Wanoah

dadadadada DaDaDaDaDa DADADADADA

I wake up with a jerk and grope for the ‘OK’ but­ton on my phone to silence the alarm. Six thirty.

dadadadada DaDaDaDaDa DADADADADA

I wake up with a jerk and grope for the ‘OK’ but­ton on my phone to silence the alarm. Six thirty. I groan at the earli­ness. It’s inhu­man to be awake at this hour.

dadadadada DaDaDaDaDa DADADADADA

I wake up with a jerk and grope for the ‘OK’ but­ton on my phone to silence the alarm. Six thirty. I groan at the earli­ness. It’s inhu­man to be awake at this hour. Wait…this feels weird. Did I? W-what? Some­times you can get ‘snooze’ and ‘OK’ muddled up. Long battles have been waged with the snooze but­ton in the past. Did I just do that? What time is it? 0631. Hmm. No -

dadadadada DaDaDaDaDa DADADADADA

I wake up with a jerk and grope for the ‘OK’ but­ton on my phone to silence the alarm. Six thirty. I groan at the earli­ness. It’s inhu­man to be awake at this hour. This feels weird. Did I just get ‘snooze’ and ‘OK’ muddled up? Long battles have been waged with the snooze but­ton in the past. What time is it? 0631. Something’s off here.

Hasn’t this has happened before? Except…You don’t nor­mally wake up with déjà vu, though, do you? Is déjà vu even the cor­rect word here? I mean, of course this has happened before. It hap­pens every week­day, right? This is the glam­our of every­day life. The non-stop fun­ride to fun­town that is hold­ing down a job. Every damn day I drag myself out of bed and try to func­tion like someone who gives a shit. Who knows? Maybe some people are fooled by that.

I man­age the simple manual task of com­bin­ing bowl, spoon, corn­flakes and milk. They are cheap gen­eric corn­flakes that taste mostly of card­board to a jaded pal­ate dulled by too much mass-produced crud loaded with sugar and salt.

dadadadada DaDaDaDaDa DADADADADA

I wake up with a jerk and grope for the ‘OK’ but­ton on my phone to silence the alarm. Six thirty.

“Shit,” I say to the dark­ness. Some­thing odd is hap­pen­ing here. Def­in­itely. I remem­ber wak­ing up just before. I remem­ber wak­ing up sev­eral times before. I remember…

“Oh this is ridicu­lous! Get a grip!” I grumble as I clam­ber out of bed, feel­ing a naus­eous sense of dis­so­ci­ation; but I force myself through the motions and I eat some bland corn­flakes and have a shower. At least this time, I’m prop­erly awake.

dadadadada DaDaDaDaDa DADADADADA

I wake up with a jerk and grope for the ‘OK’ but­ton on my phone to silence the alarm. Six thirty. I groan at the earli­ness. It’s inhu­man to be awake at this hour. Then it hits me what has just happened. “Shit,” I say, sum­mar­ising my thoughts on the sub­ject neatly and suc­cinctly, and not for the first time today. Probably.

I feel prop­erly unwell now, and just a little bit scared. I seem to be stuck in my own private Ground­hog Day without any of the com­edy value of Bill Mur­ray. Still, I have to assume that I am really, genu­inely, 100% the real deal, guar­an­teed awake or your money back. This time it’s not a sur­real dream about wak­ing up that I’m hav­ing. I mean, assum­ing that you’re wan­der­ing around in a dream would be crazy, right? This is it. I am awake. I have to be.

I eat my card­board flakes and start to feel a bit more relaxed as I take a shower. I start con­struct­ing the story that I’ll tell people at work. “I had this weird dream last night, or this morn­ing,” I’d begin. Not that any­one would give a shit about any­thing I was say­ing. Maybe I’d just save this one for myself for now.

