Waking up sucked.

That was really the only thing Lily Olsen could think as her alarm blared right next to her, a hair-pullingly irritating monotonous drone that made her wish she didn’t have work. Lifting her head and brushing her messy black hair out of her face, she blearily cast around, searching for the snooze button her hands knew to be there.

After several seconds of uncoordinated flailing, she slapped her clock into silent submission, and collapsed with a satisfied huff. Wriggling under her covers, she worked herself into a contorted and yet oddly comfortable position and closed her eyes, sighing her happiness to her small room. Inhaling deeply, she snuggled into her pillow and...

Her eyes snapped open as another alarm went off, this one much louder. It was also significantly more irritating. “LILY! WAKE UP! YOU HAVE TO GO TO WORK!”

As her own voice berated her from across the room, Lily groaned her annoyance into the soft gray pillowcase, slightly damp from drool. Burying her head in fluffy softness, she tried to drown out the alarm to no avail.

Finally, she moaned and sat up in bed, pulling on a pair of donkey-themed slippers. They’d been a gift of irony from an old friend who hadn’t actually liked her as much as she’d thought they had. The memories attached to them made her feel stiff, but they were simply too comfy to get rid of, and she didn’t want to have to pay for new ones.

Standing, she ambled across the room, avoiding stagnant piles of dirty laundry and Legos, and practically punched the alarm clock’s snooze button. The moment it turned off, she worked her way back over to her bed and collapsed, a low groan rolling from her mouth as her face met her pillow.

Not bothering to take off the slippers, she rolled onto her back and dragged a hand over her face, pulling the bags under her green eyes outward. There wasn’t much point trying to go back to sleep if you had already stood up. The curse that the bed bore (namely, the one that made it impossible to stand) was broken the moment your feet left it. Of course, that meant that sleep would evade your eyelids no matter how hard you tried.

Getting back up, she glared at the offending alarm clock, knowing that she had set it with that exact purpose in mind. “I really hate you, you know that?” She knew she was talking to herself, but waking up really was just the worst.

Popping her neck, she scratched her ankle and got back off the bed, stealing one final, longing glance at it before starting her day.

Walking over to her makeup desk, she sat down in the cushy pink stool and gazed at her own reflection, dissatisfied with her own appearance. Well, she might have had seriously incalculable self-control to get off of the bed, but it didn’t make her look any prettier.

Unscrewing a stubby, cylindrical container, she dabbed her finger in the pasty foundation inside and began applying it to the bags under her eyes, stretching them as wide as they could go despite the fact she’d done this a hundred times. Experience did not make the pain any less intense, after all.

Wiping her finger on a tissue, she grabbed a thin comb and got her fuzzy eyebrows under control, battling them into an only slightly more organized chaos. After she was satisfied, she applied a thin layer of chapstick to her lips and smacked them together. Staring at her pale skin, average face, and explosion of ordinarily straight hair, she sighed again and began brushing her hair, wincing as it caught on hundreds of tiny tangles.

Her room wasn’t very big. Dull pink wallpaper was almost all covered up by various posters of famous actors and actresses, with a large area dedicated exclusively to pictures of British men in front of a blue police box. Shelves scattered around the room were loaded to bending with books and action figures, and the mini-closet on one wall contained all of her clothes, and although she’d initially tried to fit more collectibles into it, they just weren’t stable enough for her to be comfortable with it. Her unmade bed in the corner sported wrinkled white sheets and a navy comforter. It’d had an undersheet at some point, but she’d lost it forever ago and didn’t bother getting a new one. Yeah, the heavy blanket was a little itchy, but it was really warm and didn’t static too often.

After what felt like an eternity, her hair was straightened out to an appropriate grade, and she yanked a hand through it, letting it spill out behind her to her waist. Without looking, she picked up a band and wove her hair into a messy ponytail. Squinting at herself, she shrugged. “Eh.” Good enough.

Forcing her head through a blue T-shirt, she buttoned a tacky white vest on and pulled some jeans on. Were they clean? No, not especially, but they smelled better than some of the other clothes on the floor, and were therefore the optimal clothing choices. Well, it was also her Dino Diner uniform, but she liked to think that it had individuality, even when it didn’t.

Checking herself in the mirror one more time, she yawned and headed out the door. Taking a quick right turn, she padded down the staircase before remembering she was still wearing her slippers. Pausing mid-step, she briefly wondered if she should put them back in the chest at the end of her bed, and decided that she could leave them on a little longer.

Arriving at the bottom of the stairs, she took a quick left into her old schoolroom, ignoring the wall of boxes and baskets that contained all the craft junk she’d made over the years. Sidestepping the battered table covered in paper and pencils, she entered the kitchen, humming quietly to herself.

