Waiting Out the Storm

Setting
Word Count - 1142

Location: Fremont, CA
Time: May 2nd, 2020 - May ??, 2020

This entire story takes place within a one bedroom loft apartment in Fremont, California. There is no step taken outside of the door, it all takes place here. Our main characters live in a 10 floor apartment building, The Lofts, aptly named for it exclusively having loft apartments. It's new, it was only built within the last few years. She's only the 2nd person to live in this specific apartment and she's been there for about a year and a half. There's only a key fob to enter the main building, another key fob is required to get onto the elevator, and the same one to get into her house. The exterior of the apartment building is mostly glass windows, letting anyone peer into the hallways and lobby of the spacious building. Even her apartment has pretty large windows, but not floor to ceiling and she usually keeps the curtains closed.

When walking into the apartment, there is a heavy metal door that you usually have to push with your shoulder to get it open. The apartment building loved security, and that included incredibly heavy doors. To your right there's a close with a white wooden door and silver knob that opens up. It has various jackets, sweatshirts, and winter coats, all hung up. A shoe rack on the bottom, and cleaning supplies for the apartment are stored on top. To the left was the kitchen. Fairly small. It had granite counter tops and a gas stove, a must on her apartment list. There was a small pantry, but when cooking for one there didn't need to be a ton of space. The sink was a double farm sink, deep for all the dishes she didn't have. There is a breakfast bar on the other side of the sink but it has mostly been turned into a storage area for mail that hasn't been opened, a bowl of fruit that would inevitably get thrown out, and various trinkets that she had collected over the years of statues, snow globes, tiny pop figures of memories past.

There was room for a dining room, but instead there was an enclosed litter box where the top was gray and the bottom was white. Next to it, a black wire holder for two ceramic dishes. One cleverly painted food, the matching one with water. There were two marble bins to the left of the litter box. One had food stored in it, aptly labeled with a simple label maker. The other one had cat litter in it. Along the wall where the dining room met the living room was a large black desk, and a rosey pink office chair. There were layers of notebooks in one of the drawers that remained untouched and three separate cups of different writing utensils, though she usually used only two specific pens that she favored. There was a legal pad right next to where her laptop rested with haphazard notes that failed to be deciphered by anyone but herself. 

Walking into the living room there was a wall-mounted TV with a small entertainment center underneath. It had a wide array of movie types, from Disney all the way to some brutal Psychological Horror tucked away haphazardly into wooden paned windows. There was a drawer full of miscellaneous wires, a Nintendo Switch dock on top, and another drawer stuffed with various cat treats and toys for easy access of playing in the living room. There was a blush pink hexagonal coffee table with wire legged supports. It was big enough to become cluttered. Behind the coffee table was a sectional, obviously well-worn and passed down by a family. It was a light gray that had grown raggedy and tarnished, there were no huge holes in it, but it was comfortingly broken in. It was the least new thing in the apartment, one of the only things that really made it feel lived in, like a home.

Behind the living area was a set of steps that matched the washed black floorboards of the apartment and traveled up the stark white walls. The steps themselves had a wire handrail that matched most of the other decor. Up on the second floor was where the floorboards ended and plush light grey carpeting began. It wasn't too long to be hard to maintain, but it was long enough to feel soft on the soles of the tired soul's feet that dragged on it. Her bed was a full size platform bed. The memory foam mattress rested on a frame that kind of just looked like a wooden board that her bed laid in the middle of. The wood was a medium toned brown. Her bed was covered in a dark blue constellation bed spread with the stars connected and labeled for what form in the sky that they were. The pillows were simply dark blue with speckled stars. The sheets themselves were a marble of navy and black. There was a closet on the very back wall that could house clothes, if they were ever put away. 

The bathroom off of the side of the bedroom had cold white tile with a deep-seated tub and a rainfall shower head. The benefits of an updated an apartment, newer shower heads rather than the ones that plagued hotels with low pressure. There was a toilet, and a sink that had the same kind of granite counter tops, but a mix of white and grey rather than browns. There was a towel rack next to the shower with towels of many colors stuffed into it and stacked on top of each other. Another laundry issue. There was one laundry basket in the bathroom, and another in the bedroom. The one in the bathroom was supposed to be for her towels, the other for her clothes. They both were rarely used.

Throughout the house there were various decorations. Fake succulents and plants placed strategically along the walls and on shelves to add some sort of sense of life within the home. Blankets were on every resting surface, whether that be the bed or the couch. Any dishes were a mish-mash collection of whatever she could get her hands on through adulthood and her mug collection was extensive, requiring a full two sections of the kitchen cabinets. Though, most of them were never used. There were a few landscape paintings on the wall that were generic enough to find at a Walmart in the home goods section, which is exactly where she found them. Trying to decorate on a budget. There was a rose gold clock above her desk that needed the batteries replaced about five months into when she moved in.

This is where she lived for a year and a half, and it still didn't feel like home.

Images for the Apartment

Reducio