(⚠️CW/TW: severe body dysmorphia, self harm, blood, self-depreciating behavior/speech, substance abuse. Viewer discretion is advised.⚠️)
Monday, December 16th, 202█.
Four didn't get any sleep last night, only realizing as their alarm rang the next morning and the sun started to shine in their face, signaling 7 a.m., and the time they needed to go to work.
Right, work. They dreaded it today especially, as they'd have to work off all their debts with overtime shifts, plus get back all the money they'd potentially lost from their wallet getting stolen. They probably knew who Four was at this point, he called basically every month when they lose their wallet to some unfortunate means. Hell, one of them was probably still embedded in the sidewalk outside, from when they'd tripped and it got unsalvageable when they tried digging it out.
Picking up their phone, they reluctantly called the bank they'd had their card registered under, letting their legs hang off the side of the bed, the butt of the cigarette they'd been smoking late last night still between their fingers. Four hated talking to anybody, but talking on the phone somehow always felt exponentially worse to them.
"T.T. Banking, what can I do for you on this lovely morning?" the voice on the other line chirped. Four always despised how chipper the banker was at 7 in the morning, because they knew it was mostly just a facade for their job.
"Yeah, I'm just calling because my card was stolen a few days ago. Again," they replied airily, rubbing any of that want for sleep out of their eyes. "I didn't call in yesterday because I was recovering from... illness. Yeah. Illness."
Four doesn't know why they lie to the banker with something as stupidly simple as getting mugged. Maybe it's because they thought illness was an actually viable excuse to not call in for this kind of stuff.
"Well golly, let's get right on it! And what's the name for your account?" they asked, as Four could hear the clicking of a keyboard on the other end, preparing themselves for every question the teller had all at once.
"Four S. Heltal," they responded with their legal name, before repeating the words they had to say every single time they'd had to get a new card in the past year alone from either losing it or getting it stolen. "My mother's maiden name was also Heltal, the address on record should be 4117 Crimming Lane, date of birth is April 4th, 199█. Please cancel my card and send another in the mail."
"Well, oka–" Four hung up before they could finish their sentence. They despised bank tellers, probably less than them, but it was up there. They got off their bed, stretching their eyelids open to make sure they didn't stick together from a lack of sleep.
"Fucking hell," they muttered to themselves, regretting their decisions of staying up to smoke their last cigarette, plus the added "bonus" of not having any cash on them to buy more. "Why do you always manage to make things worse for yourself?"
They ran their hands under their freezing tap, every so often splashing water onto their face as a more effective wake up call than just what they could do on their own. Their mirror was covered in a tarp like always, preventing them from seeing themselves. But today, they pulled back the tarp to see how much water they needed to dry up.
Staring back at them was the face they hated to see the most: their own. They always looked disheveled in their image, a shell of a number, and maybe that's what unsettled them to the point where they had to cover the mirror in the first place.
"Why do you hate me?" their reflection questioned in their head, Four tilting their head in the mirror like they were the reflection of themselves, being inquisitive and curious, rather than cynical like their true self.
YOU ARE READING
Written in the Stars
Science Fiction"If you love someone, let them go." A motto Four had always despised. After being abandoned twenty years ago to be subjected to the mercy of people who didn't care for them, they'd learned that that motto was a lie, a sham, a way to get them to shut...