Opening the fridge, she removed a gallon of milk (two percent fat, not the skim her mom loved) and set it on the faux marble counter. Passing the microwave and the less-than-fancy glasses above it, she hooked a right into the laundry room/pantry. There was a massive, multi-tiered shelving unit on the side, with each level overflowing with food nobody liked. Tucking a large bag of cereal under her arm, she grabbed some toaster tarts and went back into the kitchen, closing the door to block out the loud noises coming from the ancient heater.

Dropping her loot on the counter, she reached up to the cabinet and pulled out a red plastic bowl, dulled and nicked from years of use. Pouring the multicolored balls of dry cereal into it, she picked up the gallon of milk, unscrewed the cap, and sniffed it experimentally.

Well. It wasn’t expired, but it sure wasn’t fresh. Pouring it over her cereal, she stuck the tarts in the black toaster, dialed it to a minute and a half, and then sat down with her bowl.

Staring at the overflowing cereal, she wondered if it was possible to choke on something as small as pieces of artificially fruity cereal and decided no, it probably wasn’t.

The toaster dinged happily as it launched her tarts out of it, and they fell to the counter, crumbling slightly. Lily wasn’t overly bothered by the damaged goods, and put them next to her bowl, and began eating breakfast.

It didn’t take her long to finish the cheap meal, and she dumped her bowl in the sink, turning on the water and telling herself she’d let it soak, and clean it up later. Obviously this was a lie, and she knew it.

A sticky note attached to the double-doored fridge caught her attention, and she read it while fumbling for her keys on the magnetic hooks attached to the side. “Gone for… groceries? Is that what that says?”

Lily had developed a habit of talking to herself, and it showed no hint of going away any time soon. Aside from the badly written note her mom left her, she didn’t have all that much contact with people. Well, her coworkers were technically people, but they were weirder than she was, and she had a strict no-weird policy, especially when it came to guys.

Her smartphone dinged in her pocket, and a quick inspection of its screen revealed a ping from DormRoom. She smiled. “It’s about time.”

It was an app designed to help college students find other apartments that they could stay in, and it wasn’t uncommon to find posts requesting a split on any given suite. She might not be in college, but it was a forty-five-minute drive to the Diner and she’d started thinking the gas money wasn’t as worth it as it used to be. At one point, she’d been ecstatic she finally had a job, but that excitement had long since worn off.

The post was a clearly worded one, but broke her no-weird rule. She read it out loud, one eyebrow slowly raising as she did. “I’ve got a place. 147th room, 131st and Royal Rd, but need to split the thingie with someone else. Happy to settle for sixty-forty, me sixty, you forty. Must like pizza, spatial distortion, and flying sharks.” There was a P.S. attached to it, and she scanned it quickly. “Also must be OK with a slight mess. I need to clean up.”

Snorting, she almost dismissed the notice but thought about it a bit more. Sixty-forty wasn’t a half-bad deal, especially since it was on Royal Road. The street was known for snazzy and yet relatively affordable apartments, and most importantly, was remarkably close to the Diner. As for all the weird stuff in the info email, it was probably the light-hearted humor that she’d seen all over the website. People sometimes thought they were funnier than they really were, but those people tended to be fairly manageable.

Shrugging, she tapped ‘Accept’. Out loud, she told herself, “What’s the worst that could happen?”

A strange shiver crept up her spine, and she shook, trying to work it out of her system. Of course, she knew that jinxes weren’t real, but… maybe she shouldn’t have said that out loud. The universe had a habit of proving her wrong.

Shrugging, she grabbed her keys, shoved the remaining tart in her mouth, and headed out the door. Hooking a right past the boxwoods and the ill-maintained sidewalk, she jogged towards her battered Beetle. Whistling, she crouched next to the driver’s side door, hunkered down, and rammed it with her shoulder. With an irritated groan, the door opened, hinges squealing from the abuse.

Brushing several ants off the seat, Lily hopped in and started the car. Surprisingly, the engine ran with quiet smoothness, contrasting the rusting shade of yellow coating the car. She’d had it repaired recently, after all.

Pulling out of her driveway, she forced the stickshift into drive and set off on the long drive, glancing a goodbye at the two-story lime-green house. It wasn’t as if she was particularly attached to it, and she was only going to an apartment. She wasn’t exactly going to move in on the first day.

Her drive was entirely uneventful. The calm, soothing rumble of bumps under the tires lulled her into an almost-sleep, one somewhat reminiscent of the state of mind upon waking up. The puffy clouds racing across the deep blue sky felt like sheep, bouncing along without paying any attention to the thoughts and cares of the relatively tiny people below. There was a remarkably small amount of traffic on the way, which meant that Lily arrived at the Dino Diner a full eight minutes ahead of schedule.

