Main Character Vibes

Daybreak's vulgar habit of dawning before breakfast

After an arduously long day at work, Elias dragged his feet up the seemingly endless stairs of his apartment building. Lugging his gym duffle bag over his shoulder, his weary hand rummaged in his pocket for the keys before finally unlocking the door. "Honey, I'm home," he said offhandedly to no one in particular.

He heaved out a sigh as he flicked on the warmly dim lights. As of late, this sickly sigh of his had been a persistent necessity. Like a steam relief valve for the knot that twisted his stomach upon reaching the threshold of what was becoming less and less home.

Reluctantly making his way in, Elias was like an anxious child, carrying those feelings of estrangement upon being ushered into a new classroom on the first day of a new school. A school that he'd been transferred to against his will. However, Elias and his girlfriend had been living in the apartment for three years. So, the novelty of it had only been retained to the degree of strangeness his heart had harbored for it. This is why he was religious about prolonging his return home by passing what time was left in the day with a gym session right after work. His fitness was like someone who listens to music not because he likes it but to drown the discomfort of silence.

The young couple lived in a one-bedroom apartment in the beating heart of Canada's largest metropolis; the nucleus that is Toronto. But Tilly, Elias's girlfriend, was working late as usual.

In the stagnant air of the living room, the wide window was the only aperture through which the mild afternoon was deepening, and the fast pace of urban life was slowly sinking into its nighttime fatigue. Dusk was unfurling in the melancholic sky like an opening flower whose cloudy petals glowed purple-red and greyish indigo. A sky, whose cadence of colors lent a haunting charm of its own to the receding people straying in its darkening streets. Elias scurried past it all, without so much as an afterthought. But with an intensity of anticipation that transforms a moment into an occasion. He was late for his after-work, after-gym shower.

As if on cue, Tilly walked in as Elias was coming out of the kitchen with reheated takeout food for the both of them. The first thing Tilly did was reach for the remote to turn on the TV to The Office; a sitcom that both of them have watched all episodes for, twice. If the apartment was as strange as being a transfer student in a new class of a new class, then The Office was a familiar friendly face. No matter how tough to deal with reality got, the show was there to comfort them.

They sat next to each other on the sofa, half watching the show, and half scrolling aimlessly down the endless pits of Instagram Reels and Tiktok videos. They enhanced their appetites by watching Tiktok cooking videos as they ate. Until it became like a Pavlovian experiment where they would associate the time to eat upon seeing one of those Tiktok videos.

Tilly took her first bite. "Ugh you're the best, how was your day, babe?"

"good, how was yours?"

"good."

Although the food was done, the snacking continued. Overeating in the name of unwinding after a long day. Overeating in hopes that it sets a food coma for a goodnight's sleep. But most importantly, overeating to ameliorate the guilt of procrastination; the perfect alibi to not go after things that used to make them feel alive.

They slept next to each other; alone but together. In the silos and incompatibility of each having their own sleeping postures. Tilly, overworked and burnt-out, immediately slipped into a dreamless sleep. But Elias kept staring at the ceiling. The darkness of the room added the illusion of depth to it, transforming the ceiling into a black canvas on which the visual noise of his imagination clattered without any pattern. In the stillness of it all, the ceiling was becoming more of an abyss whose void was slowly swelling. Carefully he crept out of bed to avoid waking up Tilly.

The streetlamps in High Park were like a legion of glowing white orbs that shimmered in the distance behind the rain-washed living window. Elias watchfully stood there, gazing with sagging eyes at the silent world outside, so remote in the night, thinking of many things but not of one thing in particular.

He continued to watch the stillness of it all before its obscurity felt like it was steadily encroaching on his comfort. The darkness seemed to have an enveloping nature, be it the ceiling or the world. Another night, another quick thirty-minute midnight jog.

The muffled music from his earbuds and the internal sound of his panting were the only things enlivening the silence in the empty streets. Almost empty. Roaming the sidewalks of downtown Toronto at midnight on a weeknight were other young joggers. These strangers with familiar faces. Those you meet often but don't actually know and therefore are greeted with a pursed-lipped smile-nod of recognition. The night was rife with restless energy disguised as dedication a healthy habit.

For Elias, daybreak had a vulgar habit of dawning uninvitedly before breakfast, dragging with it work from nine to five, clean underwear, and other responsibilities.