Chapter 5: Chapter 4: Living with total strangers (You have bad taste in books)
Habits are a strange thing. They come and go, but sometimes stick. Your experiences sculpt some, you construct some yourself, yet others just appear. For example, I happen to be unfortunate enough to possess the ugly habit of digging my nails. I have been told on multiple occasions that my nails were quite pretty, with a beautiful long naturally curved shape that others long to have. When met with this compliment, I am often struck with a wave of guilt, because due to how I treat my nails, if somehow feel as if I don't deserve them. If it were up to me, I would treat them with great care, but for some reason, it isn't up to me. Because the annoying little habit is beyond my control.
However that does not mean that habits like those are beyond influence. Because that habit along with many others are triggered by something that yet again we have almost no control over. Emotions. For example if I am bored, stressed, nervous, or something like that, I will without realizing it, start to dig my nails.
Going back now, how do even acquire these habits? When habits are constructed by experience and the people with influence of me, they either have to have been born from on big personal experience, you just catching it by accident and it sticking, or somebody forcing the habit on me. For example, the habit for turning of the light switch after leaving a room, might originate from constant nagging, plagued upon me by my mother. The habit of saying 'welp' just caught on one day, because I liked the sound. And the habit of constantly avoiding eye contact with people might be an insecurity habit that I gained after I lost everything to a person I trusted, and was able to look straight into the eyes of.
But how do you make a habit? Out of the three I am explaining to you, this one might be the most simple of all of them. Repeating an action. Again and again and again and again. Like if you keep forgetting to flush the toilet, and you want to fix that, then the only way you can fix it is if you remind yourself to flush it, and then just remember to flush it. Again and again. Though honestly, if that's your problem then i just suggest installing an automatic flusher rather than spending your time remembering to flush the toilet.
And finally the random habit. These habits are created when you do a random fidget, or action, and it either relieves your stress in a way, provides entertainment, or makes you more comfortable. For example, I most likely developed my nail digging habit when I was bored, and the action giving my hands something to do,and the back of my mind something to concentrate on, I involuntarily repeated it again, the back of my mind, remembering the benefits of that random action. And thus, an annoying habit is formed.
But how do I get rid of it? Easy, constantly remind myself not to dig my nails, have my supposed mom nag me not to dig my nails, or maybe just randomly don't find it appealing anymore. So I guess what I am trying to give an example for, is that you can get rid of habits in the same way that you form them.
Now that I am thinking about it, we are all comprised of habits. One way to describe it, is that habits are like the individual brushstrokes of an artist, coming together to form the impressionist painting that is me, or the bigger picture. After all, habits control almost every aspect of our life. The compose our interactions, our mindset, our interests and much more. It's almost like a chain of events, if you follow it, you can find habits linking everything. And what's more is that how we act, our interactions with others will affect them. Our habits affect others, their habits affect us, our habits affect other people's habits and their habits affect ours! We don't control our habits, our habits control us.
Smith had now been living with these total strangers for 5 days. Well actually to be fair, they weren't such strangers anymore, for Smith had started to pick up on their habits and ways.
He now knew that Landon worked a boring office job, that seemed to be the least of his concerns. It was quite obvious that he cared for his Job less than Smith had cared for his. He never seemed to remember what day of the week it was, and he wasn't very organized. Smith had also soon realized that it was his apartment he was staying in, despite how in charge Beatrice always seemed to be. One day as he slowly walked to the bathroom he passed by Landon's room. The door had been wide open and Landon had been sitting on the bed, facing the door. He had been looking down at his hand, the huge supply of bandages laying around him. But Smith had hardly taken in any of these things, they were not nearly as noticeable as the hand…. I don't want to go into full lengths to describe it, because it was a rather bloody sight. In fact, all i will say, is that it looked as if Landon and dipped his hand in a bucket full of blood colored paint. Terrified Smith quickly edged on past it, the last thing he had heard before entering the bathroom, was Landon mutter "I wish I had bought more bandages…". After this Smith just stood in the bathroom for a moment shaking. I don't think that he ever complained about paper cuts again after that day. He wanted to go back to the time when he hadn't thought about what was under those bandages on Landon's hand. What could have done… 'that' to Landon. How on earth was Landon even able to injure his hand so badly? Those questions chased Smith for the rest of that day, and dwelled in the back of his mind from then on.
