Joel Adrian - A Shattered Future

The fact that they were succeeding, both up for promotion, made her hate them more.

Whitney started to pull Anne from the road once she noticed Emersyn pulling up, but Anne stopped her and flashed Emersyn a phony smile. She walked up to the side of her car.

Sighing, Emersyn stopped the car. She rolled the window down and looked at the pair of them, the scent of Anne’s strawberry perfume permeating from her skin.

“Emersyn!” Anne said with false enthusiasm. She rested a hand on the open window slot of the car. “How’s it going?”

“Not bad,” Emersyn replied. She kept her eyes on Anne’s hand. She couldn’t look her in the eyes, it was too intimidating. She wished the conversation over and done with as quickly as possible. “You?”

“Listen,” Anne said, her squeaky, over-excited voice grinding at Emersyn’s patience. “Whitney and I just realized we made arrangements to spend the day together on Sunday, but Gary has me scheduled to come in from 3 ‘till close. I’d do it, but Whitney’s babysitter isn’t free the rest of the week. Is there any way, any possible way, you could cover me?” Anne enlarged her eyes and pleaded with a begging smile.

Emersyn gripped the steering wheel tighter, and let her head fall back onto the headrest. There goes my entire weekend . “Sure thing.”

Anne squeaked in happiness and smiled. “You’re a life-saver, Emersyn! Thank you so much, you have no idea how much this means to us! We truly appreciate it!” She turned and exchanged a smile with Whitney.

The two left, carrying on to their cars.

Emersyn didn’t buy a second of Anne’s generosity. The two had thrown Emersyn under the bus at any opportunity to advance themselves. When she’d been up for a raise, she heard Whitney compare her to a new hire to their boss, Gary. The next day Whitney’s raise wasn’t anywhere near the expected $0.40, but a measly $0.07.

Emersyn pressed her foot to the pedal, now twice as pissed off at herself as she was 10 minutes ago when she walked out the door.

The drive home was long and lonely. Emersyn brought the radio to life for some company but couldn’t find anything she liked. The car was much too old to have an aux input, and the only things she could find over the air were preachers warning about judgment day, a country station playing songs from four decades ago, and a modern pop station belting out autotuned trash.

She settled on the pop station but turned the volume barely above audible. The traffic was backed up, as it always was on the streets at rush hour. She’d normally admire the dense urban setting and take in the people of the city from the safety of her car, but tonight was different. She was too upset with herself to think straight.

Fridays were the day everybody loved. Work was usually easy-going at Atriarch. Call volume wasn’t quite as high as it normally was, everyone was in a good mood, and if Gary felt generous, he let folks leave an hour or two early.

But while Emersyn had gone in ready for the weekend, a mere 9 hours later, she now had a full day of work tomorrow, and a half-day on Sunday. Then another 40-hour week after that.

She rested her head on her hand, staring at the back of the delivery truck in front of her. Things weren’t going her way lately. Stuck in the same role for 6 years, and she was still the office workhorse. You’ve got to learn to tell them no , she told herself. But it was so much easier said than done.

Emersyn hadn’t accomplished near as much as she’d liked to have done in her 29 years. Her career wasn’t successful, she had a one-bedroom apartment in a bad neighborhood, and a relationship that couldn’t be duller if it tried. She loved Ollie, but he never seemed to reciprocate the feeling beyond saying the words and going through the motions.

By the time she reached Blackwood Ave, she’d transitioned from kicking herself for her mistake to trying (and failing) to put the situation out of her head. It was a struggle, because the more she told herself to stop thinking about it and enjoy her evening, the more the anger came out at herself.

She looped around the block twice, searching for a parking spot on the street. She could feel her cheeks flushing red the more she looked. “Damn it!” she yelled, moving on to the next street a block away. She could feel every little aggravation chipping away and getting under her skin.

There was a lone spot at the end of the next street. She parked, locked her car, and started the trek back to her house. The streets in the neighborhood were all filled with houses converted into apartments, squished together and leaving very little room between them. They all sported different fading colors, many with poor repairs done to them and broken windows.

Hers was slightly better than the rest, but she still hated it. She made her way up the steps to the porch, then through the double set of doors, punching in the same 3-1-4-5 code she punched in every day to open the lock. The four floors of stairs took her to the front of her unit: apartment 406.

Once inside, she tossed her bag aside and collapsed on her stained brown couch. She groaned, needing to will herself up to make something to eat and force herself to enjoy the evening. She needed to enjoy every second of tonight because her weekend had mysteriously disappeared in a vanish of cowardice and fear.

There you go again , she told herself. She pressed her palms to her head and groaned. Stop with those thoughts !

Her stomach growled. She’d hardly eaten a lunch. But the thought of getting up, finding something to eat, preparing it… it was far too much work.

She grabbed the remote from the floor and turned her small, flat-screen television on. She flipped through the stations idly, looking for anything that would grab her attention. She skipped past local news, a horror film, a sitcom, and finally landed on one of the national news networks.

She despised this garbage, but there was nothing else on.

The female anchor was reporting that the Russian government was undergoing a radical change, as their new Prime Minister promised them a revolution in how the country was run and how it negotiated with the other nations of the world.

The anchor asked her guest what this meant for the USA, and the guest speculated that there wouldn’t be any immediate danger or threat, but in the long-term, nothing good was going to come from the Prime Minister’s promise of change.

Sick of the news already, Emersyn stood with a groan and turned towards her kitchen area. It was just a stove and mini-fridge in the corner of the living room. She walked towards the fridge, stepping over the piles of clothes and trash she’d let accumulate. She knew she should clean it, but decided that since she’d already stood to cook, that cleaning could wait.

She ate her mediocre dinner of instant noodles and had a cinnamon bun for dessert. The sticky, sweet taste of the cinnamon bun was incredible, and for a moment it made her feel satisfied. She was able to push the worry from her mind.

Then it came back.

The whirlwind of anger at herself stormed her mind. Yes, Gary, I’ll work a half day tomorrow, so you don’t have to ask someone else. Yes, Anne, I’ll cover your shift because you want to spend the day shopping. Yes, yes, yes. She groaned.

Her cell phone buzzed in her pocket, and she pulled it out, welcoming the distraction. “Ollie” popped up on the screen. She bit her lip, debating as to whether she was going to answer or not.

She slid the answer button over and held the phone to her ear. “Hey.”

She heard him breathing heavily into the phone for several seconds. “Sweetie. Mind if we go on a date tonight?”

She glanced at the empty cinnamon bun wrapper in her hand. “Sorry, I just ate. Do you have anything else you’d want to do?” she asked, hoping for some spontaneous activity to jolt his mind and they could break up the monotony of a date night every Friday.