Pulling into an empty parking space, she climbed out of the vehicle and stared at the workplace. It was a stunningly average restaurant, made out of stained brick, with slightly clouded windows and shiny plastic decorative stripes. On some of the higher-end stores, a full-size fifty-foot blue dinosaur watched over the parking lot, silently judging everyone that passed under its blank gaze and cartoonish grin. Not on this one, though. Here, a hastily erected dino head poked out from above the rim of the flat roof, and it had more of a glare than a gaze. The employees called it Joe for some inexplicable reason, and even though Lily had asked around several times, no one would tell her how it had gotten the moniker.

Pulling the glass doors open, she entered, the electronic bell above the entrance buzzing as she did. The restaurant didn’t do breakfast, which meant they didn’t open until eleven o’clock on most days. Ten thirty for Saturday, obviously.

The woman manning the register saw her and smiled vaguely, bangles shaking gently. “Hello, Lily. Have you established your aura yet?”

Pasting a smile on her face, Lily answered, “Yup! Aura’s all good, Jill. I’m gonna go to the back and get ready, okay?”

Jill nodded placidly, and Lily sped past her before the cashier could realize that she was already prepared for the day. Hurtling past the aluminum shelves, Lily burst into the back room, slamming the door wide open with one hand and grinning. “Gotcha, James! You owe me one!”

There were three people in the windowless room, two men and a woman. They were all dressed in the familiar blue and white uniform of the Diner, seated at an in-progress game of cards. One of the men, heavyset and bearded, complained loudly. “Oh, come on, that was a casual bet! I didn’t know we were exchanging money on it.”

Lily shook her head, and the other two people in the room chuckled. “She’s right, James. Pay up.” The thin man speaking smiled faintly, expressing the always small amount of humor that he had running in the back of his mind. “We don’t want another Mustard Incident repeat, do we?”

James shivered, pulling a ten out of his wallet and handing it to Lily. “Yeah, you make a good point, Leo. Seriously though, how’d you talk me into this?”

She shrugged, accepting the cash without further gloating. Quietly, the other woman said, “What was the bet this time? Did it involve arriving on time a certain number of occasions successfully?”

Lily nodded happily, folding the dollar bill into her pocket. “A week straight. No exceptions.”

James grudgingly agreed, slapping his cards on the table. “Yup. Besides, I ain’t got nothing here, either. Fold.”

Leo placed an exceptionally smug full house on the table, and leaned back, crossing his arms behind his head. “See that? That’s how you-”

Anna interrupted, calmly displaying her cards. “Royal flush. I win.”

They all did a double-take. “Royal-” James began, one eye twitching. Anna simply nodded and pulled the small pile of cash, totaling around sixty dollars, towards her. “I win.” She repeated it again with a small smile.

A shadow fell over the game. The shadow of death, sadness, and the destruction of all things fun. “Guys, are you betting again? You know I can’t allow that on work hours.”

Everyone flinched, slowly turning to the short blonde woman, arms crossed in a clearly disapproving manner. Gray eyes flashing, she paced in and took a good look at the cards. “Really? You couldn’t - wait, who got the flush?”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Clambering into her car, Lily slumped. The sun was about to set, and given the spring weather, she estimated the time to be around six o’clock. Rubbing her tired eyes, she pulled the vanity mirror down and glared at her reflection. “Why do you do this to yourself?”

Sighing exaggeratedly, she turned the car on and backed out, setting her phone’s GPS to 131st and Royal Road. Of course, she didn’t have to check it out, but it couldn’t hurt to see what sort of person this guy was. Opening up the DormRoom app, she checked the name attached to the post, and raised an eyebrow. “What kind of name is Noah Cosmic?” It was indescribably corny. Really, it was the sort of name that a person going through a questionable puberty-induced phase would have.

Shaking her head, she decided to just drive. Weird name aside, he was offering a really good deal, one that she didn’t want to miss out on.

It only took a few minutes for her to get to the street she was going for. She felt incredibly out of place among all the Bentleys and Mercedes parked neatly all over the street but found the building in short order. It was neither exceptionally fancy nor overly ordinary. In other words, it was made of neat gray brick, shuttered windows evenly spaced on the outside to lend to the overall stylish appearance of the apartments.

It looked altogether too expensive for Lily’s fast-food budget, but she remembered the sixty-forty deal and pulled herself together, walking on in. She was greeted by a spacious parlor, a patterned purple and green carpet accompanying nondescript gray walls. A short wooden desk sat in front of her, a shockingly ordinary teenager manning it. He was a little taller than she was, at around five foot ten, with tousled brown hair and bored hazel eyes. Looking up at her, he sighed and sat up. “Hello, my name is John, how can I help you.” He said all of it in a disinterested tone.

Tucking her phone in her pocket, she leaned against the desk. “I’m here about a deal with a guy in room 147. Is he here right now?”

