Polarity | 2: Apartment

When Max woke up, he couldn’t remember what he’d dreamt about. This wasn’t unusual in general, but it was as of late. For the past two weeks, he’d been having vivid dreams that he recalled well after awakening. Though, he didn’t miss jolting awake to write gibberish into his phone in a pitiful attempt to document what he saw.
           His phone dinged, but he was too groggy to react. Instead, he curled into the fetal position and buried himself in his blanket. He wanted to fall back to sleep. Unfortunately, the incessant drone of the birds chirping outside had a different idea. Frustrated, he smacked the blanket off of himself with a groan. His room was still dark, as usual. The only indications that it was morning were the birds and the slivers of light that slipped around the curtains. At least he wasn’t tired"no, he felt well-rested. He only wanted to stay asleep because he knew he didn’t have anything else to do.
           On top of the birds chirping, his phone dinged yet again. Max sighed and closed his eyes.
           Reckon it’s Stacey, wanting to yarn about something I don’t care about. Can’t she let a guy sleep in peace?
           Hang on. What if it’s that bloke from last night"Cameron, was it?
           Remembering Cameron brought him sudden interest in his phone. He rolled over onto his side and reached down to the floor. It took a few pats of the cold, hard surface for him to finally find it. When he did, he removed it from its charger and looked at its notification wall.
           Sure enough, he had an overwhelming amount of texts from Stacey. The latest began with the words “They have job offerings”; Max found himself snarling at them like a wild dog. Somehow, she’d got it into her head that digital art commissions weren’t a “real job”. That, he assumed, was part of the reason why she’d left him. Even so, she’d still send him information about job offers she heard about.
           Given, in her defense, most of them at least had something to do with art. What she couldn’t seem to grasp was that Max wasn’t traditional artist. He wasn’t even sure where to start when it came to painting on anything other than a digital canvas. So why she made a point of sending him job offers for traditional artists was a mystery to him. As far as he was concerned, he was making enough money with commissions and donations from fans and the like. His mother wired him a certain amount of money every month to help him pay his rent. He was nineteen years old and didn’t need a “real job”. He was doing fine as it was.
           Underneath Stacey’s messages, Max took delight in finding a few texts from Cameron. The latest of his read “Let me know when you wake up!”
           Instead of replying immediately, Max decided to perform his morning ritual first. Clutching his phone in his fist, he sat up in bed and dangled his feet over the side. He took a deep breath, then stood up and stretched. After grabbing his zip-up hoodie off of his chair and slipping it on over his black baseball t-shirt, he put his phone into one of its pockets. Finally, he left his bedroom.
           Max’s apartment was small, but that was how he liked it. Stepping out of the bedroom led him straight into the living room. To the left of his bedroom was the door to the bathroom and, separated from the living room by a thin island, the kitchen. The door out of his apartment was a few inches to the left of the fridge. The floor in his apartment was cheap white tile, but the walls were a pale linen color that he somehow admired.
           With a yawn, he headed into the bathroom and flicked the light on. In his reflection, he noticed the bags under his eyes. They’d never go away, would they? Once he’d messed up his sleep schedule once, they were there to stay. He picked up his toothbrush and turned on the sink. As he rinsed the bristles, he used his other hand to get the toothpaste from the medicine cabinet. Then, he took a minute or two to scrub his teeth.
           When he finished in the bathroom, he went to the fridge and opened it to look inside. It was more or less empty. He poked his head into the freezer. It was barren, apart from the bag of frozen peas sitting inside that had been there since Max moved in, but wasn’t his. The young man sighed. It seemed he’d have to go to the store. Wanting to eat for the sake of it, Max opened the cupboard and pulled out a bag of potato chips, salt and vinegar flavor. One at a time, he started to shovel them into his mouth. Then, bringing them along, he paced back into his dark bedroom.
           For a long moment, he stared at the curtains while he ate. He’d nailed them into the top of the windowsills so he could take them down easier if he so pleased. He never had, though. Yet, without warning, he thought, it’s too bloody dark in here. Motivated by this whim, he curled up the bag of chips and set it down on the seat of his rolling office chair. Then he approached the curtains. To take them down he had to stand on his bed, so he did. With no further hesitation, he ripped them away.
           He regretted it immediately. The light from outside was blinding. He flinched at it and let out a noise of discomfort and betrayal. All that was missing was the hissing of burning flesh upon the light’s touch. So, deterred, he decided to re-cover one of the two windows. The other could stay uncovered, at least until he grew to hate sunlight again. Trying to force his eyes to adjust, Max squinted and peered through the window for the first time in months.
