[ WP ] In a box , there is a button that resets your day . However , every time you push this , you bring a random someone with you .

I was holding my lecture notes six inches from my face, trying to decipher my own handwriting, when the door of the living room crashed open. My flatmate was standing there wearing only a dressing gown and boxers, and every inch of skin that I could see was beaded with sweat. `` Simon, I -'' he said in a distressed tone before his words were stopped by a violent shiver that went the full length of his skinny body. 
 `` You're ill.'' I said, returning my attention to my work. It would have been an easy guess even if I had n't had - how shall I put it? - supernatural knowledge of the matter. It was the next thing he said that surprised me. 
 `` Why is it Tuesday?'' He was holding out his phone, screen towards me, as if to prove this fact. 
 I lost my breath for a second, felt all the muscles in my body tense up. Nonetheless I replied calmly, `` It's the day that comes after Monday, Brad.'' 
 He seemed agitated. `` No. It's been Tuesday. I remember it. I - I was ill, but I was getting better...'' 
 My heart was racing. `` You were dreaming.'' I said. 
 `` I do n't think I - it felt so real...'' he said helplessly. 
 `` Well, dreams can be like that sometimes. Come on. How could it be Tuesday twice?'' 
 Brad nodded dazedly, seemed to accept this. He disappeared from the doorway. I heard the bathroom door open and close and put my headphones back in. I took a couple of deep breaths. 
 `` Holy fuck.'' I swore. 
 *** 
 I was only supposed to use the button in emergencies. That's what Dad had said as he solemnly pushed the wooden box across the kitchen table towards me at eleven o' clock the night before I left. It was what he'd repeated as we struggled to fit my eighteen years' worth of accumulated possessions Tetris-like into the boot of our small car. It was what he'd texted me half an hour after driving away from the university and leaving me stranded in an unfamiliar bedroom surrounded by unopened suitcases. When you've known me for a while, you get into the habit of repeating things. 
 This was an emergency, right? If you looked at it in a certain way, it was a life-and-death situation. Dad was going to kill me if I failed. And I'd definitely failed. The exam might as well have been written in a foreign language. After twenty minutes of flipping through the incomprehensible pages of the test paper with a sick feeling in my stomach, I'd spent the remaining two hours perfecting an elaborate drawing in the margins. I just had n't studied. I do n't know why. I never know why I do the stupid crap I do. 
 I looked at the box in my hands, scuffed and unremarkable, with a faded inlay of lighter wood showing some sort of foliage. On its longest side it was no bigger than the length of my hand. It looked like a music box, but without the handle to wind it up. All I needed was a pass, forty percent. I could get that with a day's work, right? 
 There was the sound of the toilet flushing, running water, and the bathroom door being unlocked. I shifted guiltily, feeling suddenly exposed, and cursing myself for not considering my dilemma in the privacy of my own room. Brad came into the living room swaying slightly, his face the colour of a prawn cracker. 
 `` I have had the worst fucking day.'' he said, collapsing on the battered wicker chair across the room from me. 
 `` Me too.'' I replied, thinking: but unlike you, I get another shot at it. `` Pretty sure I failed my exam.'' 
 `` You're not going to fail. You're like, really smart.'' Brad is convinced of this due to the fact that I know a lot of trivia. But I do n't know jack shit about anything I'm supposed to be studying. Just tell me I'm going to have to write an essay on a subject and it immediately kills any interest I might have had in it. Brad, in contrast, is one of the least curious people and most ignorant people I know - about most things - but he's a savant at computer programming, which he's studying, so he's doing alright. 
 `` What's that?'' he said, pointing at the box I was still holding in my lap. 
 `` Old music box. Does n't work though.'' 
 `` Why you got it then?'' 
 I shrugged. `` Sentimental reasons.'' 
 `` Can I see it?'' He leaned forward, holding out his hands. 
 `` No.'' 
 There was a short silence, then my flatmate returned to his favourite subject. `` I had the worst fucking day.'' 
 `` Really?'' 
 `` Felt like I was going to die.'' 
 I had been living with Brad for almost a year now. He was my flatmate because no-one else wanted him. He was n't a bad guy, just... disgusting. Some kind of chronic digestive illness, I believe, though I try to tune out when he talks about it. He loves talking about it. He's allergic to milk and gluten and probably half a dozen other things, but he eats them anyway, and drinks six pints in a night even though he has no alcohol tolerance. So you can imagine why people were n't keen to live with him in a crappy thin-walled student flat and cook dinner or write their essays to the symphonic soundtrack of moans, groans, retches and unidentifiable wet noises coming from the bathroom at all hours of the day and night. Not to mention the smell. `` I'm not contagious!'' was his plaintive cry as people not-so-subtly tried to avoid him. As if that was the point. I had ended up with Brad because I was desperate. By the time I'd started looking for flats a month or so before the start of term, everyone else I knew from halls had already found a place and did n't have room for an extra tenant. 
 `` Really?'' I said again. 
 `` I was literally crying out for God to take me.'' Brad continued. 
 `` Tough luck, he does n't exist.'' 
 `` Fuck you, atheist. You're going to hell.'' 
 `` Sounds like you were already in hell.'' I said. This is what passes for banter between us. Brad nodded sagely, fingers templed. `` I think the worst of it has passed. Hey, do you wan na watch Breaking Bad?'' 
 `` Maybe later.'' 
 It's a good thing Brad does n't have the ability to repeat his day, I remember thinking before I flipped open the lid of the box and pressed the button.
