He woke up with a gasp at the sound of the alarm on his phone ringing deafeningly next to his ear.
4.30 AM, it read.
Right on time. I'm not late.
Lyor let out a shuddering breath and slowly got himself out of the makeshift bed inside the cold bathtub. The porcelain bit into his spine with a familiar chill, the worn towel beneath him doing nothing to soften the hard curve against his back. He then went to the bathroom door and knocked loudly, calling out for his father.
He heard complaining, shuffling as usual, and then a loud curse, making his heart rate spike.
Please don't be angry. Please don't be angry.
The morning mantra played in his head as he clasped his hands together, eyes darting to the dull brown colored tiles, trailing through the cracks he tried so hard to mend with cheap filler that always crumbled away. Breath picked up as the heavy footsteps closed in, each thud vibrating through the thin walls.
A click.
Footsteps receded, and Lyor exhaled loudly, letting a brief relief flood in. His knees trembled. The lock had opened. He was allowed to exist in the wider prison of the apartment for another day.
4.37 AM, it read.
He rushed out, with small, quiet footsteps, and turned on the light in the three-foot kitchen area that did not provide enough light to see. The single bulb flickered, casting gray shadows that danced like waiting hands. The gray walls trapped every sound in, making his task to stay quiet harder, his own heartbeat too loud in his ears.
Soft clanking filled the area while he made breakfast for his father with the limited amount of ingredients left, and he packed himself a small breakfast with four spoons of rice and one spoon of cooked bean curry. The container was stained, the lid cracked, but it held.
Father always checked his breakfast, made him make breakfast, but he knew that he never ate anything he made. He wasn't worth much, and he knew that.
Two years ago, his father forced one of his friends to give Lyor a job at an immigration company. A burden he could not handle at his age, but still, he had to learn fast and be useful. The salary went to his father's account, only leaving him with barely enough money for transportation, medication, and lunch. Sometimes not even that.
His father hated his white hair and brown eyes that resembled his mother's. His mother, who gave her life away for money to save his leg. But everyone tells it's because she was tired of living like a prisoner in that cramped apartment that smelled of mold and despair.
"Don't be afraid to leave here, baby. This is Mom's last gift to you. You deserve so much more. So leave and be free. I love you so so much." Lyor recalled her last words as he ironed the worn-out clothes that made his skin itch, the fabric thin at the elbows, the collar frayed.
"The world is so beautiful," she had said, but he never saw what's so beautiful about it.
He promised, and when the metal bone was implanted, blood circulation was improved, and he could walk as normally as everyone, he tried. He did escape, but his father always found him and, in each attempt, brought him to more restrictions and rules. More locks. More hits. More silence. More ways to make him understand that freedom was not his to have.
He stopped trying.
5.57 AM, it read.
A minute of delay was a waste of five dollars. In ten minutes, it would become hundreds of dollars. He had to pick up the pace. The broken fan in the so-called living area stuttered as he packed his things, after cleaning up the dull apartment that smelt like cement and disgrace, no matter how much cheap air freshener was sprayed, the chemical lavender mixing with dust and something sour underneath. Yet his father's room was closer to looking like a suite, the door always closed, the privilege of space and softness guarded like treasure.
Lyor doesn't have the right to complain. He was living at a cost of life that made his father miserable, made parents lose their precious daughter, and he had to earn a living for it. So said all the people he met and his father, their voices overlapping in his head like a chorus of rusted chains.
Running out of the apartment in his too-tight shoes that made his toes hurt, he made it to the bus by 6.40 AM, fulfilling the need to arrive at the office earlier because he was a slow reader. The morning air was thick with exhaust and humidity, clinging to his skin.
His task included proofreading the documents because the company did not want to pay for any tools to make anyone's life easier. And then to check all the calculations of the financial activities of the department he was working on in the immigration center, make document packages, and input data of each client accurately. One missing document meant a loss of 50-100 dollars, and some even more, because the client pays to get the work done and safely migrate to another country for a better life. If the visa was rejected due to the misalignment of the documents or financial records, it meant a salary deduction from Lyor as well as working double time to cover the loss he made.
Putting the blame on him was easier for the people who worked there, and he knew that.
The situation has worsened to the point that whenever his phone rings, his heart would skip beats, his palms would sweat, vision would narrow to a tunnel. He doesn't realize he is suffering from anxiety, and a visit to the doctor could help and thought it was his own weakness and pushed through, every single time.
The only one who called him was the office, and it was always to tell him that something had gone wrong.
He was terrified of making mistakes. Hence, instead of 9 AM, he always arrived at 7.10 AM, and instead of 5 PM, he mostly clocked off at 9 PM or 10 PM.
Today was one of those days. Yesterday, he had prepared documentation for 15 clients while the 3 colleagues who are older than him only spoke with those clients and told them about the process. He had missed one of the CVs of a family of 6 people travelling to the UK for vacation, and the client had raised a complaint.
