3. Morgenmuffel
Monday, February 1st-7:45 a.m.
1,849 words. Approximate reading time: 9 minutes, 20 seconds.
The bedroom lights turned on, slowly brightening as Michael’s handheld tablet began playing soft instrumental music. The music swelled with the lights, welcoming Michael and his wife Cindy to the new day.
With a swift motion, Michael reached a hand out from under the blanket and slammed it down on the tablet, quieting the music. He sat up and immediately moved his hand from his tablet to his forehead, groaning softly.
Next to him, Cindy stirred and rolled over to look at him with bleary eyes. “Mike? You okay?” she croaked out before clearing her dry throat and sitting up.
“I’m fine,” Michael replied tersely, rubbing his temples with the index finger and thumb of his right hand, and using his left hand to prop himself up in bed. “I must have not slept well last night; I feel-” He hesitated. “-fucking exhausted.”
Cindy smiled a little and started to climb out of bed. “Well, Mr. Grouch, it’s time to get up and get ready for work. Want me to make you some coffee or something? That’ll probably help you feel better.”
“Fine,” he grumbled. “I’m just going to hop in the shower and then I’ll be down.”
Cindy crossed to the other side of the bed and gave Michael a quick kiss on the top of the head. “Don’t take too long; we’ve gotta get the kids up and ready for school, too!”
Michael groaned and hauled himself out of bed just as Cindy was closing the bedroom door behind her. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt so bad. He wasn’t normally such a grouch in the morning, either. As he made his way toward the bathroom, he could feel that his balance was off, like he had been spun around in circles for five straight minutes and sent on his way.
As soon as he made it to the bathroom, he grabbed onto the doorframe to steady himself, and huffed a bit. He just slept badly. He needed a shower and a cup of coffee and he’d be back to his old self again. When he flipped on the light switch and looked at himself underneath the fluorescent lights, though, he knew something wasn’t right.
Those lights never made anyone look good, for sure, but Michael looked... bad. He wasn’t sure what to make of it. His skin looked pale and his eyes were watery and bloodshot. How Cindy didn’t notice was a bit of a wonder, but then again, the lights in the bedroom were a little more forgiving.
Michael stared at himself in disbelief for a moment, then shook his head quickly, coming back to reality as he moved to turn on the shower and step inside. The hot water really did make him feel quite a bit better as it ran over his body, easing the dull aches he was feeling all over. He was starting to think that he actually did just need a shower and a coffee when he felt a tickle in his throat and coughed.
It sounded wrong. Michael had coughed before, but this cough wasn’t anything like the coughs he had made when he accidentally inhaled a drink or when he laughed until he couldn’t breathe. The new cough was, for lack of the appropriate word coming to Michael’s mind, bubbly. It sounded like there were bubbles in his throat and the coughing was trying to push them out.
Suddenly even more worried, Michael turned off the shower and started to dry himself off. He stopped to steady himself a few times as the dizziness came and went, but managed to finish the job and get dressed for work. He glanced at himself in the mirror again. He looked tired, but that was it. The bubbly cough was just a fluke.
But he still felt the bubbles in his throat.
He cleared his throat as much as he could before heading downstairs to find his wife and his children, Lyle and Erica, who were already awake before they really needed to be. Seeing his family there together for breakfast was always a bright point of Michael’s morning. He smiled a little, despite the worry and the bad feeling, before tousling Lyle’s hair and leaning down and giving Erica a kiss on the cheek.
“Feeling better?” Cindy asked as she handed Michael a cup of coffee.
“Yeah, I’m alright,” Michael muttered, trying to mask his worry with gruffness. “Just tired still. Gonna be a rough day at work.”
“Well, drink that down and get some energy in you. I’m going to go get showered and dressed. Can you make sure the kids get dressed and start school?”
“Sure,” Michael said, sipping his coffee.
“And don’t forget to mark the board! The last thing we need when you’re tired is some surprise test!”
The board. Of course. It was extremely important to keep the board updated, Michael knew, especially out here so close to the border. He finished his coffee and gently prodded the children up the stairs to their rooms so they could get dressed and start their school lessons, then moved to the small table by the front door. He picked up his face covering and wrapped it around his head a few times until only his eyes were visible, and tied it in the back securely, before opening the front door and stepping out onto the porch.
There, just next to the front door, was the board. Every house had one; they had been put in place by some government officials just a few months earlier, after a recent wave of new cases had cropped up along the border.
The idea was simple-in order to streamline operations and to better protect the population, people would no longer be required to go to their local testing center each morning, and would instead simply mark on the board whether anyone inside was currently experiencing symptoms of the virus. Testing officers would patrol each neighborhood daily, checking the boards and determining which households to randomly test. That is, they would randomly test households that were marked as not experiencing symptoms, since asymptomatic cases were among the most common.
