Shades of Gray

The first time I wake up, the lights are bright, and it's loud, a chorus of beeps invading my sleep sensitive ears. There are people standing over me. I lay back down and close my eyes.

The second time I wake, it's with a start, and I blink, trying to process where I am. My head pounds dully, and my neck aches from being in one position for too long. I'm mildly confused, wondering if I'm dreaming, because in the past what, five years? I haven't been able to simply just wake up.

"Morning," comes Jack's voice, and it startles me again, causing me to jump slightly, take notice that my ass is also sore from sleeping while half sitting up.

"Feel good?" asks Jack with a grin. He's different like this, I note, in a blue snuggie, with tousled hair, and morning thought, like he's not quite drunk or tired-excited enough to be the boy he can be, but not awake enough to sit up straight or deepen his own voice and speak in a serious tone, extensive vocabulary that might make you want to punch him in the face.

"I slept," I say with a yawn, more of a statement than a question, taking in my own morning voice, something that sounds odd even to my own ears.

"That would explain your wrinkled shirt," Jack smiles, letting a comfortable silence hang in the air. He looks at me intently.

I let myself think for a moment, but my head is as quiet. The sound of nothing is a stranger to my thoughts.

The ticking of the thermostat timer, a downside to old apartments, they're old and the air conditioning isn't in fashion, comes at me like a slap in the face because it reminds me of the ticking of a clock. How dare I, not thinking about what time it is, not only have I wasted precious moments sleeping and sitting, but I don't even know how much time I've wasted.

"Where's your bathroom?" I break through the silence, standing up, stretching my legs to walk about six feet to the hallway in pointed direction.

Jack and Dan have a clock in their bathroom, a kitty wrapped around a bowl of milk, it seems to be, and it's a few seconds off, I know it is, but it says the minute nonetheless. It takes me a few seconds to actually read it, sliding my hands under the sink to wash with their rough abrasive of a soap, deciding I've been awake for about seven minutes, making it around 9:37 in the morning.

The water feels good running over my hands, so I count, you need to wash your hands for two minutes, after all. I count to one hundred twenty, then decide the water wasn't hot enough to cleanse my hands correctly, so I turn it up again until it burns, wondering how sink water could possibly get this hot, and count again. When I hit the two minute mark, I keep counting, raking my fingernails over my skin roughly.

I didn't dream, I note. Not that it's normal for me to dream or anything, because I don't. Or maybe I do, and don't remember it, but then I'd have that instinctive struggle of trying to remember, so.

I'm a little disappointed. I'd have thought my first welcome hours of sleep in a while would have brought colorful dreaming.

Or non-colorful. Do I dream in black and white?

The water continues to burn my hands. Another downside to old buildings. The heater does it's job all too well.

I stare at myself in the mirror. My eyes are puffy from sleep and. I've actually got a slight trace of stubble. Huh. I make a mental note to see how much of a beard I can get sometime soon.

"Alex?" asks Jack from the doorway, staring at me.

I glance at him through the mirror, then look down at my hands. They've sort of turned a slight shade of red.

"Man," Jack says, stepping cautiously towards me. When I don't move, continuing with the scrub of my hands, he reaches over and turns the water off. The abrupt change of temperature nearly burns as much as the water itself, fresh air biting my hands.

I stare blankly. I was washing my hands, was that not obvious?

Jack puts a hand on my shoulder tentatively, and it feels like I've frozen. The clock on the wall ticks disruptively.

"Alex, are you okay dude?"

I don't meet his eyes.

"You were scrubbing for about eight minutes. Any longer and you'd have used up all this month's water," he jokes, but it doesn't settle the hollowness filling my stomach.

Eight minutes?

That's literally impossible. I counted. Two hundred and ten seconds.

"Hey, bro, you alright?"

I scan the living room. There's a giggle from somewhere else in the building that sounds vaguely like my friend Lisa's laugh, but I don't really notice. The lights are suddenly really bright and in and out, between the seconds, the beeping noise comes back.

Jack looks at me, the morning expression gone from his face, now staring at me like he's trying to diagnose me with something.

The air seems to escape from my lungs, and it feels like the ground beneath my feet has suddenly disappeared. I steady myself against the wall for support, but it's more like the gravity is coming at me from the wrong direction.

"I'm dizzy," I muster out, trying to catch my breath.

"C'mon," Jack says softly, hand on my arm. "Let's sit down, calm down, breathe," he tries, but I pull away.

"This doesn't feel real," I sort of whisper, staring at the floor that seems to be twisting itself up.

"What doesn't?"

I let out a yawn. Blink.

I'm still here.

I back up to the wall, putting my whole weight against it so I slide down to my butt on the floor. I put my head between my knees. Breathe.

My head hurts bad. It's probably the worst it's ever hurt, counting yesterday. I have the slight urge to vomit.

Dammit, Alex. Pull yourself together. You've just had a good night'a rest for fuck's sake.

My face itches bad. The burning feeling in my hands remains, and it's almost a relief when I begin to scratch my face. My nails aren't long, but they get there enough to leave a slight sting.

Jack immediately takes a more proactive action, attempting to pry my hands from my face, but honestly I can't stop, I'm so itchy.

I didn't finish washing my hands, have to make up for it somehow. Eight minutes, eight minutes. How did I not count high enough? Was I counting too slow? How long is a second?

A second, duh.

My mind goes into a frenzy of jumbled thoughts that I can barely process, the splitting headache becoming worse.

"Alex, stop," Jack says with a firm voice, hands gripping my fingers that still attempt contact with my face.

I shake my head stubbornly, reaching forward to reach my face, because I swear to god Jack probably has never itched this much, and it's not even the feeling of an itch that I have, it's the need to scratch, it's coming from my hands and dammit Jack, get your hand off of mine already.

Jack's fingers shift around mine until he's holding both my wrists to the point where if I move, my synovial lining will probably tear.

I give up, and we stare at eachother for a second, and I'm about to say sorry or something like that, but my mind is kind of clouded so the moment he opens his mouth to speak, I push myself up, palm resting against the wall to steady myself.

"Alex."

"Alex?"

I look up, past Jack, to see Lisa. For a moment I'm sort of confused, but then it kind of clicks. Dan sees neuroscience girls. Lisa is a neuroscience major. Lisa has also gone on a date with a guy named Dan.

He was quick to take her home.

I make a mental note to interrogate Dan, giving an awkward smile to Lisa. Jack reaches for me again as I shove past him, cheeks flushed to grab my phone and my wallet. I still look like shit, but I really don't care.

The time is 10:03.

"I, uh," I scratch the back of my neck. "I have to go," I tell Jack with a nod.

He doesn't move as I step out, realizing that I haven't got a goddamn car.

Jack's apartment building seems close enough to the older parts of campus, which is still pretty fucking far from my side of the campus, but, I decide, as I reach up to scratch my eyelid, a walk will do me good.