Landon wasn't the only person who he had began to understand. For he had observed Tey and Beatrice now as well. Tey was perhaps the most mysterious one of them all. Every morning when Smith woke up, she was gone. She only returned later in the day, exhausted, grim, and almost on the verge of breaking down. There were only a couple of things Smith knew about her job. Number one, it was soul crushing. Every day when she came back, her eyes were cold, almost dead. He had almost begun to think that she worked at Malmart. But of course, she didn't, for he never remembers getting hurt (other than spiritually) at Malmart. Number two, the bruises and cuts. She never came home without at least a couple more, or with a limp, a black eye, you name it. Perhaps she was a boxer? Smith was starting to run out of possible Ideas for her Job. A security guard or cop? Though that didn't seem to likely either. Number three, her job seemed shady in more ways than not. The hours were unpredictable, her injuries, how she never ever ever brought it up, and how she received serious phone calls, where she would step outside to receive them and step back in looking grave, before she went and hid away for a little bit. And finally, Beatrice knew what it was, and she didn't like it. But, other than these little moments, Tey didn't interact much with Smith. The most she did was shoot him small glares, or coldy respond with a forced hello every time he said hello to her in front of Beatrice (when Beatrice wasn't there, she wouldn't respond). He had only had one real interaction with her, and it was weird. On the second night she had come home exhausted, but more guilty and depressed than usual. She had picked up her portion of that night's chicken broth and sat down and started to eat her food silently. A feeling of remorse seamed to hang about her like fog. Our painfully awkward main character saw this, and awkwardly in an attempt to break the silence, he had said "did you have a rough day?" she didn't respond. She had stopped eating, her mouth clenched slightly. Seeing this Smith jokingly said "well I mean it's not like you killed anyone or anything". Her chair scraped as she got up, leaving her chicken broth at the table and going to her room, the door slamming and locking behind her. Smith sat silently for a couple moments, before looking down at his soup, and unpleasant feeling about him. Her reaction had troubled him, then an unpleasant thought hit him. What if… what if she had killed someone?
Now we have covered two of the residents of this apartment. But what about Beatrice? Well, she was perhaps the strangest of them all. Unlike the other two, she was always kind to Smith, she was the one keeping him company, as she stayed home, seamingly unemployed. What was so strange then? Well, let's start with the fact that she was a good 10 years behind on news.
I mean, talk about living under a rock. Once, she and Smith were sitting on the couch watching TV, as it was one of the only things they could do, other than attempt to play monopoly with only half the Items needed, or try to play 4 in a row (which for some weird reason, only had one color) and try to sort out who had won (which is impossible with only one color by the way). But anyway, back to the story. So Beatrice and Smith, were sitting on the couch watching TV, when, getting bored, Beatrice changed the channel to the news station. They watched a couple minutes of the weather report (which didn't matter since they never left the house) when suddenly a reporter came on and started talking about the president. Beatrice leaned forward as if suddenly interested, and the reporter went on to describe another stupid action that the president had taken. Beatrice seamed shocked, though Smith just rolled his eyes. "That guy is on a roll" he said sarcastically.
Beatrice looked totally shocked, and she didn't say anything until the report was over, then with an expression of doubt she said "so, your telling me, we actually voted for that guy?".
Smith nodded, clearly thinking she was just ranting about how stupid some people in their country were. "Well some people aren't very clever you see" he said sarcastically.
"Well he must have been running against some pretty bad people to actually get elected" she said laughing.
"Wait a moment...you actually didn't know that this guy was elected! You know that happened three years ago right?"he said bewildered.
She shook her head "no, I actually didn't."The two fell silent after that. But while the room was silent, Smith's mind wasn't he kept on thinking about the most recent incident, and back to the day when this had all started. When she had crashed into him, wearing summer clothes in the middle of winter, and asking about which year it was.
A day later after the incident, Smith was still pondering what had happened yesterday. He had also been working up the courage to ask beatrice, about when the last time she had celebrated new years had been.
Taking a deep breath, he stepped outside his room. It was more towards noon now, so only beatrice would be home. He walked to the living room, it was time he ask beatrice, and find out the truth about everything. As he entered the living room however, he saw that it wasn't just beatrice who was home. Infact, everyone was home. He didn't understand, why had they skipped work just to hang out on the couch? Then suddenly, as they all looked back at him it occurred to him. They had been waiting for him there, slowly he walked towards them, a bit nervous. His butt had hardly touched the seat when Beatrice said "I think it's time that we tell you the truth.".
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