Be Careful What You Wish For
Elliot sat and stared. His back was straight and his legs crossed; the sheets of his bed ruffled round him like the accumulated wax at the base of a slowly melting candle. Eyelids drooped slightly from his recent fatigue, but his dark brown eyes, almost a match for the blackness of his irises, were staring intently. Out the window of his bedroom was a wall, separated from his building by the most narrowest of alleys.
Elliot sat and stared at that wall, counting in his mind the bricks visible from the frame of his window. Next to him lay a woman. The sheet being almost entirely aggregated to Elliot, only a small corner covered a slender, naked shoulder. The cold morning didn't seem to affect her at all, for she lay quite peacefully, snoring softly, which to Elliot's ears sounded like the purring of the faintest of felines.
As he reached the limit of bricks in his field of vision and was about to restart his count to confirm his accuracy, he felt the vibration of his phone somewhere in the folds of the sheets. Worming his hand under the sheets, he retrieved the phone and checked the message. It was from Unknown. Again. The same message, sent around the same time every day, with the same six words: 'Be careful what you wish for.'
Solid advice Elliot thought and he appreciated the mysterious person's solicitous message, though he didn't feel the repetition was necessary. Elliot sent a short reply: 'Will do!' but decided on not leaving a smiley face as he had done the previous three nights.
The woman, Evelyn, stirred and kicked Elliot with her right leg suddenly, but remained asleep. Elliot looked down at the leg that had just kicked him before sending to Unknown an animated leg kicking emoji. Then he reached over the side of the bed and wedged his phone between the mattress and the frame.
He placed his disrupted limbs back into their original, Buddha-like position and began his count again. As the count was nearing 30, Evelyn awoke with groggy eyes, which she rubbed once before sitting up. Her eyes were light gray and reminded Elliot of slush on the side of a gravel road. He never told her that though, but if he had, she wouldn't have been offended.
Regardless of Elliot's mental picture of roadside slush and Evelyn's eyes, he happily admitted that they were very beautiful and charming. Her eyes were her best feature and were set proudly at the top of an otherwise plain face. It was a plainness that was elevated by its symmetry. As near as Elliot could tell, she had a perfectly symmetrical face, with an equally symmetrical body.
Evelyn regarded Elliot for a moment before poking him in the ribs and asking him what he was making for breakfast. He turned his head so his profile was visible to her, raised an eyebrow and replied, 'Nothing.' Evelyn poked him again in the same spot, drilling her finger in between two ribs and protested, 'I'm hungry.' A nearly imperceptible smile made a brief appearance before retreating back into his unperturbed countenance. 'OK then, in a minute.'
Evelyn got out of bed, picked up an oversized T-shirt from a pile of clothes resting on a chair, dressed herself in this one piece of clothing and left the bedroom. Exactly a minute later Elliot rolled himself over the edge of the mattress, landed on his feet, stood up straight and followed her into the kitchen