Michael didn’t exactly know what happened if the testing officers saw that a household was experiencing symptoms. IQ, most likely, but he’d never seen it happen before in his neighborhood. He did know one person that had been IQed, however. That was back in high school for Michael, when kids were still going to school in person instead of over VR. His buddy William Jepps had been talking to him after school one day, saying that he wasn’t feeling so hot, but chalked it up to over-studying for the upcoming exams.
The next day, William didn’t show up at school. William lived in the same neighborhood as Michael, so Michael had decided to check on him on his walk home. As he passed the Jepps residence on his walk, he noticed that the front door was wide open, and carefully snuck inside to see what was going on.
The house was devoid of any life, but it appeared that everyone had left in quite a hurry. In the kitchen, there were still plates on the table of half-eaten food. The television was turned on in the living room. When Michael checked the bedrooms, it seemed as though the Jeppses had even neglected to take their clothes with them when they left.
It was an eerie sight, but he didn’t know what to make of it at that point. Returning home, he spoke to his parents about it, and they told him that the Jeppses had been IQed (after severely admonishing him for entering the house in the first place). William had caught the virus somehow and his whole family had been removed for both their and the neighborhood’s safety. They were sent to a Quarantine Camp, his mother had told him, to get better, and they’d be back and right as rain in about three weeks.
Michael never saw William or his family again.
As he stared at the board, he wondered about William and the Jeppses. He wondered what would happen to his own family if they had to be IQed. He read the notice at the top of the board:
“ATTENTION: TO ALLOW US TO BETTER SERVE YOUR COMMUNITY, PLEASE INDICATE FOR NHD TESTING OFFICERS IF ANYONE IN YOUR HOUSEHOLD IS EXPERIENCING ANY OF THE FOLLOWING SYMPTOMS:
“Fever, Cough, Dizziness, Shortness of Breath, Fatigue, Headache, Muscle Soreness, Itchy Palms, Nausea, Heartburn, Severe Gas, Watery And/Or Red Eyes, Intestinal Upset, Frequent Urination, Infrequent Urination, Ingrown Toenails, General Malaise
“IF ANYONE IN YOUR HOUSEHOLD IS EXPERIENCING ANY OF THE ABOVE SYMPTOMS, PLEASE MARK YOUR BOARD WITH A RED ‘X’ USING THE PROVIDED MARKER. IF NO ONE IN YOUR HOUSEHOLD IS EXPERIENCING ANY OF THE ABOVE SYMPTOMS, PLEASE MARK YOUR BOARD WITH A BLACK ‘O’ USING THE PROVIDED MARKER. ANY HOUSE WITH A BOARD NOT MARKED BY 9:00AM WILL BE SUBJECT TO TESTING AND POSSIBLE IMMEDIATE QUARANTINE.”
Michael double-checked the symptoms list. Yes, he had a few of those this morning. Not nearly all of them, but a few. And the board did say “any of” the symptoms. The shower and coffee hadn’t done nearly enough to quell his symptoms. And so, the internal tug-of-war began between honesty and hope.
The last thing that Michael wanted to see was his entire family get IQed. Cindy, Lyle, Erica... they hadn’t done anything wrong. No one really knew exactly what happened at the Quarantine Camps, least of all Michael. Everything they were shown on the news made them seem like nice places, where people effectively got a free three-week all-inclusive resort-style vacation while they recuperated from their illness. But thoughts of William rang in his mind, and he wondered how many people would notice if his own family was simply disappeared in the middle of the day, never to return again.
At the same time, it seemed highly irresponsible to lie about not feeling well. For all Michael knew, it might not be the virus, but something different. Surely the officers would just test his family and everyone would come back clean if he was honest. There was, of course, the fact that, if he did actually have the virus, he could spread it to... well, he didn’t know who exactly. He never had a reason to leave the house; Cindy did all of the grocery shopping. Although, if he passed it to Cindy and Cindy passed it to someone at the grocery store, that could cause some serious damage, and Michael didn’t want to be responsible for murdering half of the surrounding neighborhoods due to his selfishness.
As he stood in front of the board, wrestling with his sense of self-preservation, Cindy came down the stairs inside the house. “Geez, Mike, get in here and shut the door!” she shouted out to him. “You’re going to get us all sick!”
He glanced inside through the open front door and saw his wife smiling at him. He coughed again, another bubbly cough, as quietly as he possibly could, to avoid any neighbors hearing. Cindy was so beautiful, and he loved her and the kids more than anything.
