His mind flickers. To anyone else, it's fatigue. The cry of one's body for sleep, a hypnic jerk shocking them awake. Chess knows better.
He knows better and still he panics.
Is he already going again? So soon?
He just cleaned his room, his clothes, his hair! He was just starting to feel okay! But he's lost the game. Not that one, the other one. The game of preoccupation. The game of obsession. It's loose in his mind, untethered from its restraints, and he knows it won't be long before it colonizes his senses and he loses more time.
Chess slides into his bathroom and shuts the door, staring into the mirror intensely. His sweat clouds like droplets of grey paintwater beading up on his skin. Plink! Plink! It drips readily into the basin and slides down the drain, leaving dirty streaks as it goes.
He runs the water and splashes his face.
His mind already feels hazy. Drunk, almost. High on delirium and anxiety and all this fucking ink.
A message from a friend buzzes in his pocket, but he doesn't need to read it to know who's texting. Shaky fingers open up the chat client, but not to read. Just to send.
hopelessScrambler: happy eurovision. nerd
hopelessScrambler: anyways uhhmnmngh
hopelessScrambler: dont come over im about to like
hopelessScrambler: do some serious fuckin gaming you dont even KNOW
hopelessScrambler: the kind of gaming i gotta have all my focus on like do not even knock on my door i will crack you like a glowstick
hopelessScrambler: hhahah jk but not about the first part
hopelessScrambler: ttyl
The phone clatters to the floor, along with his clothes. Water screams from his bathtub faucet. It's scalding when he climbs in, but his thoughts begin to cloud up more than the bathroom air. The water is murky grey already, and with the last of his lucidity, he closes his heavy, tired eyes and chuckles to himself, considering a private joke about sharpies.
Thick black darkness encroaches quickly on a resting consciousness. A fleeting dream of peace is drowned and forgotten. Flashes of blue and red flood two sets of senses. Mind meld, mind melt, mind moving around itself in endless circles, until it's impossible to parse out the end from the beginning.
Buzzing emits from the pile of clothes on the floor. Steam floats about the air, through nostrils, clearing the haze.
Static-filled eyes open, and stare at the pitch black water with perfect clarity.
They sit up.