Morning everyone somehow we have reached the midpoint of the week. It shouldn’t be a surprise but when Monday is a holiday it always feels like it. We had a lot of Monday holidays this year. Or last year, technically speaking. But this was our last holiday for a while, Monday or otherwise. Wednesdays all ways make me feel like I am behind on things too which doesn’t help. There the feeling that half the week is gone and I haven’t finished what I need to. So I work like crazy on Wednesdays and then find myself on Thursday somehow ahead of where I thought I would be. You’d think I would learn, but no, it’s pretty much an every week sort of thing. But enough about me, let’s jump into the morning prompt and see what comes out. Timers set and we are off.
I like the premise of taking time off and then having something major happen in that time slot that changes your perspective. I also like the anonymity of no one at work really knowing her and the realization that she is in a way free to be whoever she wants as no one will actually notice as long as she gets her work done. I just have to figure out what happened in those three weeks. To be honest though, I may be able to tie this into my current fifteen minute novel…
Wednesday, January 17th: Everything looked somehow different.
Everything looked somehow different. She hadn’t been gone all that long. Three weeks to be exact. Yet so much changed in those three weeks that everyday objects now looked foreign to her. She took a seat at her desk and as he computer warmed up she reached a hand for the stapler. She touched its back like it was some sort of ancient artefact, the slightly textured plastic strange beneath her fingertips.
The computer prompted her for her password and she blinked pulling her hand away from the stapler and looking around to see if anyone noticed. No one was even glancing in her direction. Others were stowing bags and settling travel mugs, shedding coats as they got ready for her day. They noticed nothing different, nothing changed.
It was strange.
She felt so strange yet nothing had actually changed.
‘Maybe I’ve changed.’
It was not the first time she had that thought. It occurred to her when she walked through the door of her apartment the day before. Things looked strange there as well. She felt so different inside.
‘Yet apparently I look exactly the same on the outside.’
As she typed in her password she wondered if that was in fact true. She wasn’t friends with her coworkers. This wasn’t a place where people gathered for drinks after work or socialized much in any way. They each had their cubicle and they worked in their own little worlds. Mr. Lawsen their department supervisor walked around periodically to check in on them. Occasionally words were exchanged if he needed something but for the most part he was just watching and making himself available in case they needed something from him.
Occasionally words would be exchanged with coworkers but they were general greetings done in passing. Easily spoken, easily forgotten. At the end of the day, they each shut down their equipment and went home. There was no break room or water cooler to gather around. As their building was a part of a complex of other similarly staffed businesses there was a courtyard on the first floor and a circle of food trucks across the street.
In good weather people ate in the park adjacent to the food trucks. In bad weather they retreated to the courtyard and sat on low stone walls around planter boxes or on the lip of the fountain, or they simply took their food back to their desk. There food was consumed hurriedly in an almost guilty fashion even though they were all given the mandatory half hour for lunch. It was not an atmosphere that prompted companionship.
Ten til Midnight 