Imagination and A Monster (Draft One) Chapter Five

The apartment you end up choosing is about an hour from the family-owned grocery store you work in. And you haven’t actually moved in yet, it’s just what you’re considering if you find a way to, because even with what little money you’ve saved up, you can’t cover the down payment, at least not without a roommate.

You should be looking for one, right now, but you’ve got two weeks before the campus dorms kick you out when the nongraduates finally get their ceremony over and finish up whatever late projects they need to submit. There’s that familiar feeling where you know you should be doing something, but at the same time, you can’t really be bothered to. 

Inconvenient, that it had to come over you now, of all things. 

Your roommates are moving out soon - both of them, like you, already had jobs before you’d graduated and are just moving to places closer to them, but they’re nowhere near your own place of work. Some of your classmates have actually been recommended by professors to hiring companies in their network, so good for them. You don’t have a lot of people you can actually say you’re close enough that you’d initiate the conversation of sharing an apartment together with them. 

There’s probably some people who are in the same situation as you but, are you really going to risk talking to a bunch of strangers?

On your dresser, your phone buzzes. It’s probably your mom. She’s been asking about whether you’re getting a new job now that you’ve graduated and everything, or where you’re moving. You know she’s considering asking you to come back home, find a job in your town.

You’ve promised yourself you’re never going to. You don’t tell her that, though. 

Maybe you can ask for an advance from your boss. You can afford this month’s rent anyway, you just need to double the amount for the down payment for the next one. You can scrape together what you can to keep paying the next month’s rent after.

You sigh, rolling over in your bed, grabbing a pillow and hugging it to your face. You’re not gonna be able to manage that, even if you think you can. You can get another job, though. 

“You haven’t packed yet?”

You pull the pillow down, lifting your head a little. One of your roommates has come in. You hadn’t heard them open the door. 

“No,” you say, “I’m meditating.”

They snort. “A little too deeply, it looked like.”

“Isn’t that the best way, though?” you say, sitting up. “You moving out tonight?”

“Nah, tomorrow morning,” they say. “Early morning. You know how traffic sucks in the afternoon, I’m not gonna exhaust myself sitting five hours in a cramped bus.”

You nod. Outside, you can already hear the honking of irate drivers, like they can do anything about the traffic when it all just comes down to how many cars are on the road at once trying to get past programmed traffic lights. 

“You eaten yet?” your roommate asks again.

“No,” you say. You only realize that as you say it.

“Cafeteria’s still open, you wanna come with?” 

“You buying?”

“Yeah, why not?” They crack a smile. You should probably commit to not forgetting their name every two days or so. Just because you’ve never considered yourselves close is no reason to be rude. They’ve never been cruel to you. Neither of your roommates have. “I got a job interview next Wednesday. Consider this a celebratory treat.”

“Oh shit,” you say, “Congratulations.”

“Moving up in life, baby,” they say.

You laugh. It’s genuine, even if it’s a little soft. Just because you didn’t get a job and have no energy to look for one doesn’t mean you can’t celebrate that your roommate might get one.

“Come on,” they say, and you stand, throwing your pillow back to the head of the bed. They grab their dorm room keys from their desk and toss it into the air once. You glance at the customized keychain it’s attached to when they catch it. 

Leone Aliénor, it says. Right. Their name is Leone. 

You hope they do get the job. Someone’s got to make it in this hellhole. 

-

The cafeteria turns out to be full and neither of you are keen on walking around trying to wait for a table to be free (mostly because you don’t want to seem like assholes passive-aggressively pressuring people to hurry the fuck up) so you end up walking to one of the shops near campus. One of the advantages of university is that there’s an abundance of shops in the area, even if there’s a lot of people at all times. 

You find a table, order food, and make small talk while you wait, and you realize sadly that you suck at making small talk. You’ve always known it, at some level, but it smacks you in the face now when you can’t even talk to your roommate of several years without having to strain yourself to think of anything to fill the silence with. Thankfully, the shop you’re in has a television in the corner, one where you can both see even if one of you has to turn, and it’s playing one of the pre-news game shows you guys always watch in your dorm. 

