Piece By Piece | ✓

3 | vanessa

     There was a loud and annoying beeping sound that continuously blared against her eardrums, making her frown deeply in her sleep.

     Vanessa turned to face the other side of her bed to tune out the noise and drift back to a dreamless sleep, but it rang loudly this time, jolting her awake, her heavy-lidded eyes narrowing in annoyance as she lazily reached out for her phone sitting on her nightstand.

     With a subtle yawn escaping her chapped lips, Vanessa pressed her thumb onto the yellow icon and let it slide smoothly, finally silencing her damn alarm clock.

     Smiling groggily to herself, she placed her phone back to where it came from and plopped back down on her pillows with a contented sigh.

     Just give me a few more minutes to sleep in, Vanessa thought sleepily. She could easily take a really quick shower before going to work, anyway, so going back to bed for a little while wasn't too much of risk.

      It wasn't always this easy to catch some shut eye because of those damn nightmares that kept coming back to haunt her, but whenever she felt like dozing off, she would immediately take advantage of the situation since she didn't want to take any more of those sleeping pills unless it was really necessary.

     But sometimes, even though she had sworn not to touch the pills time and time again, she always came up with a pathetic excuse just so she could get her hands on them.

     Deep down, Vanessa knew how dangerous it could affect her health if she took them regularly, but fuck, she just couldn't take seeing that same bloody scene in her head whenever she tried to force herself to close her eyes and sleep.

     The bruise-like circles under her tired eyes was something she had tried to conceal before, back when she still gave a shit to what other people thought of her. She finally came to her senses and stopped denying the fact that she was never going to recover from it when she got released from the hospital and she still had those nightmares.

     The medicine she had been prescribed with didn't help at all, even when she tried to take larger doses of it. Sure, it worked the first few times she took it, but as the nightmares got more vivid, more haunting than the last—so surreal that it was as if a barrier between life and death was created, as if the devil himself was enticing her to his haven of Eternal Paradise—she opted to self-medicate herself with various sleeping pills every time she couldn't get any decent amount of sleep.

     It helps me calm down, that's what she would always say out loud. Nobody else lived here anymore except for her, but sometimes, it felt like someone was watching her from a distance and chastising her for her unusual source of peace and quiet—that's why she always said it out loud, just in case somebody else was listening or watching her.

     Whoever it was should know that she was only taking the pills to help herself get some sleep and nothing else. That was it.

     And no matter how much she wanted to go back to sleep, her brain was screaming, telling her to wake up as images of flashing lights, deafening sirens, and frantic whispers flooded her subconscious.

     "Fuck!" Vanessa yelled as she sat up abruptly, her heart pounding in her ears, her breaths becoming erratic, her throat aching and closing in on her, her eyes filling up with unwanted tears, her chest tightening as she tried to calm herself by forcing those horrible images out of her head.

     A bead of sweat rolled down her temples and she quickly wiped it away with her hand. Dragging her fingers through her hair, she closed her eyes shut and chewed on her lower lip for a few moments, still trying to calm herself down.

     "It's too early for a goddamn panic attack," Vanessa muttered under her breath, then she slapped herself with both of her hands, squishing her cheeks in the process. "Stop fucking crying, Vanessa."

     Vanessa stayed like that for a little while, and after snapping out of her mini episode, she sighed, wiped her tear-stained face with her hands, and reached out for her cellphone once more to check the time.

     It was six twenty-seven in the morning.

     With another sigh, Vanessa sluggishly got out of bed and stretched her limbs before fluffing her pillows and fixing her bed. After that, she went straight to the bathroom to wash her face and wipe the crust out of her sleepy eyes.

     Vanessa padded her way to the kitchen, her hand automatically reaching up to her head to tie the thick waves of her dark hair into a messy bun before preparing her food, and also thinking about which homework she was going to finish before going to the coffee shop for her shift.

     Her breakfast consisted of the following—scrambled eggs, two pieces of toast, and a mug of hot coffee. Once she was done setting up the table, she went back to her room to collect the pile of papers sprawled on her desk and grabbed a pen that was tucked in between the pages of a notebook.

     Sitting on her chair, she took a quick sip of her coffee, relishing the warmth that was settling in her stomach as she analyzed the papers in front of her, removed the cap from her pen with her teeth, and started working on her Humanities homework.

     With furrowed eyebrows, she thought deeply of what she should answer regarding her perspective on realism and surrealism. She wasn't very keen on art, and a little part of her brain wondered why Art Appreciation was even included in her curriculum—she majored in Literature, not in Fine Arts, for crissakes.

     Three paragraphs and a half-finished mug of coffee later, Vanessa heaved a sigh and mentally patted her back for finishing it quicker than she thought. "Finally," she mumbled.

     Looking up from her homework, Vanessa glanced at the clock and inwardly cursed, realizing that she took twenty minutes to finish everything instead of the usual fifteen.

     Hastily, Vanessa stood up from her seat, disposed of her plate and mug at the sink, washed it thoroughly but quickly, and finally made her way to the bathroom to take a quick shower, reminding herself that she should be finished within five minutes.

     Once she was done, she hurried back to her room to put on a new set of clothes, dragged a brush down her tangled mess of wet hair, ran back to the kitchen to fetch her homework, and shoved them all inside her backpack in one swift move.

     Before leaving her room, she grabbed her wristwatch on the nightstand and checked the time again; she didn't want to be late for work.

     It was ten minutes after seven. She needed to pick up the pace for her to arrive at the coffee shop on time. Tardiness was never a good excuse when her attendance at work was on the line.

     "Damn it," Vanessa cursed under her breath, looking around her room to find the other pair of her black Converse sneakers, "I can't be fucking late today!"

     Vanessa found the other one under her bed. "Ugh, I seriously need to buy a shoe rack this time," she told herself and mentally added that to her Things To Do After Work list. Her room wasn't that messy; she just had little space for her boots and sneakers.

     And with that, Vanessa closed the door to her room and made her way back to the kitchen, snatching her phone from the table and shoving it inside the pocket of her jeans.

     Vanessa quickly dipped her hand inside the bowl near the front door to get her car keys and stole another glance at her watch.

     Another five minutes passed since she last checked the time.

     Vanessa pulled the hood of her black jacket against her head and sighed deeply as she dragged her feet to the driveway, where her ancient Corolla was parked smoothly, its faded blue paint signifying its old age.

     She slid into the driver's seat swiftly, turned on the ignition, gripped the steering wheel tightly, and drove straight ahead, a bit apprehensive of getting late for her morning shift.