The Companion
Flash Fiction
Near the cold embers of the last night’s fire, she saw him sleeping peacefully, in a dark corner of the room beside her. It was a crazy night of stuffing all the food they had and binging on the series. The last episode of the eight season popular series was to be released the day after. And all this week, Sara and her dearest lover, Procrastination tried to catch up with the hype and gaga over the series, by beginning to watch from season one. They both slept, sharing the mixed emotions of sadness of the main character’s death and curiosity same as the other zealous population storming the social media with memes and predictions. She tried to tiptoe out of her blanket but he pulled her in, just telling, “There’s still a lot of time, I don’t want to miss the thrill of running after things when we are late.” And like the caring one in the relationship, she agreed.
She faintly remembers when exactly did they meet first. It was probably on the day of result of the exam for which she worked the hardest in her life and despite best efforts didn’t succeed. Those days, Discipline used to be a regular friend to her place and they would study together, burning the midnight oil almost every day. Heartbroken and ashamed after seeing those exam results, she never confronted her old friend ever after that. That’s also the same time procrastination lured her with all his fancy tricks. He initially felt soothing to her scars, caressing to all the scratches of her degraded self-worth. He ricocheted off the barriers she had created against working hard on anything in life. He entered, all soaking in knowledge of delaying anything in hand to be done later in haste. He also boasted about how his past relationships began when everyone started detesting Discipline. Her initial days of relationship were full of fascination and thrill of pushing important and urgent things to the last moment of running, sliding and speeding things.
Her relationship with procrastination had been marred by hits black and blue and wounds turning red when the world started feeling that he soiled her reputation of being the best from the rest. She did not pay any heed to the warnings about her future being in danger under his sway in her life. He always had a comforting and convincing influence on her, which she would regret later. But she was too used to agreeing, cluelessly enjoying unnecessary but dopamine releasing activities and then straining herself to catch up with things later in the fastest way.
They built a strong bond with their next door neighbour, Tomorrow. She got used to postponing everything; the gym membership card stared blankly at her every day, her exam preparations were hardly a two-day marathon affair, important mails looked at her everyday with great expectations for a word of reply, number of alarms snoozes every morning ranged between ten to twenty. They also aced the art of leaving for any meeting or a party almost an hour late or even more sometimes. She fought with him about several of these issues but he would always find a way to slither away from these arguments smoothly. Every night she would keep brooding if their relationship moved way beyond the healthy silo of a bond worth keeping. Sometimes, she would go sleepless or wake up from bad dreams of not being able to fulfill her aspirations in life. But he would give her explanations of a longer life with plentiful of time forever to put her to sleep. She knew for sure, this relationship was getting toxic but her mind was fearful about the foggy image of what will she do without him. Thinking of it would take her back to the past days of mindful toil which gave her no results.
He suggested that socialising with some of their friends would be very helpful in strengthening their relationship. She agreed. He told her one day that two of his old buddies invited themselves to dinner. They complained of not gaining enough attention like they got years back in his past relationships. They therefore took a house nearby to be a closer part of their lives. She had an obnoxious feeling when two of his friends made their way to their place for the first time; Anxiety and Anger. She could whiff the bad influence his friends started having in their lives but by that time her endurance had developed a thicker skin. They used to come every day, uninvited and played games like anticipating how worse an upcoming event in life can be, horror stories of terrifying past, race of misery, tracking loneliness, over analysing things an old friend, relative or a new colleague said, bringing past conversations and thinking of bitter answers one could have given etc. Procrastination grew comfortable and more talkative in their presence. When his friends would leave (only briefly), their absence would build a wall of silent disapproval and disgust around the two of them. Swamp of discomfort was writhing their relationship. This made her days worse. Instead of postponing tasks, she stopped doing anything altogether, looking for words in space to express about this misery.
“I will leave early in the morning. I cannot handle this anymore,” she murmured to herself before going to sleep. He asked, “What’s the matter. You seem to be lost in your train of thoughts?” She did not say anything, rather hugged him tight to sleep with the joyful thought of emancipating herself from this toxic relationship. Early morning, she woke up and tried to move out of the blanket with the utmost effort of tiptoeing quietly. To her utter dismay, he rubbed the sleep from his eyes and stopped her from leaving. She refused, “Not this time. This needs to be ended.” And she breathed a sigh of relief after stepping out.
It was just a dream. When she woke up, she realised, Procrastination gripped her in his charm even more tightly this morning. She woke up in the afternoon.