A Page Each Day

Normal Service Will Resume Shortly..

2009-06-17T23:54:00.002+01:00

Hi to anyone who's reading this..

As you may have noticed, there's been no updates on here in a little while.

In a "sods law" kind of way, I launched this literally 3 days before my work life got amazingly busy meaning I've had little free time to work on this.

The site is by no means dead though and I plan on continuing the thrilling story of "5am" shortly as things are now calming down again.

Thanks to anyone who's visited and read the first few installments, I hope you'll come back to read the next ones in the near future.

I've already got some ideas for future stories too which will likely be a complete change of genre and style.. hopefully in a good way.

Cheers!

Steve

Story 1 - "5am" - Page 3

2009-04-14T23:22:00.005+01:00

The drive to work was as uneventful as ever. A few minor holdups from queueing traffic but nothing out of the ordinary. Ashley pulled into his works car park just as his watch ticked over to 7.55am.

He got out of his car and walked into his office using his secure key fob to open the front door. As he walked in, his colleague Keith ran up to the door behind him. "Morning" he chirped, in a voice far to cheery for the time of day. "Morning", Ashley grunted back as he began the walk to the 1st floor where their desks resided.

Ashley walked over to his seat and sat down whilst Keith veered off on a detour into the kitchen to make the first of many cups of coffee they'd drink over the course of the day. As with everything else in Ashley's life lately, this situation was all to familiar in it's almost ritualistic daily recurrence.

As he waited for his laptop to slowly buzz and flicker to life, Ashley shuffled the mountain of papers on his desk into a neat pile, as if doing so would make their sheer volume less intimidating and give a small semblance of order to his chaotic workload.

As Keith walked back to his desk alongside Ashleys, the laptop was still going through it's usual slow start up routine before it would deign Ashley worthy of logging on and using it. Keith sat down and placed a cup of hot black coffee next to Ashley before starting his usual morning banter, "Good night last night mate?" he asked quizzically. The same question he asked every morning leading into the usual conversations of which TV shows or movies he'd sat through the night before. Ashley hated the stereotypical view people had of IT workers and always did his best to distance himself from it when away from work but as he sat having these conversations each morning, he couldn't help but feel that he and Keith both fit the description perfectly.

Story 1 - "5am" - Page 2

2009-04-13T15:13:00.005+01:00

As he lay there, thoughts spinning round in his head Ashley realised how tedious his life had become. Every morning he got up, showered and got dressed before driving to work. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had a day off and couldn't wait for the next one - but he knew he'd have to.

He worked in IT, developing systems for his company and its various clients. Things hadn't been going great for a while thanks to the near lifeless economy and whilst his team had been spared any redundancies, a number of people had chosen to leave and they weren't then replaced.

This had lead to the remaining people having to take on more work. More work, more hours, no extra money - one of the perks of his recent promotion. Ashley's girlfriend had long tired of the situation and left him leaving him alone with his seemingly never ending work.

He constantly scoured job sites looking for a way out but nothing ever seemed suitable - the money was always too little or his skill set just didn't quite cut it. He felt trapped and with each and every day his desire to get up and follow his same daily routine got a little less.

After an hour or so of lying, eyes closed tight, clenching the duvet for every bit of warmth it could provide, Ashley's alarm clock finally started to beep to signal it was time for him to begin another day. He contemplated hitting the "snooze" button and staying put for another few precious minutes but decided against it - "Why delay the inevitable" he thought to himself as he climbed out of his bed, stretching in an attempt to will his limbs to life.

He slowly walked to the bathroom, yawning as he went. Once there he followed his morning routine - shave, shower.. the usual before heading back to his room and picking out his standard work attire. Shirt, trousers, socks and underwear. He pulled them on and walked downstairs.

Up until recently, this would be the point where he'd make himself some cereal and toast but since the early morning wakeups he'd found he'd also lost his appetite. Trying to eat anything now always would lead to him feeling sick - sometimes he actually would be, other times he'd just feel it but either way, he decided it was just best avoided.

He grabbed his wallet and keys, locked the door and walked out to his car. He climbed into the familiar seat of his silver Fiat Punto, started the engine and began the least favourite of his two daily drives knowing that he'd be sat at his desk in precisely 25 minutes time making chit chat with his colleagues and praying for a quiet day so he could continue to wade through his current mountain of work - actually in work time - with the vague hope of being able to have some personal time at the end of the day.

Story 1: "5am" - Page 1

2009-04-12T11:27:00.002+01:00

Ashley's eyes opened and he was wide awake almost instantly, peering through the darkness at his small LED alarm clock he already knew the time that would be emanating out from its warm red glowing numbers. 5am precisely.

This had become a familiar occurrence having happened the day before, the day before that - in fact, every day now for several months. Except on weekends of course, on Saturdays and Sundays he could happily lie asleep all morning if he felt like it, they were the only days setting his alarm had a purpose, the days he wouldn’t be awake for almost two hours before having to get up.

He was never sure why he woke up so early, or how his body seemed to know exactly when 5am came round but it happened daily and he could never get back to sleep but still, he never let that stop him trying and like every other morning, he wrapped himself up in his duvet hoping today would be the day he’d actually doze back off and awake at 6.45 to the sound of his alarms shrill chirping.

As he expected though, today wasn’t that day. Instead he lay there, eyes closed trying to get comfortable as a stream of random thoughts ran through his head. It could be anything from things he had to do at work that day or random musings about ex-girlfriends up till now long forgotten. Today it was work, a small sense of dread filled his tired mind at the thought of another day working on the same depressing project. Hours of hard work which would inevitably be met with criticism and disappointment.

Sometimes he thought he should just get up and use this extra morning time to do something constructive - maybe an early morning jog or even just see what passes for TV at 5am but inevitably, it’s easier to stay warm and cosy in the duvet with random thoughts for company before the days impending monotony.

Sometimes Ashley wondered if he was suffering from depression but he didn’t believe in being depressed. Surely it’s just a state of mind, a way for unhappy people to avoid dealing with their day to day problems and he wasn’t going to let something like that happen to him so he carried on, putting a smile to everything knowing one day, he’d sleep through a full night again and suddenly everything would be back to normal.