Happy Veteran’s Day everyone! I am going to be quick as I am leaving the house shortly after these prompts are posted. So Timers ready and off we go…
I like this. No clue where it is going but I think once I find out the chores he needs doing I will know.
Monday, November 11th: Birds twittered in the trees.
Birds twittered in the trees. He moaned. It was far too early for this. He glanced to the window. The sun had not yet risen, or at least it hadn’t on his side of the house. Part of that he was willing fo concede was due to his room being in the far corner of the house and all of his windows facing west. While he often had the light until later in the evening than the rest of the house, morning light took longer to reach him. His windows also faced the back of the property where the trees grew densely.
Even so he decided it was too early for birds and rolled over pulling his pillow over his head to block the sound.
It didn’t help. While he couldn’t hear the birds, he could hear his own heartbeat now. It thumped in a rhythm that seemed more awake than asleep now. He tried closing his eyes. How long had it been since he had a day off? A day he could sleep late? He couldn’t remember.
‘But no birds are going to take this from me,’ he thought.
He took deep slow breaths and tried to slow his heartrate, to make it think it was going back to sleep again.
Thoughts began to intrude. There was a long list of chores that he had been putting off. Things he knew he had to get to once he finally got a day off. He knew if he didn’t get to them then he would spend his entire day off completing them. His only option was to get up, knock them off the list one by one and hope that at the end he still had some free time to call his own.
‘I don’t know when I will get another day off.’
The thought annoyed him and he rolled over and let his pillow fall back to the bed. The birds seemed louder and he sighed heavily, dramatically even if no one was there to witness it. The extra hours were killing him. They had been short staffed for months now. Each time he was asked to work on one of his scheduled days off he was given an increased pay to make up for the over time even though overtime wasn’t generally a standard practice.
‘And each time David promises me that he will hire replacements.’
He knew why David was dragging his feet. The last few replacements they hired hadn’t worked out. They had been in fact unmitigated disasters. David was now gunshy where the employment office was concerned. He suspected David wanted him to work today, but John managed to spend the previous day making sure he was no where David was. He had always just stepped off to another task or was returning after he left. There were a couple of near misses, but David never caught him and John got his first day off in he didn’t know how long. Ron was working today and had been vocally peevish.
John slipped out of the bed leaving thoughts of a lie in behind as ha padded to the bathroom. Ron was always the first to tell him to be a team player when David asked him to work an extra day. His favorite phrase was ‘suck it up, man.’
John knew that returning the sentiment would not go well and destroy the tenuous working relationship they had between them. They weren’t friends but they tolerated each other. If John pointed out Ron’s hypocrisy, that would come to an end.
He used the bathroom washed his hands and tried to decide if he wanted to put the coffee on or take a shower first. ‘Coffee,’ he decided.
Several of his errands were going to be a bit messy. There was no point in wasting the water for a full shower now when a wet comb through his hair would sort it until he was done getting filthy.
Ten til Midnight 