Cosmic Soup | coming soon!

the month of may | i

I hate Mondays. I mean, who doesn't hate Mondays? Capitalist society is designed to make you hate Mondays. It's designed to make you hate Mondays but not be able to do anything about it. Or at least that's what Nea tells me every Monday morning at precisely six o'clock AM as she falls out of the top bunk of my bed (we arm wrestle for it every time, and she always wins) and stumbles downstairs. Of course, at that point, she screams, because I live above a tattoo parlor and Nea is not a fan of needles.

The morning of May 3rd, 2021 is no different than any other. I release a groan, cussing like a twelve year old boy on his Xbox as I topple out of the bottom bunk and throw open my tiny apartment's door, going down the stairs two at a time.

"NEA!" I bellow, grabbing her by the arm and attempting to drag her back up to my room. Smith is sitting by one of the chairs, tattoo needle poised above a disgruntled customer's arm, looking thoroughly unimpressed. I cringe. "Sorry, dude."

"Every damn Monday," Smith grumbles.

I apologize several more times as I shove Nea up the stairs and back my way up after her. Nea is rubbing at her eyes, sitting cross legged on my bedroom floor when I get inside. "I fucking hate Mondays," Nea groans.

"You told me before your idiotic screaming episode," I say.

Nea shrugs, a sheepish expression on her face. "It's a habit at this point."

"It's a habit you need to get rid of," I reply, walking into my tiny kitchen and turning on the coffee maker.

Nea follows after me, her short, dark hair tucked behind her ears. "You know what my grandfather always said," Nea starts. I sigh. "A habit is difficult to break," she quotes. "Take away the 'h' and 'a bit' remains. Take away the 'a' and 'bit' remains. Take away the 'b' and 'it' still remains!"

I snort at her solemnity. "Your grandfather was something else."

"My grandfather was a genius, thank you very much!" Nea sniffs, sitting down on one of the two crappy bar stools Smith offered to me when I moved in. She gratefully grabs the chipped, blue mug of coffee that I push across the tiled counter towards her.

"You're not wrong," I reply. "So why did he end up with an idiot like you as his granddaughter?" I reach across the counter and ruffle her hair. She makes an annoyed noise, much like that of an angry kitten.

Nea sticks her tongue out at me as she gets up, rummaging through one of my drawers in an attempt to find the clothes she's left there. "Well, I'm off to work," she says after a few moments, slinging her Google bag over one shoulder as she hops on one foot in a sad attempt to get her boots laced.

"Enjoy that," I say, leaning back against the kitchen counter and sipping from my own chipped yellow mug.

Nea snorts, running her hands through her hair. She opens the door and steps out. "Bye."

I hear a shriek far below as Nea enters the tattoo parlor. Rolling my eyes, I sit down on my bed, grabbing my phone. There are a few texts from my friends about the Dodgers game from last night. I missed it, because I was busy with Nea. We have a Sunday night tradition of cleaning up videos that our alien-video-hook-up slash interstellar-nerd friend, Bart (yes, like Bart Simpson), sends us and reposting them. We've been doing it since we were in high school. It started as our way of humoring Bart's obsession. He was your typical "weird kid" - fascinated with bugs, rocks, and anything from outer space. We got a laugh out of editing the videos that he made while hiking in the most obscure places or crossing the Nevada desert in the hopes of glimpsing alien life. He joined the U.S. Air Force, and though it's probably against policy to send us fighter jet footage of the weird crap happening in the sky, he continues to email us, and we've kept the channel up. Our few hundred subscribers have a tendency to comment ridiculous alien theories on new videos.