💌 𝚂𝙾𝙻𝚂𝚃𝙸𝙲𝙴 𝙰𝙿𝚃𝚂. — vi langford & wyatt finley [ closed starter 4 @hxache ]
Some guy with a microphone once crooned: Viva Las Vegas. Decades later, it would become a maddening earworm that Vi couldn't stop humming to herself as she impatiently awaited in the foyer for a sign of life other than her own. In one hand, her keys jingled as she tossed them in the air and caught them repeatedly. Hard up for entertainment, muscles aching for somewhere to go. Maybe it had been 15 minutes, maybe two hours. The point was, she was bored out of her tree. Time was as loose of a construct as any of the other impulses which governed Vi’s lifestyle, only existing occasionally and in theory. A recommendation, not a rule. Her personal schedule was a living breathing organism that flexed around her beck and call, extended by attention and capped by disinterest. It had grown comforting that she typically saw the night sky more than the sun. In a city that never slept, it felt only fitting to avoid sleep and continuously partake in the endless banquet of activities on offer. The connotations of her sunset and sunrise had long ago flipped in reverse. On her way outside, the world would be blanketed by the softness of twilight, bracketed by street lamps and neon signs. Heading home, hours later, the sky would just be starting to pale. Granted, the urge to pull all-nighters was a mostly involuntary displeasure – but she’d grown to bend the truth to fit her own narrative. ‘I suffer from acute insomnia’ was lame. Better excuses came easily: ‘I’m just a night owl’, ‘I get nightmares’, ‘Too much crack cocaine’; ‘If three hours is good enough for Schwarzenegger, it’s good enough for me’. Enduring sporadic sleep patterns suited her just fine compared to what pill popping had once earned her – sleepwalking, featuring an attempted pavement swan dive. Only the fact she hadn’t been able to remember how to use window latches inhibited the task. Feeling spun out on an hour’s sleep in two days was better somehow, more controlled than losing hours out of her mind and body. Days spent exhausted was an indication of a life well lived, anyhow. Today saw Vi experiencing one of the more high energy swings, lending her to deviate from her usual post-graveyard trudge up the stairs and face-first into couch decay. Coasting on a second wind, arriving home sometime after 6am, Vi had been struck by an idea and immediately actioned it: parking herself in the ground floor foyer of the complex, leant against the cluster of strata letterboxes. Absentmindedly bringing the collar of her shirt over her chin, she inhaled the scent of Tide with bleach, tobacco smoke, and a floral fruity gourmand perfume. She didn’t dare risk rushing upstairs to shed the mingling traces of laundromat and lounge. Sooner or later, she expected company. The only factor she’d miscalculated was the precise timing of his arrival.
Vi bounced between being vaguely aware and nearly certain a local courier lived in the building – presumably, based on the limited data she possessed which associated his figure with stacks of parcels (secondary working theory: he was a chronic mail thief, tertiary: anthropomorphic golden retriever). Given that the lifeblood of couriers was mail, Vi was inclined to believe camping the mailboxes of their shared address racked up better odds at naturally crossing paths than leaving it up to chance. He would either have to leave the building to head to work or, if she’d already miscalculated his whereabouts, swing by to deliver something. A win-win. This intersection of slapdash collected trivia had made sense once, fortifying a trap of the universe’s own design. The longer Vi stubbornly lingered, the more she dreaded she’d mistaken what day of the week it was.