Morning ritual.

A distinct sound breaks the silence and fills the room, the contrast between silence and sound so stark that it seems to alter the very room itself, as if it bends space and time, warping the physicality of things.
Fnord My heartbeat increases and my body jerks; no matter how subtle the sound is –I’d picked a soundbite from a videogame from my childhood, gentle and recognisable– is still startles me every time. I turn onto my side, towards the sound. I open my eyes and immediately find the source of the sound, my phone lying next to my pillow, radiating a white-ish light suffused with hints of red and green. I reach out, grab the phone, bring it to my face.
Fnord As every morning, I can’t believe it’s time to get up already. I feel like I fell asleep mere minutes ago, as if time loses all meaning when my consciousness is not around to notice it and ceases to go by one minute per minute when I don’t actively experience every one of those minutes. In a better man these ponderings might lead to a questioning of the fabric of time but it’s just too damn early for that.
Fnord I stare at the phone in my hand with eyes feeling as if they are newborn, the screen –with a text I can’t be bothered to read– flashing on and off to achieve maximum irritation. I blink. The sound is not very loud but still my mind in its entirety is occupied with a burning desire to make it stop.
Fnord Two buttons blink on and off in unison with the screen, one red, one green. The concept is a simple one: the red button stops the alarm dead in its tracks and the green one stops the alarm also and activates the snooze feature, allowing me another hour of much needed sleep. My mind, however, fails to grasp this deceivingly simple concept and I struggle to come to a decision about which button to push to turn on the snooze feature. I feel my mind groaning, as if it is clambouring out of a deep dark pit of apathy and misery like the mighty Kraken being released from its resting place deep under the sea after eons of nothingness.
Fnord The phone, unperturbed, keeps burbling its merry little tune at me.
Fnord My mind is torn. While it cannot determine which button to push to achieve snooze, it is very much aware of the fact that the wrong button would lead to a need to reprogram the snooze feature, right here, right now, a task which seems as insurmountable as eating the moon. I feel like a member of the bomb squad attemtping to disarm an explosive devise in some anonymous war-torn country; your rigorous training as an explosives expert has allowed you to come this far but now it’s down to these last two wires, one red, one green, and you simply do not know. Which do you cut?
Fnord I blink at the phone, my thumb hovering over the two infernal buttons. I hesitate for a second before I come to a decision and push a button. The sound stops immediately and a liberating silence fills the room. The screen stops blinking and radiates two words at me: Alarm Disabled.
Fnord “Motherfuck!” I mutter, searching my mind for any information regarding reactivating the snooze feature and finding only darkness and self-pity.