1 [00] The Normal (1)

It was a normal day like any other day. The sun had already slept but the night was still quite noisy. Racquel faced her phone the most as if the world inside that thing was her reality and the world she was living in was just fiction. It was far-fetched to explain it that way. Simply, she lived her life by escaping reality soon after she woke up. And this night, when people have to fall into slumber, she refused to join. Racquel just wants to relinquish this moment when no one would look at her, when everyone would just vanish.

... And when she was alone.

There was an unpleasant noise caused by her ripping the sachet of instant coffee. Her face didn't make a single move as she stared blankly at the cup. Soon after, the aroma of coffee entered her nose. Drinking it at night wasn't really healthy at all and Racquel knew that. Then she picked up her phone and engrossed herself in the world she owned while drinking her coffee.

It was a normal night like any other night. She first check her social media account and finally ended up in the novel she had already finished days ago. It was just like yesterday, or maybe the day between yesterday and tomorrow. The novel that she wanted to read. The novel that taught her many things.

'I wish I could create something like this,' she thought.

Plagiarizing it entered Racquel's mind but she quickly denied it. She couldn't write it as great as how it was written; and even if she could, she wouldn't because it wasn't hers to tell. She has her own waiting for her, too...

At that moment she felt a presence behind her back. No, it wasn't only one-they were more than one. She turned off the phone and glared blankly at the air. The kitchen was just in front of her but she couldn't see a kitchen. She couldn't see anything. And when she blinked, she could see the dishes her brother just washed earlier, the faucet at the sink, and the stove. She stayed blinking there, not moving.

Like everything that just happened was nothing, Racquel sipped on her coffee and again turned the phone on. She opened the app she usually used for writing and found her drafts there. Was there any finished story she had written? There was. Only one. But she couldn't even tell if it was a story or not.

The cup was emptied. Racquel hugged her knees as she enclosed herself in that monobloc chair. She began reading her drafts one by one. Some oldies were decent and some weren't. Her brows knitted when her newest draft came into the view. It was the complete trash.

The story that had risen as the pandemic started. The story that originated from a song. The story which she had put all her hatred towards her family. The story that soon became victorian-themed. And probably due to lack of research, energy, and her own conflicts in her own world, Racquel couldn't find the next chapter.

And then the stories after it—the greatest empress and the withered flower. They all waited for her. It was not only them. Characters from the stories that once lived on her mind were waiting for her, too. Even the five women her nine-year-old self randomly thought of.

The hands of the clock ran at an undefined speed. Racquel who was finding it hard to sleep was now closing her eyes, and started dreaming.