With a trembling hand, Michael reached for the black marker fastened to the top of the board.
1,849 words. Approximate reading time: 9 minutes, 20 seconds.
The bedroom lights turned on, slowly brightening as Michael’s handheld tablet began playing soft instrumental music. The music swelled with the lights, welcoming Michael and his wife Cindy to the new day.
With a swift motion, Michael reached a hand out from under the blanket and slammed it down on the tablet, quieting the music. He sat up and immediately moved his hand from his tablet to his forehead, groaning softly.
Next to him, Cindy stirred and rolled over to look at him with bleary eyes. “Mike? You okay?” she croaked out before clearing her dry throat and sitting up.
“I’m fine,” Michael replied tersely, rubbing his temples with the index finger and thumb of his right hand, and using his left hand to prop himself up in bed. “I must have not slept well last night; I feel-” He hesitated. “-fucking exhausted.”
Cindy smiled a little and started to climb out of bed. “Well, Mr. Grouch, it’s time to get up and get ready for work. Want me to make you some coffee or something? That’ll probably help you feel better.”
“Fine,” he grumbled. “I’m just going to hop in the shower and then I’ll be down.”
Cindy crossed to the other side of the bed and gave Michael a quick kiss on the top of the head. “Don’t take too long; we’ve gotta get the kids up and ready for school, too!”
Michael groaned and hauled himself out of bed just as Cindy was closing the bedroom door behind her. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt so bad. He wasn’t normally such a grouch in the morning, either. As he made his way toward the bathroom, he could feel that his balance was off, like he had been spun around in circles for five straight minutes and sent on his way.
As soon as he made it to the bathroom, he grabbed onto the doorframe to steady himself, and huffed a bit. He just slept badly. He needed a shower and a cup of coffee and he’d be back to his old self again. When he flipped on the light switch and looked at himself underneath the fluorescent lights, though, he knew something wasn’t right.
Those lights never made anyone look good, for sure, but Michael looked... bad. He wasn’t sure what to make of it. His skin looked pale and his eyes were watery and bloodshot. How Cindy didn’t notice was a bit of a wonder, but then again, the lights in the bedroom were a little more forgiving.
Michael stared at himself in disbelief for a moment, then shook his head quickly, coming back to reality as he moved to turn on the shower and step inside. The hot water really did make him feel quite a bit better as it ran over his body, easing the dull aches he was feeling all over. He was starting to think that he actually did just need a shower and a coffee when he felt a tickle in his throat and coughed.
It sounded wrong. Michael had coughed before, but this cough wasn’t anything like the coughs he had made when he accidentally inhaled a drink or when he laughed until he couldn’t breathe. The new cough was, for lack of the appropriate word coming to Michael’s mind, bubbly. It sounded like there were bubbles in his throat and the coughing was trying to push them out.
Suddenly even more worried, Michael turned off the shower and started to dry himself off. He stopped to steady himself a few times as the dizziness came and went, but managed to finish the job and get dressed for work. He glanced at himself in the mirror again. He looked tired, but that was it. The bubbly cough was just a fluke.
But he still felt the bubbles in his throat.
He cleared his throat as much as he could before heading downstairs to find his wife and his children, Lyle and Erica, who were already awake before they really needed to be. Seeing his family there together for breakfast was always a bright point of Michael’s morning. He smiled a little, despite the worry and the bad feeling, before tousling Lyle’s hair and leaning down and giving Erica a kiss on the cheek.
“Feeling better?” Cindy asked as she handed Michael a cup of coffee.
“Yeah, I’m alright,” Michael muttered, trying to mask his worry with gruffness. “Just tired still. Gonna be a rough day at work.”
“Well, drink that down and get some energy in you. I’m going to go get showered and dressed. Can you make sure the kids get dressed and start school?”
“Sure,” Michael said, sipping his coffee.
“And don’t forget to mark the board! The last thing we need when you’re tired is some surprise test!”
The board. Of course. It was extremely important to keep the board updated, Michael knew, especially out here so close to the border. He finished his coffee and gently prodded the children up the stairs to their rooms so they could get dressed and start their school lessons, then moved to the small table by the front door. He picked up his face covering and wrapped it around his head a few times until only his eyes were visible, and tied it in the back securely, before opening the front door and stepping out onto the porch.
There, just next to the front door, was the board. Every house had one; they had been put in place by some government officials just a few months earlier, after a recent wave of new cases had cropped up along the border.
The idea was simple-in order to streamline operations and to better protect the population, people would no longer be required to go to their local testing center each morning, and would instead simply mark on the board whether anyone inside was currently experiencing symptoms of the virus. Testing officers would patrol each neighborhood daily, checking the boards and determining which households to randomly test. That is, they would randomly test households that were marked as not experiencing symptoms, since asymptomatic cases were among the most common.
