Orphic

I. Clinomania

' Clinomania

(n.) the excessive desire to stay in bed. '

Sometimes it's hard waking up. I hate having to get out of bed, and usually end up wanting to go straight back to curling up in my dusty duvet. Each New Day I stare up at the ceiling, just breathing. In and out, a couple of deep breaths, a long sigh. Just. Breathing. It's hard not to take it for granted really. Yet in the ten minutes I have before I need to get up, I focus on filling and deflating my dying lungs.

Breathe in....breathe out....breathe in....breathe o-

Claws scratch on wood and a deep growl floats up from underneath me. I feel my bed sway to one side as I open my eyes sleepily, blinking away the blurriness of Yesternight to see the dead ceiling. There's another dog like growl which pitches into a high-pitched yawn, and the bed sways back and lands back by the wall with a thump.

"You up, Umbra?"

I sit up and lean over the edge of the bunkbed to see Alice, lying on the floor in the shape of a starfish. Our shared room is small and oddly rectangular, and in that position she can nearly touch both the right and left side of the room. She looks up at me with her golden brown eyes, half closed from Yesternight's sleep, and stretches with a sigh. She itches her arm quickly with a couple of swipes of her hand and wriggles a bit on the floor, smiling.

"Why wouldn't I be?", I mumble down at her, "You're always so damn loud."

"You're one to talk!" She rolls over on to her front and arches her back, "You were talking in your sleep again- still mentioning your precious Koda."

I fall back amidst my covers and groan. Sleeptalking seemed to of become a habit in the past few months, with memories of reality that seemed to seep into my mind and quickly distort into fragments as I near consciousness... I don't remember who Koda is, or how he was related to me; just that he was someone who was part of my previous life.

"C'mon, we gotta get ready." Alice finally climbs off the floor and starts to head into our shared en-suite, "Otherwise Suco will be on our tails."

"You're the only one with the tail, Lupus!" I call back, and climb down the ladder to follow her. There's two changing rooms in the en-suite, one for each of us. Outside of those is a mirror stretched across a soft blue wall, although one side is smashed into sparkling pieces, with one long crack nearly reaching the other side.

There's not much point me looking into those glass depths; my reflection is as broken as the cracks. As i'm thinking of this, a bubble of some distant memory floats into my mind, an image of a memory slipping across the soapy surface. Is that...? Pop! A howl comes from Alice's changing room as I hear the shower being turned on, water rolling waves onto the en-suite floor and down into the rusty drain so conveniently placed by the cubicles. I try to think back to my bubble, but nothing is resurrected. Sighing, I go into the cubicle next door to hers, and hum quietly to Alice's melodic howling.

***

By the time both of us are changed out of pj's and into fresh clothes (although we didn't have many, which often pissed Alice off), we could hear the others beginning to walk down to the main hall. When I first... appeared... here, I quickly learnt that everyone had named the hall The Calling due to what happened there. All of us would need to go there each day, find Suco (also known as Asher if you wanna piss him off) at his pedestal, and go fulfill our jobs. It wasn't what I expected out of dying: the stereotypical hell or heaven doesn't exist; instead it's a permanent limbo where we can go live as a stereotype. I used to think monsters were just old wives tales, myths and bedtime stories that were made to show what our actions could cause. Oh, was I wrong.