2

Daily Routine

“Yes, Mom. I’ve been very busy, sorry.” Iris finally has the time to call her mother back, after ignoring her missed calls for two weeks. It wasn’t like she hated her mother, she just would rather avoid the same lectured and practiced speeches Eva Shuester would always give her. The cliched parental expectations of where a millennial was supposed to go in life.  

Iris begins to light her cigarette outside of 7/11, holding the phone tightly to her sweaty ear. She’s waiting on one more bus to take her home. There had been a brief robbery inside the store that took place fifteen minutes before she entered apparently. The cashier was telling her about it as he was shaking, ringing her up. She felt so sorry for the young man, who looked like his life depended on this job, that she left 3 smokes of her go-to brand for him. An upgrade for him by far; she had smelled Camel menthols instantly on his work shirt mixed with fresh coffee stains when she walked in.  

“You sound frazzled, hon.” Her mother’s calm and somewhat worried voice soothes her.

“There was a robbery at 7/11.” She squeezes her eyes shut. “I wasn’t there but it happened not too long ago.”

“Oh my. Did they catch him?”

“Not sure. Waiting for a bus, trying to get home right now.” Her voice is nonchalent.

Had she shown up to 7/11 eighteen minutes earlier, the robbery would not have even scared her. Not in the slightest. Proper timing in this world when it came to life-or-death situations, did scare her though. The right time, the right place. The wrong place, the wrong time. Life would always be a gamble. At least the cashier and customers survived though.  

Originally from Chicago, Iris’s upbringings were surrounded by things like this on the daily. She had only lived there the first fourteen years of her life, until her parents decided to move to Grand Rapids, Michigan for a more subtle life. Her mother grew up there and knew it was a safer choice. Alice had graduated high school and headed off to Brown University, the year before they moved. Iris’s parents felt in that moment, it be best Iris lived in a smaller atmosphere since her sister was leaving. Chicago, Grand Rapids, and now Portland? No wonder why she was so different.

“Trying to get home on a bus? But you have a car. Iris, what’s going on?” Eva shifts her daughter’s distracted mind back to the present.

“It’s in the shop right now,” Iris mumbles the lie through her breath as the rain pours on her paper-thin skin. She is not in the mood to explain to her mother that she took a bus because she met someone from an online dating app. During in person meet ups, Iris never liked driving, due to someone potentially discovering her license plate number or what her car looked like. Better to be safe than sorry.

“Why? What’s wrong with it?” More questions mean more lies. Iris is getting pissed at her mother, even though she didn’t do anything wrong.

“I’ve got it taken care of.” She exhales her cigarette away from the phone, taking a deep breath. At the corner of her eyes, a homeless bearded man winks at her from a few feet away. She shakes her head, staring toward the bus stop, where it should be coming any minute. The sooner the better at this point in time.

“Are you still smoking?” her mother blurts.

“No.” Iris’s voice falls flat.

“Liar.”

“Why bother asking if you already know the answer?”

“I just want you to quit soon, is all.”

“I’ll quit once my life gets together. Right now, it’s not, Mom.”

“At least you’re graduating in a few weeks. Surely you have some internships lined up. Or maybe applied some places?” Her mother’s sweet voice turns cold now.

“Yes, I have. I’ve applied to work at a few publishing houses as an editor, some English tutoring departments at a couple universities, a local newspaper in Beaverton, and I’ve also applied to be a secretary at a law firm.”

Eva huffs and then laughs. “A secretary at a law firm? Applications for impossible job opportunities? Oh honey, please tell me you aren’t still wasting your precious time and money submitting manuscripts to publishers. Iris, you know writing can only be a hobby with how you have all that competition around you. Please please tell me you’ve put that dreadful Abby Tox novel to rest.”

Iris hangs up the phone immediately. She cannot stay on the line anymore without wanting to scream at the top of her lungs. Her mother had approved of her being a writer in the beginning, until she started college. Eva then had high hopes her youngest daughter would get a hot shot job after school, just like her sister, Alice. Doing everything right, like Alice. Not wasting life on a dead-end dream that probably wouldn’t happen, like Alice. Iris’s sister had given up her dream of becoming a professional ballet dancer after she turned sixteen.  