I get dressed and head out to work. Even once I’m settled in at my desk with a plastic cup of ter­rible cof­fee, I still have a strange leftover feel­ing: almost like I’m hun­gover. No, that’s not quite it. I feel like I used to feel after a full week­end of ded­ic­ated debauch­ery: one where hal­lu­cino­gen­ics were consumed.

Dave rolls up the office with his smug grin and his chirpy “Morn­ing!” God, I loathe this guy.

dadadadada DaDaDaDaDa DADADADADA

“Oh, you have got to be kid­ding,” I groan as I grope for the ‘OK’ but­ton on my phone to silence the alarm, “Not this shit again.”

I sit up in bed hug­ging my knees and shak­ing. Just what is going on here? Am I just hav­ing a weird dream that I seem to be oddly aware of? Or am I hav­ing repeated black­outs? The lat­ter thought is a hor­rible one and I wish that I hadn’t just had it. You can’t stuff the thoughts back in the box once you’ve let them out though, can you? What if I am pro­gress­ing nor­mally through my life, but just for­get­ting most of it? What if all I’m actu­ally remem­ber­ing is wak­ing up each day? What if this is my life now? One with a per­man­ently fried short-term memory? That is an incred­ibly depress­ing thought.

No, that can’t be true. That sort of memory prob­lem would make it impossible for me to func­tion, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it? Maybe it already has and I just don’t remem­ber. Maybe I’ve already lost my job and the home help will be here shortly. Maybe — “Oh for fuck’s sake,” I say out loud, “Maybe I’ve just woken up from an unusual but incred­ibly dreary dream, and I should just get the fuck on with my day before I’m late for work.”

I get on with it. What else can you do? I pro­ceed through the mech­an­ics of a work­ing day feel­ing detached from the pro­cess. It’s almost like I’m play­ing The Sims hav­ing unlocked some secret first per­son mode. I can almost visu­al­ise click­ing on the fridge and select­ing ‘Eat Cer­eal’ from some friendly-looking pie menu. I shower, dress and go to work. The sense of unreal­ity doesn’t diminish.

“Morn­ing,” says Dave with his fake cheer­ful­ness. I fan­tas­ise about stabbing him in the eye with a Biro. I have rarely come across someone that annoys me as con­sist­ently as this guy does. Just look­ing at his stu­pid face sets my teeth on edge.

When that glor­i­ous day arrives when I have handed in my notice, and I’m sit­ting in the exit inter­view with my boss, my answer to the ‘Why are you leav­ing us?’ ques­tion will be short and sweet: Dave.

I’m sure that Dave has some redeem­ing fea­tures because every­one has at least one qual­ity that elev­ates them at least a single notch above the com­plete waste of cells cat­egory. I cling to that belief, even though in the per­son of Dave Kit­chener, the evid­ence seems to be against me. He is an out­lier on the graph. I have yet to find the redeem­ing fea­ture. Maybe he is kind to anim­als or some­thing, who knows? The rest of his life is ded­ic­ated to being a smug, irrit­at­ing twat and that does seem to nul­lify everything else. I guess you could admire the degree of com­mit­ment he shows: the atten­tion to detail impli­cit in com­pletely nail­ing the role of office prick.

Dave bobs around in front of me, shift­ing from foot to foot like he needs to pee, clearly burst­ing to tell me some excit­ing piece of news. I’m relieved when the phone rings. dadadadada DaDaDaDaDa DADADADADA

I wake up with a jerk and grope for the ‘OK’ but­ton on my phone to silence the alarm.

“No.”

“This can­not be happening.”

I feel detached. Just like before.

“If you’re going to be doomed to be stuck in a dream forever more, couldn’t it at least be a decent fuck­ing dream? Some­thing that involves a naked Nat­alie Port­man per­haps? Rather than dream­ing about get­ting up at stu­pid o’clock and going to work?” I real­ise that I’m talk­ing to myself, out loud, and resolve to stop that. I might be going crazy, but there’s no point in act­ively liv­ing the ste­reo­type, right?