You fall into your usual habit of talking shit about the contestants. Small blessings.

When the food arrives, it’s easier, since you’re not expected to make conversation, and at that point, you’re genuinely invested in the show. It’s actually nice, you find, just sitting somewhere having dinner with someone familiar and making fun of a tv show together. There’s a lot of people, but you’ve been in your seat long enough that you don’t mind too much, and it’s become a little cozy.

You sip on your drink as the game show ends and the news comes on. Ah, well, time for the disasters of the day.

“Oh shit,” Leone says, watching the headlines as the anchors list them out, one by one. “That’s been going on a while, hasn’t it?”

FIFTH LABORATORY RAID: ENLIGHTEN LABORATORIES DATA STOLEN, the headline reads. It’s gone as another one immediately takes its place.

“What are they doing with that?” you mumble.

“Probably some espionage stuff,” Leone says. “It was bound to happen one of these days. So much for all that blackout-induced peace and goodwill.”

“Ah, shit,” you say, flatly enough that it gets a chuckle out of Leone.

You’ve both still got a platter of cake that Leone had impulsively gotten, so you’re not in a hurry to leave. You set your drink aside, working through your dessert slowly as you watch the news, waiting for the laboratory raid segment. 

It’s the same as every lab raid that’s been happening this past few months: stolen paperwork, stolen data drives. No equipment or samples taken. Just that. All the raiders wanted were data they couldn’t already get from the data breaches that had happened months prior to the physical raids. 

“Someone’s getting desperate,” Leone says.

Maybe it really is espionage stuff, although you’d expect them to be better at their job. Still, it’s not like you have much knowledge about these things anyway. Maybe the security guys are just as good with their jobs as the thieves. 

There’s been investigations going on, of course, but no one’s fessing up yet, although that’s to be expected.

“Oh, yeah.” Leone feels their pockets, trying to find something. They fish out a folded piece of paper from their jacket and open it up, laying it down flat and pushing it towards you so you can read it.

It’s a flyer. 

ENLIGHTEN LABORATORIES, it reads, at the very top with the laboratory’s famous logo stamped below it.

“Enlighten’s doing lab tests,” Leone says. “Non-meteor dreamers and meteor dreamer brain scans. Couple of new sleeping pill tests. Hypnotherapy tests.”

“Was that how you got the cash for all this?” you ask.

“And for apartment money, yeah.” They nod. “You’re a meteor dreamer.”

“Haven’t really been diagnosed.”

“There’s a shitton of people out there who aren’t,” they say. “Plus, you didn’t exactly have a hospital that could.”

“True,” you concede.

“Give it a try. You still don’t have a roommate for your new apartment, right?”

You snicker. “I don’t have a new apartment.”

“Soon-to-be new apartment,” they say. “They pay good, you’ll be set for a while.”

You look back down at the flyer, skimming through the details. Applications end two days from now, you get an email if your application is accepted. Two weeks at the lab, to monitor your progress. Seven grand - 

You choke on your cake. Leone slides your drink over to you and you hurriedly gulp some of it down.

“Seven thousand fucking dollars?”

“Meteor dreamers are rare,” Leone says, “It’s not like you guys can ever be replicated.”

“It’s seven fucking grand!”

“Yeah, you’re set for a couple of months while you sort shit out.”

You know it’s probably gonna be gone quickly, but you’ve never held this much money in your hands. You still haven’t, but the concept of it is baffling you.

“I don’t think they’re gonna refuse one of you guys since they have a hard enough time finding you,” Leone says. “Give it a try.”

“Seven grand.”

“Yes.”

“Holy shit.”

“Shrine-worthy, truly,” Leone says. “Think it over.”

“Yeah,” you say, nodding absentmindedly, your attention still on the paper.

It’s just two weeks at a lab. It’s probably nothing like the horror and sci-fi stuff you’ve read and seen. It’s just two weeks while doctors research a baffling, possibly once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon that’s likely never going to happen again. 

“Besides, maybe they can refer you to a therapist,” Leone says, shrugging.

You laugh. “Yeah, I need one anyway.”

It’s seven fucking grand. 

