The Ace of Spades

Chapter 13

3 in the morning is an ungodly hour. Some people actually get up at this time and are happy with their lives. Some people don't go to sleep until 3 and they, too, are happy with their lives. To Mea, though, 3am is the middle of the night. The absolute dead centre and therefore she does not want to be awake. There are things to be dreamt about and rest to be acquired.

So naturally, the assumed mating call of some nocturnal creature is loud and terrifying enough to wake Mea out of her comfortable slumber. She startles awake, flinging her covers off, and bolting upright. Heart thudding in her chest, she checks the time.

Fuck Mea, fuck this animal, fuck every single thing in the entire fucking universe because it's 3 in the morning and now Mea is awake. Mind you, she is not wide awake and could absolutely fall back asleep (the world knows Mea can fall asleep at the drop of a hat), but Mea still wriggles out of bed to check what on this green Earth made that noise.

The noise comes again, loud and clear, Mea's heart rate picks up infinitesimally, and then she rolls her eyes.

It was a goddamn owl.

A fat, fluffy bird that sounds like it's asking a constant question. Hoo, hoo. Who, who?

"Fuck you," Mea whisper-grumbles out her window to the loud owl and flops back into bed.

The warmth and softness of the bed engulf her as she shuffles the covers back on top of her, assembling herself into the fetal position. It doesn't take long for Mea's eyes to droop shut, the weightlessness of sleep to consume her once again, and she's out like a light.

But still - fuck owls.

**

Mea's awake, staring at the ceiling and assessing in her head if the owl situation was actually real not even three and a half hours later. Truthfully, six thirty is also an ungodly hour. Mea does not enjoy being awake for no reason other than to wonder if an owl really did wake her up in the dead of night. And did she really tell an owl to fuck itself? How unethical. Mea chuckles to herself. That owl has no idea how to speak English and Mea has an unfair advantage, what with being able to not only hear the owl but also speak English.

Mea chuckles again. She is going insane, absolutely nuts, over a damn owl occurrence that may or may not have happened.

Crazy people laugh about trying to talk to owls, right? Crazy, mental, insane people who are locked in cells with padded walls tell owls to do inappropriate things to themselves in the middle of the night, right? So Mea's crazy.

She rolls over and smushes her face in one of the pillows, trying to keep her laughter down. She is crazy in a million ways, this whole ordeal proves it entirely. It must be because she was supposedly awake at 3am. Only crazy people are awake at that hour anyways.

And so Mea is still laughing at herself when there's the quietest of taps on her bedroom door, then it opens to reveal her older sister. It's 7am by now, and Jojo is already coming in for some sort of heart-to-heart probably. Mea laughs lightly again - Jojo is also crazy.

Her whole family is crazy! Maybe possibly except for Toto, but aren't little kids crazy in their own way? Mimi is crazy, for certain, and Mea won't accept any other argument on the topic. Viv, despite not actually being family, is crazy for even knowing these people, for taking crazy Mimi's kids for the summer and not complaining once. Doug is crazy, too. He married Mimi and that's a whole new level of insanity.

Mea wipes a tear from her eye, sitting up to face Jojo who appears to be paralysed, standing in front of the shut door.

"Morning," Mea says.