto his lap.

They made love that morning. They were both late to work because of it. Matt's boss yelled at him. Emma's boss didn't give a damn and didn't notice. She was just a warm body at the office.

Things were okay. They were okay. At least at first glance.

2

Emma was stuck on the highway, almost every day around 5 P.M., Monday-Friday. She was used to it at this point, as much as one could be, except, this time, the snow was coming down harshly. That was making the traffic even worse. She was beginning to think she wouldn't be home until 7 or 8 P.M. This upset her greatly. She probably wouldn't want to cook and neither would Matt, so they would opt for some crappy fast food and get increasingly more unhealthy because who had the time? Who had the damn time? They wanted to relax for two to three hours before having to repeat the whole damn thing over again. All she could think about was the fact that she would have to repeat this whole damn thing over again. And again. And again.

"...What if you could escape reality? What if you could have the perfect reality? What if you could be the CEO? What if you could be the billionaire? What if you could have everything you ever wanted? Buy a RANGER VIRTUAL REALITY HEADSET and find out! No box required, just slip on the headset and you'll find whole new worlds to explore..." Emma sighed because of the ad playing from her podcast. It was some true crime podcast she always listened to on the way back from work. It was probably the only thing keeping her from losing her goddamn mind in the car and now she had to listen to some shitty ad about how awful her life actually was. She already knew.

The traffic was bumper-to-bumper. It was not moving. It would end up moving very slowly for several hours and she would not get home until 9 P.M. due to weather conditions. Matt ended up picking up McDonald's before she got home. She ate a room temperature McChicken and fries. It was fine. Not Matt's fault, she thought. It was the whole damn thing that was the problem. The whole system.

They watched some show on Netflix. Emma was too tired to even remember much of it. She smoked a joint on the couch and passed it over to Matt. "You doing okay, Emma?" He asked as he took a hit.

"I don't even know." She was already far too stoned. She hadn't smoked any in a while.

"What's wrong?" He asked after taking a hit, passing it back over to Emma.

"Just tired of the mundane. Tired of this reality," she said.

"But we're happy, aren't we?" He asked sincerely from the other side of the couch.

"Happy as we can be. It isn't your fault. It isn't anybody's fault. Let's just go to bed." She got up from the couch. "Unless you're not tired."

"Nah, I'm pretty sleepy." They both got up from the couch and headed toward the bedroom feeling like zombies, except this was no apocalypse. This is all it really was. Day-in, day-out, expectations, mundane, things to do, places to be. Here we go again, Emma thought.

3

They laid in their king-sized bed together in their small bedroom where it almost didn't even fit. "You gonna be okay?" Matt asked again, looking away from the new Stephen King paperback he was reading.

Emma looked away from her iPad. She was never reading enough, despite being a writer. Well, on the side anyways. It made her maybe a hundred bucks a month. She self-published. It was working well enough, she thought. She got joy from it, writing her silly detective stories. "Just stop asking me, Matt. Seriously. I'm just tired," she said firmly.

"I'm just worr- "

Emma cut him off. "No, I don't want to do this. I'm just tired of the same thing, day-in, day-out." She had gotten herself worked up. Then, she began to cry.

Matt held her in his arms. "It'll be okay. It's going to be okay."

She didn't remember much after that. She fell asleep, but something felt off. Something felt wrong. A detachment. A separation.

Like being split apart from herself. She had a feeling nothing would ever be the same. It was a turning of black and white, then colors filling the eyes.

The next day would be a new one, maybe a bit too new.