Of course you send in your application when you get back to the dorm.

-

Meteor dreamers are rare, considering they’ve only come into existence for a grand total of once in the history of humanity, but you’re still twiddling your thumbs in nervousness the morning after you send in your application. Leone gets up at four to get to the bus station early - summer means that students are gonna be travelling in droves, after all, and they want to beat the traffic - and you’re already sitting up before they can so much as stretch and fix their bed. 

“What the fuck, go back to sleep,” they say, nearly jumping out of their skin after you silently sit up, almost mechanical in your movements. 

“Couldn’t sleep,” you say. You’ve been drifting in and out of sleep the whole night, and you’re even more tired than when you started. 

“Nightmares?”

“No.” You wave a hand. “Just nervous about that application.”

“Oh.” Leone nods, understanding. “Give it a bit. If you don’t get a response in two days, hit me up and I’ll help with your apartment.”

“What?” You blink. “You don’t have to.”

“It’s fine,” they say, yawning. Finally, they move to start fixing their bed up. “You want anything from the kitchen?”

“It’s too early, I’m not hungry yet.”

“Alright,” they say. “Go back to sleep then.”

You snort, but lie back down. You don’t sleep though, instead you just stare at the ceiling for a while listening to them moving around until the door closes when they head downstairs. 

It’s funny that you hadn’t been nervous about having no roof over your head until you actually sent in that application. You knew you had to afford that apartment, eventually, because there’s no way you’re going back home, but it hadn’t sunk in until then. Like actually doing things was making the situation more tangible for your mind to grasp, like it finally understood that it was important enough that you had to put effort into it. 

Eventually, Leone comes back with food, and your other roommate stirs at the scent of freshly brewed chicken soup, sitting up. 

“Kitchen didn’t have anything yet, I had to go across the street,” Leone says, “I got enough for everybody if you two want to get up.”

Deciding you might as well, since you’re not doing anything else, you get up.

It’s a funny feeling, knowing that you’ve roomed with these people for years and you’ve barely paid enough attention to remember things about them, and you’ve never shared chicken soup with them at dawn in a dark room. It feels as nice as it is weird, so it’s best that this is most likely the only time it’s going to happen. 

Leone eventually pulls some of the curtains aside to let what bit of light from the still-rising sun come through, which isn’t much at all at this hour, and all three of you sit in silence by the window while you eat. 

The campus is silent and empty, with everyone else asleep. It’s peaceful. It reminds you of how home felt like when you left - beautiful in its silence, but only then. You’d hate to see it in the daytime and in full action. 

You have to hit the lights, eventually, and all of you clean up and wash your dishes. Leone gets ready and drags their bags over to the door before checking to make sure they have everything. When they’re sure they’ve got everything, you offer to help them bring their luggage downstairs. 

It’s the least you can do. 

“Well,” they say, all three of you waiting for their cab to arrive. “This is it, I guess.”

“Look at you, Aliénor,” your other roommate, Arden, whose name you’d recently learned after taking a look at the only other bag name tag in the room that didn’t belong to you or Leone, says. “Finally becoming an adult.”

“Feels like Teen Plus Edition, to be honest,” Leone says. “And it sucks even more.”

“Isn’t that always the case?” Arden says. “Don’t die out there.”

“I’ll try not to,” they say. “Try not to die too, you little bastards.”

You don’t hug, but you do share awkward fistbumps (only awkward in your case). 

“Call me about your apartment situation, okay?” Leone says to you.

“You really don’t have to.”

“Yeah, but I want to,” they say. “Don’t worry about it.”

Eventually their taxi arrives, and you wave them goodbye as they make their way to the bus station. You watch the car disappear into the dark.

Arden’s right. They’re making their way into the world, which you know isn’t really as grand as everything in your childhood makes it out to be, but it’s still such a foreign thing to consider, that you’ve outgrown your childhood shoes and have finished school, which always seemed like it would never end. That you’ve done these things and there’s a world of possibilities and you’re supposedly joining society. All that was supposed to be a distant thing, something that happens ‘when you’re older’, something that happens ‘when you grow up’.

Growing up, huh. 

It fucking sucks.