           Ah, s**t. It snowed again. Guess that explains why it’s so bright . . .
           His apartment was on the fourth floor of a cheap building in a rundown part of Boston. As such, the view from his window was nothing to write home about. Pressing the side of his face against the cold glass, he tried to look as far down as he could. He wasn’t able to see the ground, so he knew that it was one hell of a drop.
           If I opened the window and slid out, would the fall kill me immediately? Nah, Buckley’s of that; with my luck, I’d only cripple myself or something.
           He shook his head, trying to clear his mind of the thought. He wasn’t suicidal, only had a morbid imagination. In fact, he wouldn’t even call himself depressed. Though, he likely was, very much so. Life bored him and, as much as he wanted to deny it, desolation was all he knew anymore. He wanted to talk to people, but at the same time, didn’t. His own contradictory wants and needs frustrated him to no end. So, instead of taking a side on the matter, he decided to ignore it altogether. He talked when he felt liked he could without coming across as awkward. Otherwise, he kept his mouth shut.
           Max stepped down off his bed and pulled his phone back out. He looked at the time. It was 11:43 in the morning.
           Might as well go to the store now, he thought. Nothing better to do.
           He opened his texts, leaving Stacey’s on “read” (as he often did). He replied only to Cameron: “Hey, I’m awake now. About to run to the store.”
           After only a few seconds, as if he’d been waiting, Cameron responded. “Good morning! Did you sleep well?”
           “I guess so. You?”
           “I wound up staying up all night working on my novel. Actually, I finished revising the first chapter and was wondering if you’d like to read it.”
           Max pouted in thought and shrugged to himself. Why not?
           “I’d love to!” he accepted, using an exclamation point; noteworthy because it was a rare punctuation mark for him. Before sending the text, he debated its presence, replacing it with a full-stop twice. He ended up deciding to keep it, though, sending the text with it as a show of good faith.
           “Great! I guess I’ll have to email it to you, huh? It’s a PDF file.”
           Max frowned a bit at the sight of “e-mail” written without a hyphen. He knew that was the norm, but he preferred the hyphenated version. “Yeah. That’s fine, though. I’ve got Adobe Reader.”
           “Oh,” Cameron asked, “what version? I don’t think it’ll work right on anything higher than version nine . . .”
           “Pretty sure I’ve got nine, actually.” Max told him as he blindly reached over and pressed the power button on his laptop. The sound of “Adobe Reader 9” rung a bell. Though he’d never looked into which version he had, he could only assume that was it.
           “Perfect! Can I have your email address, or would you like mine?”
           Max replied with his e-mail address. He wasn’t as concerned with giving that out as he was his phone number. Cameron already had the latter anyway, so he was thus assured that giving his e-mail would lead to no harm. “Send it to me while I’m at the store and I’ll read it on my laptop when I get back.”
           “Will do! I hope you enjoy it,” Cameron remarked with a smiley face.
           Not knowing what else to say, Max smiled somewhat at his phone before turning its screen off. Sure enough, as he was slipping off his shorts, he heard a ding signifying that he’d received an e-mail.
           Max was a slender young man with long, skinny legs. He stood at five feet eight inches, and the last time he weighed himself, he’d weighed around 119 pounds. Because of his long legs, it was difficult for him to find pants. That didn’t matter though, because he’d been wearing the same clothes for at least three years. He pulled on his gray jeans and moved his phone into the front left pocket, then picked up his wallet from beside his laptop. This, he put into his front right pocket.
           On the floor next to the bedroom door, he kept his soft-soled sneakers. Though Max had long legs, he also had small feet. This made finding shoes difficult, as well. So, the sneakers were a size or two bigger than he needed. He didn’t mind, though; he’d found a way to tie them so he could slip them on and off with ease, but wouldn’t fall off his feet while he walked.
           He figured, because of the snow that was still falling, it was cold outside. He kept his jacket"black and puffy with a tan fur-trimmed hood"draped over the arm of the couch. After standing back up, he left his bedroom. Before picking up the coat, he pulled on his sweater’s hood. Then, after putting the coat on, he let it fall back down.
           His keys were where he usually left them: sitting on top of the kitchen island. He picked them up, then left his apartment. After locking his door, he put the keys into one of his coat pockets and then buried his hands into them. The hallway outside his apartment was quiet. Max looked right, then left. No one. He let out a deep sigh. With that, he headed for the staircase.