Rude Awakening

[Oddball]

Ah. there it is. My least favorite time of day. Morning.

Specifically morning when I've just woken up.

Even more specifically, morning when I've just woken up after far too short of a nights sleep.

I guess that's part of my problem. Despite how much I sleep, I never feel like I've gotten enough sleep. It's just that the mornings always seem worse for some reason.

“Just five more minutes,” I mutter out loud. Maybe we can make that ten. Wait a second. This is a weekend. Alright, two more hours it is. Weekends make for a perfect excuse to stay I bed and catch up on my napping. That's always the best use for them.

I roll over to keep the sun out of my eyes and blindly feel around for my pillow to put over my head. I hate it when I forget to pull the curtains closed. Let's see... sheets, worn out comforter, stuff dog... I don't remember having one of those... naked woman....

“Oh God! What the hell?” I shout outloud as I shoot up in bed. Something even I can't sleep through. Next to me in bed is some pale skinned completely naked girl with long very light blue hair.

Also, this is not my room.

On top of all that, I don't see my clothes laying around here anywhere. “God... what they hell. What the hell,” I ramble on in panic. I've woken up to some strange things before, but this takes the cake and eats it too.

“Gahhhh! What are you doing here? What happened?” the other girl cries out before grabbing the sheets away to cover herself.

“Look, I don't know, I swear!” I call out just as shocked as she is. I grab a large pillow and pulled it tightly in front of me to cover myself. So now where' both clad in nothing but bedding. It doesn't make things anymore comfortable than they were before.

Crap. Where are my clothes? My eyes dart around the room and there's just nothing. That just raises more questions. I didn't come here already naked did I? Crap. What the hell did I do? Who is this girl and … ummm.... why is she looking like that?

“I … need my pills...” the girl says. “Night stand.” I tun to look and … damn. There's practically a pharmacy up here. I don't know which pills the girls talking about. She can't mean all of them can she?

“Which ones?” I manage to find the nerve to ask. Instea dof answering, she just pushes past me, awkwardly, as she's still trying to keep herself covered at the same time, and begins popping pill after pill while holding her bedware in place with her chin. After what seemed like way to many, she closes her eyes for a minute, and then opens them and stares right at me.

“Get out. Just get out,” she says coldly.

After a quick bit of frantic searching, I find my t-shirt wadded up in the corner of the room and my skirt under the edge of the bed. If I had shoes, socks, or underwear on when I got here, they'll have to wait until later.

Maybe they're still in my room … or maybe by now somebody has found them in the hall and tacked them to the bulletin board with my name on them … or maybe the strange pale girl will bring them back to me later? Or keep them as a souvenir?

I can't think of a single scenario where waking up and not knowing where your underwear is could be a good thing.

Four days later I got up the nerve to speak to the girl again. Four long days of strange feelings, awkwardness, and both of us going out of their to avoid each other. It's not that avoiding each other is hard. We don't have any similar clubs or classes. We do know a couple of the same people, but otherwise we don't travel in the same social circles either. It's just that every time one of us saw the other in the halls, whether it be the school or the dorms, one of us, if not both, would turn and go the other direction.

I suppose I should just be glad that we don't live on the same floor.

“We should talk,” I say as I catch her eating alone at lunch. I set my tray down on the opposite side of the table from her and take a seat. Having said that, I have no idea where to go from here.

“So...” she starts but doesn't follow it up with anything.

“So...” I answer back.

“I really don't know what to say to you right now,” she says.

“Awkward as hell?”

“Yes.”

“So, was I any good?” Rika says trying to force a smile onto her face.

“Don't go there,” I tell her, although I don't know where we're supposed to go from there.

There's a moment of silence between us until she speaks up.

“I'm Rika,” she says.

“That name sounds familiar. You were the one who did that thing with the free shampoo that was actually hair dye, weren't you?” I say.

“Yeah. The temporary stuff. It washed out easily enough,” she says. It almost sounds like she wanted to be proud of that fact, but the sheer queasiness of us being here together took precedence.

“I'm Suzu,” I say, finishing our introductions.

“Miki's friend,” she says. “I heard about you getting her with some itching powder from a friend of mine.”

Introductions complete, our conversation dies. I don't know what I was hoping to accomplish here, something about confronting her. I really wish I'd thought this through.

We each take small bites of our lunches, carefully watching the other but trying to act as normal as possible at the same time.

“I can't believe you'd just take advantage of me like that,” Rika finally says. After thinking about it for a moment she added “bitch.”

“Yeah, right, sure. I took advantage of you. That's why we were in your room and I never did find all my clothes. That was all part of my plan to have freaky lesbo love with some girl I don't even know,” I say. I'm trying to keep quiet and keep my calm, but she's not making it easy.

“Sure the girl who was drugged to her gills stripped you naked and had her way with you against your will, right. I can't even remember any of that night,” Rika practically spits at me. “That's just ice-hearted. Anyway, I've got your nasty ass underwear in a garbage bag. I was going to hang it on your door as soon as I found out which room was yours.”

