Flash Fiction


A WALK TO WORK by Bram E. Gieben

Gravity feels stronger - is it morning? - sucking me down into the superheated air trapped beneath the covers. Pink of the back of my eyes, a membrane stretched across reality. The brittle fingers of the morning cold scratch at patches of exposed arm and face, and I use the unkempt, sucking entropy of half-sleep to shrivel further into the moist heat, the smell of my night sweat running in channels down my nose.

The insistent beep of my mobile phone pierces the womb of the bed, breaks the hymen of the morning. Wearily, groggily, I cast off the focussed warmth of sleep and face the cold, rubbing sand from my eyes with bunched fingers, snot tears clinging to my cheeks.

Once through the rituals of hair and teeth and toast, I start the walk to work. My mind is a jumble of words and phrases, incoherent and disjointed. Songs I both love and hate. Fragments of dreams like blurred celluloid, seen through mist. Phrases from poems flit in and out of my internal hearing like snatches of radio from a rolled dial.

My lungs pop and rattle an accompaniment to the bass of my footfalls, a staccato fife played on ropes of phlegm inside my lungs. I try to clear my mind of time. The next eight hours belong to another Self, the Self who works and guards the lonely pass of the Debt Mountain. It is best not to trouble the long-suffering Work Self with thoughts of minutes, seconds, hours- he must endure them as they pass, in perfect blankness, ready to die at 5pm so my True Self can savour the night. My True Self is the keeper of time- the Work Self is my ignorance. Though bliss, too, is outside his mandate.

The other commuters are pasty and as nicotine-scarred as I am. There is a brief respite from my fellow cancer-chasers as a soft swish of lined coats and a click of kitten heels announces a crowd of secretaries -they stutter past on a cloud of cheap perfume. Theirs is a schizophrenic drudgery- the clarion calls of gossip that they hoot across the office are sustenance to them. They feed on it, while complaining about their lot. Like flamingos dipping for shrimp, today they will stand, one leg cocked, by the photocopier, fluttering curled eyelashes and tossing platinum tresses. Their West Coast accents recede behind me; I flick ash into my slipstream, trying to grit up their contact lenses.

As always I am late, always that fractional second behind the desired time, dragging my lead-lined legs along as fast as I can manage, huddled into the folds of my coat. The anxiety is low-level, because the small reprimands and disapproving looks don’t really touch me. The job is limbo time and nothing more, the people ghosts.

My stomach commences eating itself, sour acid bubbles stain my breath and I try to sift through the incomprehensible jumble of language in my head- phonemes tumble over adjectives and shatter, so I try to focus but end up thinking about money. How can you not think about money? This is the reason you are tied to this job, slaving in the mines at the foot of Debt Mountain. To pay back all of the money spent on not going to University, on missing lectures, on smoking weed - the thought of which draws me back down to a stubbed roach in my left pocket.

I light it, cupping it in my hand and blowing smoke right to avoid a lollipop lady and a crowd of schoolkids. The ineffable blankness seeps into my head through my lungs, and gratefully I ignore the fact that I have arrived at work. My thoughts begin to coalesce into something approaching intelligence. My back un-stoops and slowly. I climb the stairs, trying not to think of time, trying to feel the tendrils of the joint. The blank building absorbs me and I become transparent, insubstantial- a ghost like all the others. A bubble of false voices strained by forced politeness, and the monotonous digital chime of the incoming call signal. Work has begun.

Dedicated to everyone still working in Call Centres. Hang up the phone and quit.

ByBram E. Gieben, 2005. All rights reserved.



Flash Fiction