Time Loop

Day 1

The thing about Tuesdays is that they are the first day of the week where it looks like you can see the end of it. Just one hump and two days until you somehow manage to make it back to the weekend, a safe place where time is wasted until the week starts over again.

For John, Tuesdays were the worst day of his week. There are many reasons why the first one being that it's the day he is supposed to spend with his father. It had been the worst day of his week since his parents had divorced seven years ago when he was ten. It's a long worn argument between him and his mother about Tuesdays. He wanted to come back to the messy apartment they called home instead of 'hanging out' with his father at their old house that his father had kept in the settlement.

His father got a lot of things that John's mother had fought for. By the end of it, his mother had been financially drained and they were forced to move into a small apartment on the opposite side of town. The restraining order John's mother had placed on his father made it so that the man couldn't come around their apartment or within fifty feet of her without her permission. It was this way since his father had never done anything to harm John. Only his mother. It was the court's wishes for him to keep a relationship with his father, or at least some connection. His parents' relationship had been toxic, destroying nearly everything around them. Things happened that he wished he could forget and his mother wanted to take back.

The apartment that John lived in with his mother had two bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a living area. It was small for the two of them, but it was all that they could afford to live in at the moment. There was peeling wallpaper that his mother repeatedly asked the owner of the building to take down. The owner wouldn't say anything about it, or much of anything else about their complaints, which made it so that neither John nor his mother could do anything to better their living situation unless they moved out.

John opened his eyes slowly to his dark room, letting them focus on the ceiling at a slow pace, not wanting to face the day just yet. A streak of light pierced through his curtains, almost blinding him before he could fully open his eyes. His mother had bought him blackout curtains after one particularly terrible Tuesday morning. Neither of them would ever speak of it again and they both tried to block it from their minds whenever it tried to come to light. They had sworn to secrecy on it, making it a sworn oath between mother and son. An unbreakable vow.

He could hear his mother battling with the coffee maker. John stayed in his bed for a few minutes longer, hoping that maybe something, anything, would happen so that he could just stay there. When he heard his mother becoming increasingly verbally abusive to the coffee machine John decided that he had to start moving. John sat up slowly, still not awake enough for the dreaded Tuesday events that would inevitably happen. He slipped on some pants and ran his fingers through his hair in an attempt to make it look decent. Combs were too much of a hassle until he'd had some coffee.

Dragging his feet down the short hall to the kitchen, John heard his mother attempting to whisper curses at the old machine that granted them their life blood in the form of black, bitter bean water. Her voice echoed through the small apartment as she loudly spoke with the machine. He quietly stepped between her and the machine before she could do any more damage to it.

She mumbled grouchily as he worked his special kind of magic on the machine. He cooed to it and whispered gentle things as if it could actually hear him and would choose to work because of his niceties. The terrible thing was that it did work when he cooed to it. Every single time. It always infuriated his mother but she couldn't complain because when he finished she would finally be able to have her coffee.

John smiled at the small, slow machine and waited patiently in his tired daze for it to fill his coffee cup. The machine couldn't heat the water much anymore since the last time he hadn't gotten up soon enough to soothe the tension between the machine and his mother. As soon as it finished he began to swallow down the lukewarm drink without adding any cream or sugar while his mother grimaced at his animal-like nature. His wild and thick hair giving him a wild look just like every morning. He seemed to be more primitive with the un-groomed look. There was some hair growth on his chin, making him look older than he actually was. If he wanted to be at all presentable, John noted to himself that he would need to shave off the growth.