I really hope my underwear was actually clean, and she was just trying to insult me. This is humiliating enough as it is. Actually there's something else in that statement that bothers me. “Wait. Say that again. What was that about drugs?”

“What you want drugs now too?” Rika says scornfully.

“You were the one who said you were on drugs.” Come on, Suzu, keep your cool. She seems to think about it for a second before replying.

“Twice a year I have to go in for some further treatment, and when I leave, I'm pumped so full of drugs that I couldn't tell you the difference between up and a hole in the wall. Put it this way, I remember nothing. Nothing at all.” Rika says.

Shit. Damn. That... that does change things. Maybe … I'm the bad guy here? “Nothing? Damn. You might not believe this but...” I try to think of a way to stall, but I've got nothing. I hate telling this part.
“Sometime. Not often, mind you, but sometimes... my body just kind of operates by itself.”

“Elaborate,” Rika simply said.

“I've never been good at explaining this,” I sigh. Explaining it under normal circumstances is bad enough. Explaining it after whatever happened is beyond uncomfortable. “I'm a narcoleptic. Do you know what that is?”

It's one of those people that just randomly falls asleep all the time, right?” she responds.

“I hate that stereotype. I don't fall asleep all the time. Sure, I want to be asleep all the time, but I'm not going to collapse walking down the hall. What happens is ... kinda worse,” I say. You'd think after 18 years of having to explain this to people, I'd know a better way of saying it.

“Worse? Okay you've got my attention,” she prompts me to continue.

“Sometimes my conscious mind goes to sleep and doesn't tell the rest of my body. It's like sleepwalking, except I look and almost act like I'm awake. I'm still out there doing things, talking, and my eyes are opened, but I don't have any clue what I'm actually doing.” I shrug and give her my best 'what can you do?' smile before deciding to add, “no memory of it either. As far as my brain's concerned, I'm asleep.”

“So you expect me to believe you molested me in your sleep?” Rika stares at me.

“Or maybe you brought me where while you were stoned and I didn't know what was going on,” I reply. Great. I don't know if I was taken advantage of or if I rape people in my sleep now. That's probably something important I should know, but getting to the bottom of things is bad enough when you don't want to talk about it at all... and what if I am the perpetrator?

She doesn't say another word to me for several minutes. I glance at my watch several times. When did lunchtime get so long and why is time passing so slowly all the sudden? I nibble at my food, lacking any real appetite while the girl across from me does the same. Sometime she looks at me as if studying my face will somehow reveal all my secrets. With all the other noise in the cafeteria going on around us, the silence at out table is … something that really stands out.

I need to work on my vocabulary for times like this.

“I swear, if I did anything, I'm sorry but I don't remember it,” I finally apologize if for no other reason than to just end the silence.

“Yeah. Me too.” Rika says as she plays with a small piece of meat on the end of her fork. “Assuming I was the one that actually did anything.”

“Well, we can't prove you didn't and we can't prove you did,” I say. “Maybe it was me. Maybe it was you.”

“I think I actually like it better when I believed you'd just dragged me into bed and took advantage of me,” Rika says. “At least then I knew who to be angry at.”

“Yeah.”

“You realize we can't admit this to anyone, right? I mean, like, ever.” Rika tells me.

“If I planned on mentioning it, the school would have already hauled you off for sexual assault,” I reply.

“Good thing you didn't. The last thing we need is an investigation into … that. I'm not sure I want the answer anymore.” Rika finishes her statement and takes a big chug of her chocolate milk. “I still have your underwear in my room. It's in a plastic bag when you want to come get it. Sorry about calling it nasty or whatever I said.”

“Jeeze. Say that a little louder why don't you?”


...


…



At a nearby table, two other girls sit in silence, trying their hardest to remain inconspicuous and trying their hardest to hold back their laughter.

“So, think we should tell them now?” Miki asks her table-mate.

“Not yet. It was a lot of hard work dragging Suzu there and getting them both naked. I want to let them stew in it for a while longer,” Saki replies.

“You're evil. You know that right?” Miki smiles back.

“Couldn't have done it without you,” Saki says mimicking a theatrical bow while saying seated.

“Oh, pshaw,” Miki adds with a slight mocking flair. “I was just the muscle. Nobody out pranks the great Saki.”

“The Great Saki and the Marvelous Miki,” Saki corrects her, “Really? I mean itching powder and hair dye? Amateurs! … and if they get mad, we have lots of carefully posed photos for blackmail,”

“Umm...no we don't remember? You couldn't get your camera working,” Miki says.

“They don't know that.”

[brythain]

I think it's amusing. It does seem to require a bit of editing, because it's a little unfocussed, but that might be because of the pharmacological background.

[Mirage_GSM]

Now that's a typical oddball story if ever I've seen one

[swampie2]

Instea- dof answering

“God... what they hell

Definitely enjoyable, didn't see the twist!

[Oddball]

Now that's a typical oddball story if ever I've seen one

I'll take that as a compliment.