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God damn it, if you knock over the BBQ while stealing my neighbour, at least put it back! Assholes.
Nothing good ever happens when you wake up suddenly and unexpectedly at four AM.
I don’t care what your life is like, if you’re not intending to wake up at that time and you do, some shit is going down. A phone call from jail. That worrying knock at the door. The feeling that something is very, very wrong.
Or, if you’re me, the food you ate several hours before rising from its bodily tomb with a vengeance.
I was thinking about the nature of four AM as I was lying on the bathroom floor very early Sunday, feeling the nausea eventually turn into a migraine.* Partially because I had nothing else to do once I finished re-reading all the comics I keep in the bathroom, partially because I’ve decided to turn all the random crap that happens in my life into ‘research’.**
I came to the conclusion that it’s not just the circumstances. There’s something about four AM that sets off a reaction in our heads. It’s like a short hand for ‘something bad is going to happen’. Like sunrise being used as a symbol of new beginnings. Waking up unexpectedly at four am, in the darkest armpit of the morning, is the symbol of something fucking up. The machine of your life gives a lurch.
It’s probably a great place to start a story.
So, Monday Challenge, which was technically conceived on a bathroom floor at Ass O’Clock Sunday morning***, is this: wake your character up at 4 am. Something has happened to get them out of bed, and it’s nothing good. What is it? The knock at the door? The explosion outside the house? The baby crying? Or the aliens landing in the back patio knocking over the barbecue?
On your mark. Get set….write!
*That’s just how my body rolls.
**Hey, you deal with shit your way, I’ll deal with it mine.
***Probably not the only thing conceived that way.
Bare Knuckle Writer 
When I wake up at 4 am it’s because my alarm went off and I have to get up and get ready for work. Which falls into the “something bad is about to happen” category.
Hope you’re feeling better!
I am, thank you. And good god that’s an early rise for work.
I worked at a horse farm for a while when I was in college. Aside from being shitty for various reasons, including a lecherous 73 year old owner and his 40-some year old girlfriend and her two sisters, which should constitute three of the four wicked witches, my shift was 6am to 12 pm. Loved getting off at noon, and being in early wasn’t too bad in summer, but as it started to get cold in the morning…. Well, fuck that noise. Never again will I have a job that requires me to get up before 7 am. Oh shit… I’m a parent. Too late. 😦
I’m okay with early mornings; natural morning person over here. It’s the surprise than gets me about 4 am.
“Did you ever notice that four in the morning has become some sort of meme or shorthand? It means something like you are awake at the worst possible hour.”
Wow, I completely forgot about this. Must have been in the brain junk drawer.