Michael didn’t exactly know what happened if the testing officers saw that a household was experiencing symptoms. IQ, most likely, but he’d never seen it happen before in his neighborhood. He did know one person that had been IQed, however. That was back in high school for Michael, when kids were still going to school in person instead of over VR. His buddy William Jepps had been talking to him after school one day, saying that he wasn’t feeling so hot, but chalked it up to over-studying for the upcoming exams.
The next day, William didn’t show up at school. William lived in the same neighborhood as Michael, so Michael had decided to check on him on his walk home. As he passed the Jepps residence on his walk, he noticed that the front door was wide open, and carefully snuck inside to see what was going on.
The house was devoid of any life, but it appeared that everyone had left in quite a hurry. In the kitchen, there were still plates on the table of half-eaten food. The television was turned on in the living room. When Michael checked the bedrooms, it seemed as though the Jeppses had even neglected to take their clothes with them when they left.
It was an eerie sight, but he didn’t know what to make of it at that point. Returning home, he spoke to his parents about it, and they told him that the Jeppses had been IQed (after severely admonishing him for entering the house in the first place). William had caught the virus somehow and his whole family had been removed for both their and the neighborhood’s safety. They were sent to a Quarantine Camp, his mother had told him, to get better, and they’d be back and right as rain in about three weeks.
Michael never saw William or his family again.
As he stared at the board, he wondered about William and the Jeppses. He wondered what would happen to his own family if they had to be IQed. He read the notice at the top of the board:
“ATTENTION: TO ALLOW US TO BETTER SERVE YOUR COMMUNITY, PLEASE INDICATE FOR NHD TESTING OFFICERS IF ANYONE IN YOUR HOUSEHOLD IS EXPERIENCING ANY OF THE FOLLOWING SYMPTOMS:
“Fever, Cough, Dizziness, Shortness of Breath, Fatigue, Headache, Muscle Soreness, Itchy Palms, Nausea, Heartburn, Severe Gas, Watery And/Or Red Eyes, Intestinal Upset, Frequent Urination, Infrequent Urination, Ingrown Toenails, General Malaise
“IF ANYONE IN YOUR HOUSEHOLD IS EXPERIENCING ANY OF THE ABOVE SYMPTOMS, PLEASE MARK YOUR BOARD WITH A RED ‘X’ USING THE PROVIDED MARKER. IF NO ONE IN YOUR HOUSEHOLD IS EXPERIENCING ANY OF THE ABOVE SYMPTOMS, PLEASE MARK YOUR BOARD WITH A BLACK ‘O’ USING THE PROVIDED MARKER. ANY HOUSE WITH A BOARD NOT MARKED BY 9:00AM WILL BE SUBJECT TO TESTING AND POSSIBLE IMMEDIATE QUARANTINE.”
Michael double-checked the symptoms list. Yes, he had a few of those this morning. Not nearly all of them, but a few. And the board did say “any of” the symptoms. The shower and coffee hadn’t done nearly enough to quell his symptoms. And so, the internal tug-of-war began between honesty and hope.
The last thing that Michael wanted to see was his entire family get IQed. Cindy, Lyle, Erica... they hadn’t done anything wrong. No one really knew exactly what happened at the Quarantine Camps, least of all Michael. Everything they were shown on the news made them seem like nice places, where people effectively got a free three-week all-inclusive resort-style vacation while they recuperated from their illness. But thoughts of William rang in his mind, and he wondered how many people would notice if his own family was simply disappeared in the middle of the day, never to return again.
At the same time, it seemed highly irresponsible to lie about not feeling well. For all Michael knew, it might not be the virus, but something different. Surely the officers would just test his family and everyone would come back clean if he was honest. There was, of course, the fact that, if he did actually have the virus, he could spread it to... well, he didn’t know who exactly. He never had a reason to leave the house; Cindy did all of the grocery shopping. Although, if he passed it to Cindy and Cindy passed it to someone at the grocery store, that could cause some serious damage, and Michael didn’t want to be responsible for murdering half of the surrounding neighborhoods due to his selfishness.
As he stood in front of the board, wrestling with his sense of self-preservation, Cindy came down the stairs inside the house. “Geez, Mike, get in here and shut the door!” she shouted out to him. “You’re going to get us all sick!”
He glanced inside through the open front door and saw his wife smiling at him. He coughed again, another bubbly cough, as quietly as he possibly could, to avoid any neighbors hearing. Cindy was so beautiful, and he loved her and the kids more than anything.
With a trembling hand, Michael reached for the black marker fastened to the top of the board.