John snorted rudely, leaning back in his chair and pulling out his phone. “That weirdo? Yeah, he’s here. Walked in like he owned the place an hour ago. Didn’t bring any luggage and waltzed straight past me.”

Wincing internally, Lily pasted a smile on her face. “That’s… excellent. How do I get in?”

He shrugged, eyes not leaving his screen as he passed her a flat card. “There you go. Now go away, I’m playing here.”

As she headed for the hallway on the right, she made a mental note to leave a complaint about the rude desk boy. Holding the key up to the basic wooden door and the thick rectangular electric lock attached to it, she paused. How had Noah gotten in?

Shrugging, she decided it wasn’t all that important. Besides, she could just ask him.

Opening the door, she was met with an odd sight. The place had already clearly been redecorated, as there was a mess of consoles and wires plugged into the disproportionately large high-definition flatscreen TV. A fuzzy white rug sat underneath a short, square table with a blue vase on top. There weren’t any flowers in the vase.

Hanging from the ceiling was a stunningly flat fan, which was spinning lazily. It looked as though someone had taken an ordinary ceiling fan and squeezed it into the ceiling. The lightbulbs protruding from its base shone soft yellow light around the cream-colored walls, illuminating shelves covered to overflowing with books of every shape, design, and size she could imagine.

Just outside the room, she could see a tall man messing with a mad-scientist level of glass beakers on a long rectangular table. He obviously hadn’t heard her come in. Apparently, he’d repurposed the kitchen table for whatever he was doing. The tall, gently humming white refrigerator put the one at home to shame, with an intimidatingly flat surface and - holy moly, was that a drink dispenser?

The uniform white cabinets hugging the walls around the kitchen had clean stainless steel handles, comforting in their plainness. A techy black oven with what looked like a touchscreen surface sat in its niche, silent in its temporary unuse.

Lily approached the man cautiously, not really sure what to make of it all. The decor was nice, yeah, but the crazy doctor feel was starting to freak her out. “Um, hello?”

The man turned around, revealing curly black hair and menacing tinted goggles above a cheeky grin. He was dressed in an ordinary red T-shirt, a heavy black hoodie and jeans. What worried Lily was the smoking, bubbling glass of whatever was in the large test tube he was holding.

Jumping away, she yelled, “Okay, what the-”

An ear-shattering BLEEP shook the room, utterly drowning out whatever she was about to say and numbing her teeth. Several beakers cracked, and the man reflexively dropped the one he was holding. It shattered on the floor, and the corrosive liquid began eating through the floor at an incredible pace.

After her ears stopped ringing, she shouted, “What was that?”

The man pulled his goggles up, revealing green eyes that seemed both childish and ancient at the same time. Looking at him closer, Lily could see he was really more of a late teenager, probably around nineteen or twenty.

He wiggled a finger in his ear, screwing his face up in the effort, and then looked at her, puzzled. “WHAT?” He yelled in her face, and she winced.

“I SAID-”

“WHAT?”

After a short moment, he shook his head and said in a normal tone, “Sorry. That was pretty loud.”

“Ya think?” Lily was incensed, confused, and more than a little panicky. “What the heck was that?”

He frowned. “The beep? Oh, that was the language filter. We don’t have a profanity tag on this thing, so I’ve got to be careful to make sure we don’t get reported, you know what I mean?” He winked directly at you.

Utterly and entirely baffled, she just stared at him. He smiled helpfully back at her. “What is it?”

She pointed at the acid tearing through the floor. It was a solid ten inches deep at this point. “What on earth were you planning to do with that?”

Noah looked at it and blinked as though he’d forgotten it was there. “Oh, right. Forgot about that.” Snapping his fingers, the hole just… repaired itself. As if it had never been melted to start with.

He sighed in irritation. “Man, now I’ve gotta brew a whole ‘nother batch. This stuff isn’t easy to make, you know.”

She pointed, her voice shrill. “What the - what was - what’s going - huh?”

He ticked off the answers on his fingers. “Acid, the reshaping of matter on an atomic scale, I’m fixing the apartment to make it look nice. Any other questions?” He grinned at her, reaching out for a handshake. “I’m Noah Cosmic, by the way. And you’re Lily Olson! Nice to meet you in person.”

She shook her head, stumbling away with a detached smile on her face. “Nope. Nope. Not doing this, whatever it is. This is why I don’t do drugs. Oh, gosh, did I do drugs? I promised Mom I’d never do drugs.”

Noah raised an eyebrow. “No, you’re not on drugs. I’m just a transdimensional borderline omniscient being with an immense interest in how humans live their lives.” He spread his hands wide. “Hence the apartment.”

Lily shook her head again, turning for the door. No way was this freakish dream anything short of either drugs or a vanilla-ice-cream-induced nightmare.

Spinning for the door, she was met with a shark in her face.

Naturally, she passed out. For the first time in her life, no less. You couldn’t really blame her.