The 21st Floor

I had been staring at my walls for about an hour before I decided to go out, and I don’t mean that in some fancy euphemism. I meant I had been literally staring at the wall for an hour, trying to decide if the misty grey paint was tinted with the slightest touch of blue, or the tiniest hue of purple. I hadn’t reached the point of trying to find pictures in the dustmotes floating in sunbeams yet, but it was getting close. Today, so far, has been an utterly lazy one. Which is wonderful at first, but then eventually you end up lying on the couch silently going nuts trying to figure out exactly what colour your walls are. The quiet had a soft ringing sound to it, and all together it was making me very sleepy. It wasn’t even 12 o’clock yet, and my whole body felt heavy and comfortable. “I gotta get out of here,” I murmured, without making any move to do so. You can hardly blame me. I had a very comfy couch. It was kind of like if they took three of those recliner chairs that you get at the movies and smashed them together. Covering them in soft charcoal grey fabric, rather than the leather-vinyl mix that you stick to when it’s hot, and this couch was possibly my favourite piece of furniture I have ever owned. It was so squishy and cushion-like that when you laid down on it, you would kind of sink into this amazing soft plush perfect indentation of your body. I’ll admit, if it wasn’t for the fact that I was starving, then I probably would have stayed on the couch until I decided what colour the walls were tinted with. Alas, I was starving and I was fairly sure the only things I had in my apartment that were edible consisted of a tin of diced tomatoes, and a couple of rapidly going black bananas. Yeah, I thought grimly, definitely time to go grocery shopping. It kind of made me long for the days when I was a kid again, and this was all somebody else's problem, but no, I had to be a functioning member of society. At least nobody was going to trash my apartment when I was gone. I remember this one time when my mum went out grocery shopping, and left my brother Casey and I home alone. I was sick, and my brother was watching me. He pulled out this old mosquito net, a princess thing we took absolutely everywhere. It was currently residing above my bed, and managed to hang it in the lounge. Mum had been absolutely furious, but he’d hung it above the couch and spread it around us like we had our own personal little viewing pavilion. We sat under it, watching old nineties cartoons in our jammies, and lounging around a little less miserably than I would have on my own. We’d hardly even bickered that day. Of course, that meant the next one when he was down because he’d caught my illness and I had to do the same thing with him the next day. Mum had yelled both times, but in fairness, we’d brought so much bedding into the living room that we could have built individual blanket forts. Not to mention the hole we’d put in the ceiling of our rental. I missed Casey. I’d have to arrange for us to hang out, because the chest aching pang that came with the nostalgia meant that we would have to do that again sometime soon. At the very least, I would have to call him. Guilt gnawed at me as I tried to figure out when I had last called him. He hadn’t called me either, but I still felt bad enough about it that I would have called now except, you know, groceries. With a sigh, I heaved myself up, my head spinning ever so slightly as it tried to clear the impulse to just up and fall asleep. Do you ever have those days where it seems you’ve lived the same day a hundred times over before, and there were a hundred more just like them waiting for you? Hanging around the house, tidying up, watching TV, indulging in hobbies, and just chilling out. They all blur together after a while, and start giving off major deja-vu vibes. I didn’t mind, as days went, it was nice. The only thing stopping today from being another one of those days was my need for food. I probably shouldn’t be so resentful about it. Tomorrow I have to go to work. Now there was something to complain about. Not that my workplace is bad, or some kind of nightmare, or anything. I worked as a secretary in an office building, and they had a pretty sweet setup. In comparison. However, it was still in fact a workplace, which meant dressing so I fit in with what was deemed acceptable. It still meant acting how other people wanted me to act, and parroting the lines that I’d been given. All consideration is given to the image of the company, and none given to how well any of it affects how well I can do my job. Anyway, that is tomorrow’s problem. I got up off my ass and wandered into my bathroom with a handful of clean clothes. Only staggering ever so slightly on the way, so bonus. I loved my bathroom. There was a range of pink, orange, purple, blue colours all through it that absolutely shouldn’t go together, but did. It looked like there was a sunset happening in there, all the time. The best part about my bathroom, my favourite bit, was the part where the shower ran straight into the bath. It was old school, and reminded me of when I was a kid. My mum used to let Casey and I rinse off, put the plug in, and run the shower until the bath was full. Child-me used to think that it was the coolest thing ever. It was surprising how happy little things can make you. “Urgh,” I groaned, examining myself in the mirror above the sink. It wasn’t so bad, but my short purple curls had puffed into a frizzy ball around my head. It faintly resembled something that birds had used to nest in. That was going to take some time to fix. I rubbed my eyes, and hoped the slight stinging sensation of tiredness would dissipate. While my hair was a particularly stunning lavender colour, if I do say so myself, it was definitely going to take some work until I was presentable enough for public view. There were some dark smudges under my eyes, but not enough to leave me looking exhausted. The brown of my irises hadn’t darkened into the coffee-coloured tar pools that signalled a truly horrific mood. I could work with this. It took 35 minutes to get my hair resembling