She shuts her eyes tight, waiting for the bus to finally come. There are a few people around her waiting, oblivious of her presence. As she slowly opens her eyes, a baby looks at her while its mother is texting. She smiles until she sees the baby practically rip itself out of the stroller. The mother finally looks up from her phone. Iris shakes her head and turns away.

“Rough conversation with mommy, Iris?” Eliawa appears next to her again, patting her on the back.

“I don’t wanna talk about it right now,” she mutters between chattering teeth. The rain isn’t stopping.

“I’ll give you some time away. I’ll talk to you later.” Eliawa rubs his slimy hands together with a sinister grin and disappears.

Iris laughs to herself as the bus finally comes. She smiles at the driver, paying with all the quarters stashed in her purse. The ride is peaceful for all but five minutes, when an unwelcoming text from her sister, Alice pops up on her screen. It had been a few weeks since speaking and the timing couldn’t have been any worse.

Hey sis, it reads. She prematurely rolls her eyes before reading the entire message. We’re prepping for the big night around the corner. Please get back to me. I still need you to send in your measurements for the bridesmaid dress I have picked out for you. I can’t wait for my big day. Love and miss you.

Iris turns off her phone.

“Stupid piece of shit.” She mumbles through her gritted teeth.

She hates technology and wants to be left alone, despite being smothered, then drowned in the digital world since birth. She shoves headphones in her ears, playing The Smiths, her favorite old school band on her CD player the rest of the way home. She wants to forget that her perfect straight A, honor roll, neurosurgeon hot sister is getting married in three weeks.

Iris makes it into her home, three flights of stairs later, only two blocks away from the stop. It’s a quaint little studio. Nothing more, nothing less, with some worn out red drapes complimenting the windows. Her purple dining table is stacked with junk mail and the laundry basket near her bed is mixed with clean and dirty clothes. Those are usually the early indications of her depression kicking in. Couldn’t even bring herself to the junk mail to throw away in the trash nearby. She does notice though that her cat food is completely out. Stella, her two-month-old grey kitten that she rescued last week, is staring at her with those piercing green eyes.

“Stella,” Iris coos, picking her up.  

The kitten was an impulse buy, but it was for a solid reason. Iris was lonely. She’d not only been single for a long time, but she had no family in Portland. She hadn’t even established a reliable group of friends. She did gain a few random but promising friendships in the last few years, but they all got into busy relationships or forgot about her completely. Getting a cat was practical. $125 charged on her credit card but would be paid off soon.

“Let me get you some food. Sorry little one.” She kisses the squirmy kitten on the forehead and heads out again.

She walks to a Frank Miller down the road. It’s a small market-based grocery store with specialty organic food, worldwide cheeses, aisles of fancy wine bottles and an impressive produce department. The rest of the store is generic.

She grabs some cheap cat food and a bottle of cheap red wine. $8.50 for both isn’t bad to satisfy her furbaby and self. It would have to do for now. Classes are tomorrow and Iris had already called out sick to work, immediately after being splashed with a puddle after leaving Tim’s house. Studying and drinking is on the agenda today. No more boys for her right now. Time to play some hooky from work; Starbucks could go shove a Mocha Frappuccino up its ass.

“Your card has been declined, Ma’am,” the young brunette says at check out. Her eyes look worn out and she smells of Marlboro reds, what Iris used to smoke before switching to American Spirits.

“Huh?” Iris is confused.

“Your card has been declined for insufficient funds.”

Iris now realizes she currently has 57 cents in her account after buying cigarettes at 7/11 today. She always kept track but forgot to subtract the $8.09 that it took. Her credit cards were locked up in a mini safe inside her studio for emergency use only after the kitten purchase.