While I absently slurp my way through my corn­flakes, it occurs to me that if I’m stuck in this crappy dream, then I may as well play along with it and well, try to enjoy it a bit. There’s per­haps even some use­ful psy­cho­logy here: if I actu­ally start hav­ing a nice dream, Sod’s Law dic­tates that I will really wake up, right? Nature dic­tates that the nice dreams stumble to a pre­ma­ture con­clu­sion – just as Nat­alie unhooks her bra – yet the night­mares are inter­min­ably long. If I take charge, if I actu­ally enjoy this, then it is guar­an­teed to be all over. For real.

I skip the shower, and chuck on jeans and a T-shirt rather than the usual shirt and tie. I con­sider skip­ping work alto­gether but some­thing stops me. I want to see how things pan out at work. See how people react. Have fun with it.

“Morn­ing,” says Dave with his fake cheer­ful­ness. I ignore him com­pletely while he hops from leg to leg and I stare at my desk phone wait­ing for it ring. It rings a second later, right on schedule.

“Bet­ter take this,” I say, glan­cing up at Dave, who is stand­ing there look­ing at me, com­pletely unphased by my unfor­giv­able rude­ness. One of his many annoy­ing char­ac­ter­ist­ics is his incred­ibly thick skin. He never notices if you blank him or ignore him or subtly insult him in some way, he just burbles on as if noth­ing has happened. Me? I would be mor­ti­fied if someone just com­pletely failed to even acknow­ledge me like I just did.

Sadly, the call is a short one, and Dave is still hov­er­ing. “So, why the clothes?” he asks.

“Couldn’t be arsed with the tie and stuff,” I say, shrugging.

“Right. Well, I got my new phone yes­ter­day,” Dave says, bran­dish­ing an iPhone. This is another irrit­at­ing fea­ture. Con­ver­sa­tion with Dave largely con­sists of him wait­ing for you to fin­ish speak­ing so he can start talk­ing again. Then, once he has fin­ished say­ing whatever it is he wanted to say, the con­ver­sa­tion is over as far as he is con­cerned and he will simply walk away. He never actu­ally listens to any­thing you say to him.

He waffles on and on about his poxy iPhone. There was a time when I thought I’d quite like an iPhone, but with each passing second that Dave drones on about the thing I feel any desire for one drain­ing away. I try and fil­ter his voice out, but he man­ages to make noise at a fre­quency that is some­how impossible to ignore. I can feel the anger rising in my chest; it’s sur­ging through my veins. More than any­thing else, it seems so damn unfair that I have to put up with this crap while I’m asleep as well as in real life. It’s just too much.

I am prac­tic­ally vibrat­ing with the ten­sion now. I don’t think I have ever felt quite as dis­pro­por­tion­ately angry as this.

“…And there’s this other really cool app I w-”

“Fuck it,” I say quietly, stand­ing up, louder now: “Fuck it. And fuck this. And fuck you, Dave. You. Tedi­ous. Cunt.”

“What?” Dave looks at me gorm­lessly, his mouth open.

I grab my Biro and look at Dave spec­u­lat­ively. Well, why not? Why not? What does it matter?

“I said fuck you, Dave. As you’d know if you ever fuck­ing listened to any­thing other than your own voice.”

He just gapes at me, wide-eyed. I circle round the desk and go for him. He is too sur­prised to offer any res­ist­ance or any kind of defence what­so­ever. I slam the pen into his eye and feel soft­ness fol­lowed by res­ist­ance; then, finally, a sharp crack. I jam that sucker in as far as it will go, and when I lose my grip on it, I slam at it with the palm of my hand and push until it goes in deeper. Much deeper. Dave brings his hands up to his face briefly, but they fall away limply as his knees give out and he crumples to the floor face down. I hear a couple of wet, ragged gasps, then silence.

I can feel people look­ing at me as I sit back down and put my feet up on the desk. I can feel the stares; I can feel the hor­ror, the shock.

I smile to myself and wait for my alarm to go off.