It didn't necessarily cost a loss yet; the boss had made a deduction due to the damage done to the company's "reputation." It made sense to Lyor. A complaint was a big thing for any company. His faults were always big. His existence was always too loud, too costly, too much.
He always had to triple-check, always had to be perfect, or else it cost so much for people around him.
It was around 9.30 PM when he tidied the office, cleaned the coffee and tea cups that he had made for the people who demanded, and clocked off. The metal bone inside of his flesh ached so bad, a deep throbbing that radiated up his thigh and down to his ankle, but he could not take the pain killers, wanting to keep them for worse episodes, as his father would not spend money for any of that, and the office insurance does not cover any expensive medication. The bottle sat in his bag, counted, precious, forbidden except for emergencies he could no longer define.
Exhaustion tugged at his thin frame, sunken eyes, and shivering hands that almost never stopped, his body staying on high alert; he could tell his health was not the best, but he had to put up. Till he saved enough money to escape from that apartment, as he promised his mother.
Yet he wondered if things would be any better. He would still have to work to earn money with no guarantee of what kind of job he would get. The future was just more of this, endless, gray, heavy, tiring.
Putting less pressure on his right leg, he limped out and waited for the bus as his eyes kept closing, dragging him down to the rest his body was screaming to have. Knowing his father would be out, drinking as it was a Friday, he didn't at least need to make dinner.
Small mercies. He didn't know how to be grateful for them anymore.
He slept for 25 minutes on the bus, head lolling against the greasy window, got off, and went to the convenience store, looking through the cheapest meal options under fluorescent lights that buzzed like insects. Taking a one that cost around 2 dollars, barely enough to fill his stomach and keep him strong enough to wake up in the morning, he went outside and sat on one of the tables. The plastic was sticky. The air was still.
The neighbor upstairs was kind enough to remind him to eat fast and do something to make things right for his mother, who passed away. The words fell like stones.
He swallowed fast.
Flinched at the loud honking, making him wonder if the driver was sitting on the horn, or if it was broken to be that harsh and long. Black thick smoke of a huge truck coated his nostrils, making him sneeze, and the particulates ran down his throat.
Finally making it to the apartment, he had a cold shower, saved the electricity bill as his father instructed, the water like needles against his fevered skin, cleaned up the leftovers that his father had left in the morning, prepared the ingredients, and finally, he waited till his father came home.
Eyes burned as his neck ached and a feverish blush crept, when he dozed off a couple of times, and around 12 AM, his father stumbled in, dragged him to the bathroom, and locked the door. Settling into the bathtub, covering himself with the worn-out blanket that smelled of soap, he fell into a fitful sleep.
Lyor dreamt about his father coming inside the bathroom, shuffling through something, and going outside, slamming the door, and locking it.
The anxiety scrawled under his skin, making it hard to breathe, and in the dream haze, Lyor shifted uncomfortably and suddenly woke up to find the reason to be his alarm ringing.
Drenched in sweat, clothes clinging uncomfortably, he tried to get out of the bathtub, only to fall out of it, hitting his right knee on the tile. The metal bone rang a shock of pain through his body, making him yell. His chest seized as he knew he was loud to wake his father, but not in the way he instructed.
Breath came in short as he waited for him to storm in. The walls were creeping up on him, the gray tiles pulsing, the air too thin.
A minute. Two. No response.
Something isn't right.
"If you disobey, I will fucking leave you to rot here!" The merciless rumble of his father rang inside his head, and he started racking his brain to think if he had done something wrong last night.
He knocked on the bathroom door and waited.
Silence.
Knocked harder.
Silence.
"Mr. Daniels. The - the door," He managed to make out the words, throat feeling like he swallowed barbed wire.
His legs could not hold him any longer, and he sank down, forehead pressed against the chipped door, and knocked as loud as he could.
And then he knocked and knocked and knocked with no response. After waiting for exactly 10 minutes, he banged his frail fist on the door.
Silence.
The room felt incredibly small. His nose itched, and he realized that he was smelling something. Something that was awfully smelt like gas. Cruel. Heavy. Wrong.
He was sure that his father came home last night, and he locked the bathroom door from the outside as always.
His senses flooded as the panic seized his heartbeat. Trapped inside the dark, gloomy bathroom, suffocating as the oxygen ran low and gas filled in, he crumpled completely to a heap. Still, he didn't scream for help and accepted the darkness as his weak heart stuttered painfully for the last time.
He had learned too well that no one comes when you call for help, and maybe this time, it was for the best.
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It felt as if you were falling down a building in your dreams. He heard rustling as he pried open his eyes to see green leaves, soft sunlight filtering through them, and he was indeed falling, but not off a building.
He was in a tree, and he was falling from it!