“Oh. Right. Sorry, wrong account. I’ll…actually write a check.” Iris awkwardly pulls out her muddy checkbook, relieved that checks do not process for three to five business days at Frank Miller. Pay day is painfully slow this week for her. Four more days.

“I.D. please, Ma’am.” The clerk gives her a funny look now. People rarely write checks anymore. A few people stack up in line behind her, all with carts full of heavy items. Being a cashier sucked. Iris had her fair share of that in high school.

“Certainly,” Iris says, handing her passport to the clerk. The girl looks at her funny again for using a passport as an ID, but gives a curt enough smile. Iris can tell she’s annoyed though. “Sorry for the hassle.”

“No problem,” the clerk mumbles and types the check vigorously, processing it. The receipt pops out and she tears it off in an abrupt manner. “Have a nice day, Ma’am.”

“Thanks, you too, Ma’am.” Iris walks out of the store in a hurry, annoyed how the clerk kept calling her “Ma’am.” Her license was somewhere in her studio lying around with other messes, so passport ID entries meant extra work on the cashier’s end. Oh well.

She turns on her phone as soon as she gets home, out of curiosity. It had only been an hour since she turned it off. The screen is blank, as usual. A voicemail notification pops up a minute later though, and Iris listens to it as her hands start to shake.

“Hey Iris, I know you are sick today, but Cali called out for tomorrow. We could use an extra night person. Give me a call back, thanks.” Her manager Chainey’s squeaky tone rings in her ears.

Iris throws the phone against the wall, watching it bounce from the expensive Otter Box it was in. Stella runs frantically, hiding behind a cabinet. She cups her face in shock of her own anger, bringing the whole bottle of wine with her to the shower. Today is going to be long. Studying for finals before she earns a degree that will either make or break her future job. It cannot be Starbucks though. Not for Iris.

She closes her eyes as she scrubs her grubby body in the shower. The flowing water calms her down while she sips the wine with a bitter face. The shower begins to drown her as her nostrils clog up from all the crying. Iris does not want to live much longer. The degree will only be a piece of paper in her hands, once she earns it. It won’t magically transform her into Little Miss Perfect, like her attractive, ambitious, engaged sister, Alice.

Nearly stumbling to the bed in a shredded brown towel that should really be turned into a rag at this point, she decides to watch some TV before homework. It had been a while and she feels like it’s time to see what the news is all about.

“Garbage,” she gags, nearly after chugging the remains of the wine bottle without thinking. Half gagging at the cheap warm wine and half gagging at the cheap fake news story.

Being a journalism minor, in hopes of landing a newspaper or blog job, she feels the industry rapidly decaying in professionalism. It’s all about the viewers and what the next hot thing is. She picked that as a minor because she couldn’t find anything else that would contrast well with being an English major. She had taken journalism class in high school and remembered liking it but that was about it. No wonder why she was a disgrace to her family.

Iris glares at her textbook. Science is her worst subject and putting it off until her last year, especially being chemistry, is a big regret for her now. She pops in her Ritalin and Xanax before beginning. Iris has A.D.H.D and depression in addition to schizophrenia, according to all the doctors who ran multiple brain tests on her since the age of seventeen. That was their conclusion. One had even said borderline personality disorder was in the mix. Despite ridding Abilify at Starbucks last night, she found use of the other prescriptions she had been given for her other issues.

Stella jumps on the bed suddenly, purring as she nuzzles Iris’s cold hands. “I fed you, cat.” Iris points at the tiny little tin of water and bowl of wet mediocre-branded cat food. Stella leaps over her bed and obeys.

Iris then throws on an oversized presumably clean black nightgown from her laundry basket that said, “Sleepless in Seattle,” from a gift shop that she got inside the Seattle airport. She then chucks the raggedy towel across the room in annoyance of her own self. She is the only one at fault for being too poor to buy a new towel but rich enough to smoke American Spirits.

