Costume in a Can: Cure for Boredom Preview

 Been working on some projects, but nothing fully completed in rough draft form yet.  As such, I would like to present the opening on a story I'm working on currently in the meantime.



Tick.  Tick.  Tick.  Tick.  Tick.

Time trudged on by, ever so slowly, ever so painfully.  Ross laid there on his bed, spread out, as the podcast he was listening to ended.  That was that.  The last thing on his list to catch up on, the last thing for him to indulge in.

Ross let out a slow sigh and turned off the app on his phone.  Guess that’s it then, he thought, uuuuugh, what now?

The town’s lockdown remained on.  Outside of essential businesses and jobs, no one was allowed out and Ross had been furloughed.  While worries haunted the back of his mind, he did feel confident in his money situation and decided to simply focus on catching up on all of his movies, shows, and games.

Two weeks later and he had finished them all.  Everything was done, everything was caught up on.  He had finished his backlog [which wasn’t as long as he thought] and now had nothing to do.  He was tired of scouring YouTube and Netflix, was out of games, and he wasn’t able to check in on family and friends in person.

Things had gotten… empty.

Ding!  His head turned to his phone.  He had just received an email.  Grabbing it, he opened up the email app and checked, seeing it was from something called “Witchy Times Inc.” and the message was: “Cure for Boredom.”

It was spam he thought, nothing but spam and not worth his time.  He was prepared to delete it and go on about his day.  But part of him itched.  Part of him was curious about this odd message.

He opened it up and read/scanned it really quickly.  It was something about a local witch coven, products, a special offer, and so on with cute witch faces and imagery.  Certainly was more visually interesting to look at than most spam emails.

But what truly caught his attention was the last bit.  It read: “Need to add flavor and fun to your life at this time without any risk?  Why not contact us at Witchy Times Inc. to get you started on a cure for boredom!”

Right below it, a single link that would direct him to where he could buy this “cure” or whatever.  He rolled his eyes again, just tired with all of this nonsense already.  But, again, he found himself tapping on the link.  He couldn’t help but think his isolation and emptiness was going to cost him his phone by directing it to some shady, no doubt “hack-ful” site.

The screen went white, the Internet app opening up.  The screen lingered for a bit, a spinning wheel indicating that things were loading and nothing had frozen.  It continued to load and load until a simple message appeared: ‘Directing you to in person service.  Please wait…’

And there’s that virus.  Why did I think this-  His negative thoughts came to sudden stop as a low vrrrrrrrm sound filled the room for a brief moment before vanishing.  He sat up in his bed and looked around for the source…

...coming face to face with a floating window beside his bed.