something less like a Sim that had been set on fire. When I was done, it sat in big loose curls in a… I think my hairdresser called it a pixie bob? Like it was long with curls framing my face and a whole bunch of layers, but it left the back of my neck exposed? Sort of chin length. If that makes any sense, I was always more obsessed with clothes and shoes, rather than hair and make-up. Which is why my curls are so short, because there was no way I could take care of them with any added length. I wouldn’t even know where to start. Speaking of dresses, I now felt like an i***t because my hair was perfect, and I still hadn’t put on my dress yet. I let out an aggrieved noise and tried to avoid throwing a temper tantrum. I was going to ruin my hair, I just knew it. Don't even think about it, I told myself internally, clamping down on that line of thought ruthlessly. Just move on, and get dressed. Actually, I hadn’t even picked which direction I was going to go in. There were two options, and I held them both up to me. One was dark purple, with long sleeves, very flowy, and short. The other was black, with thick black straps, and tied just under my bust. I liked the shiny golden buttons on the black one, I decided. Well, that and the part where it was silkier. I do like a silky fabric. In my head, I smoothly pulled my dress over my legs, rather than over my head, but that didn’t make much difference to what actually happened. What actually happened consisted of me hopping around like an i***t, to the point I was laughing at myself, and almost falling on several occasions. Thank God that nobody else was here to see this, I thought to myself, giggling and more than a little out of breath. “This! This right here is why I’m still single,” I muttered to myself, not that I really minded. I haven’t ever been lucky on the relationship front... Oh! Don’t be unnerved by that. The talking to myself thing, that it. Anyone who lives alone will tell you that it comes sooner or later. The alternative is to go out and sound perpetually like you’re coming down with a cold, because you don’t use your voice box and it gets rusty. It’s only a problem if you start answering yourself. I exited the bathroom with a final tug at my clothes to make sure that they were sitting properly, and it wasn’t long before I was slipping on the most basic and comfortable pair of black ballet flats I owned. Sitting down on the floor, in front of the front door and pulling them out from underneath the table that held all my essentials for leaving home. I stood up, wincing at the creaking sound my body made when I did, and collected my keys from the small purple dish they sat on, with a handful of random crystals leftover from my witchy phase. When I left, I quietly locked up, jiggling the handle of the darkly painted green door. It made a rasping click followed by a hollow thud as it had closed, signalling that it had locked. Actually, all the doors are painted the same green. It was so deep and dark it was almost black, and if described to me before seeing it, I might have been iffy. It didn’t sound like it would look nice, it sounded like something out of a horror movie taking place in the sixties, but they’d not only managed to pull it off here, they’d done it and made it look classy all at the same time. There was a warm reddish brown stain covering the hardwood floors, and dark green rugs matching the doors that ran down the centre of the floor. The walls were a soft silvery cool white colour that put to mind an icy forest, and covered in art that they rotated often. Some people had plants outside of their doors, and others had tables with expensive-looking knick-knacks evenly spaced between the doors. Nobody seemed to worry about them being stolen, and I’d never noticed any missing on my floor. Personally, I liked the plants. My apartment was full of them, and almost half a dozen vases of flowers. At either end of the hall was an elevator. No stairs option, but they have never broken down so… glass-half full, until something goes wrong, it’s not a problem. The elevator covered all twenty floors and the basements. I assumed all of the other hallways were the same. I’d never actually visited them. Still, from ground level up there were exactly twenty floors. I stood absently tapping my foot, waiting for the elevator to get to my floor. DING! And it made posh noises. I liked that bit. That was my favourite bit. It made me feel like Eloise at the Plaza. There were just little things that made it feel more special than any other elevator I had been in before. Like the ding, to announce when it arrived. I slipped into the gold and glass fancy contraption, and pressed the button for the lobby. All of the buttons were placed in completely symmetrical and even rows. Despite being a building, the elevator was designed more like the glass ones you find in shopping centres. There hadn’t been any people in the hallway, but there were plenty of people in the lobby, and eating in the cafe they had just off to the side of the waiting area. It was amazing. For all the people coming in, there was nobody at the front desk. Actually, I thought, stepping out of the elevator… I don’t think I’d ever seen anybody at the front desk. Internally, I shrugged to myself at the thought. If it didn’t work, it wouldn’t function. I tuned out the noise of them all. For all I was paying attention, they could have been speaking another language. I wouldn’t have noticed. Mentally, I went through the list in my head. Bacon, eggs, weetbix, frozen mixed berries, mince, pasta sauce, garlic bread… actually normal bread while I was at it. There was plenty to get. I hoped I had the arms to get it all back up the elevator and into my apartment. I probably should have written a list, but it would have be more fun if I had tried to remember. It was a good thing that I didn’t have to worry about any people coming in. There was a sort of pause when I went to leave. There were still people around, but they were nowhere near me. Thank God, I probably would have bumped into at least three of them by now. Lost in thought, I wandered out in search of food.