She shouldn’t even own a cat, she realizes, but would rather be selfish in that regard. Especially in that regard. Her last cat, Bobby, was a six-year-old rescue and had died after only one year of having him, due to health complications. Kidney Failure. Though Eliawa popped up when that cat was around, terrorizing Iris, she still had a friend, even if it wasn’t a human. A mammal. A friendly lovesick animal. Something happy to be taken care of and not evil like her imaginary alien friend who felt too real at times for Iris. A month after his death, she adopted the last kitten available at a shelter, not wanting to adopt an adult cat again after that happened. Tiny, fierce looking Stella. Too young for a human to handle in Iris’s opinion. She was just so small, it was scary.

She smacks herself on the cheeks lightly, drum-rolling her hands to try and wake up some more. Her new kitten comes trotting back to her and jumps on the bed, meowing for attention. She smiles but turns away from Stella, even though she is too cute to ignore.

“Aww, don’t want to cuddle with wittle kitty?” Eliawa suddenly appears on the bed, patting Iris on the head, messing up her hair.

“Now is not the time! I have finals tomorrow, Eliawa! Can’t you just disappear for good?” her startled voice leaks and she clenches her fists, holding her tongue from screaming and producing more tears. “I served my time with you for nearly my entire life.”

“I can’t, sweetie. I belong inside your mind and until you stop thinking of me, I’m by your side for eternity.” A small chuckle leaves his mouth. Iris realizes Stella is completely oblivious to a red slimy alien in her presence. “Well, that’s a lie, actually. I am with you no matter what, as I have a big plan for you soon. You’re mine…forever and ever.”

“Well, regardless, I can get rid of this bullshit, easy.” She glares at the alien, popping in 4 more Ritalin pills. “There, focus mode is on.” She’d probably be up for days now, avoiding sleep in order to avoid having dreams. She didn’t want it to come down to this, but sleep would need to be on hold for now.

“I’d be careful if I were you, Iris. Those things can put you in overdose mode and we both know what happens after you die.”

“I evaporate into thin air after death. Better than this life, I’m sure of it.” She sneers and closes her eyes for a moment.

“Well, when you die, wherever you end up, I’ll still find you, Iris. I will still be there, my sweet Iris. Always have…always will! I found you, and I am never letting you go. You are a special one, Iris. Special one. Special one! SPECIAL ONE!” Eliawa is now jumping on her three pages of notes for the final in chemistry tomorrow.

His tone is beginning to frighten her. Special one? Never letting her go? At twenty-two-and a half, Iris still cannot believe how long this nonsense has been going on for, despite taking the proper procedures. Today couldn’t be any worse. First the awkward walk of shame this morning, then her mother nagging, then the reality of being a poor loser, then realizing her wasted time on a minor and major in fields that hardly make money…Iris wants to snap, badly.

“Stop it, now!” She smacks him away, sending him to the floor abruptly.

“Got a tough bone in you, don’tcha?” Eliawa winks.

Iris chugs her wine bottle at his head. “Piss off! I need to graduate! I can’t with you always bothering me!”

The bottle hits Eliawa in the belly instead, causing him to disappear. Iris gets a twisting stomachache all of a sudden, causing her to grasp her waist, cradling it gently. The twists become tighter inside her, bringing her body to the floor slowly.

Iris doesn’t feel very well right now. Her eyes begin to burn up, mixing in the tears flowing out of her eyes. Drool exits her mouth by the pound. She feels the water from last night’s Starbucks date come out, along with the vodka complimenting it on the floor. She begins to choke, coughing up as much as she can. Vomit splats on the ground, giving her more chokes to hassle with. Her head begins to spin dizzily as she lays her head in the puke. It’s cold and chilling to her face.

        After feeling as if she were about to die on the floor, Iris pops her head up a few minutes later, seeing her kitten purring loudly next to her. Stella needs to be taken care of so there’s no time to die right now. Plus, she’s jacked up on an intense stimulant. Maybe it’s time to put it to good use for her studying. She doesn’t want to do that right now though. Instead, Iris leaves her place and walks directly to a destination she does not wish to go to.

Next Chapter: Monthly Check-In