This Is Yr Life

Chapter Thirteen

He did not know what rose him so early that morning, but he felt energised. When he woke up, he had almost leapt from his bed, walked out of his room and towards the kitchen where he had made breakfast and drank a pint of water. As he was microwaving his breakfast, a burrito that he had picked up on the way back from seeing Chloe the day before, Finn and Lewis had also woken up and moved in and out from their rooms at separate intervals. Eventually, they stood either side of him as he placed his burrito on the plate and asked where he got it.

‘Some shop down the road.’

‘Smells good.’

‘I got you guys one, too. You know, to make up for the other night.’

‘s**t Kyle, thanks.’

After he had taken a shower, he got dressed, combed his hair, gelled it, too, in some way he eventually realised was a futile attempt to tame it. He left for work with Finn and Lewis sitting on the sofa, arguing about what to watch while they ate and whether or not they should just not bother going into work that day.

At work, again, Kyle couldn’t concentrate. Only this time, it was not purely because his mind was swimming with images of Chloe, although she permeated his every thought.

But this wasn’t his entire reason for a considerable lack of focus. He had walked into work on the Monday morning a good half an hour before he was supposed to start with the office looking emptier. He had never been in so early, aside for his first day, and so this scene was not all that unusual to him. People could very easily just not get in until five minutes to nine, much like he did. Kyle, along with others, often had to wait for two or three lifts before they were able to get into the office due to the sheer amount of people who were racing to get into the workplace on time.

Kyle hated these times. He would stand next to people whose faces were familiar but names were a mystery. They stood waiting for the next empty lift to arrive and would exchange half-hearted small talk. Often, he would speak to the same person every morning. Someone who sat on the other side of the office, but Kyle was unsure where. All he knew was that when Kyle sat down at his desk, this person; one who in his head, Kyle had nicknamed Clyde, continued walking across the office and disappeared behind cubicles.

This person who Kyle had nicknamed Clyde looked like a teacher who had taught Kyle and his friends at school. His hair was greased back like some imitation of past fashions. He had a beard that looked half-shaved every morning, always with some stray hairs sticking from his chin or cheek. He always wore a t-shirt with some nonsensical slogan printed across it. Kyle assumed it was something from a TV programme that he did not watch.

And every morning when they stood next to each other, Clyde would talk and talk about his weekend, his plans for the next, and what he had for dinner the night before. He would talk about his girlfriend who had blonde hair one week and then brown the next. The arrival of the lift made Kyle think that he would be relieved of this conversation, but as they shuffled in Clyde stood right next to him and continued to talk. As they left the lift every morning, Clyde would then say ‘See ya, pal,’ and walk off. But they never interacted at any other time during the day.

Kyle had taken a seat at his desk and loaded up his computer, signing in with a fingerprint and gotten to work. There had been no repercussions about him disappearing the week before. He was unsure if anyone had noticed.

As the morning went on, he noticed that there were fewer people than normal. The person who usually sat on the other side of his cubicle; a woman with pink hair and piercings and tattoos who listened to pop punk from before the new millennium so loudly that the whole surrounding area was treated to it, also was missing.

Across the office, beside the kitchen, four out of what was typically five people of varying shapes were absent. At first, he thought that they had just gone to lunch, but there were no bags beneath the desks, as there usually were.

The office felt quieter. The office was quieter.

While he waited for the lift to go to lunch, Clyde appeared beside him. Kyle could see his sky blue t-shirt out of the corner of his eye and could smell the grease in his hair. He was expecting Clyde to say something, as they had not conversed waiting on the ground floor earlier this morning. But Clyde said nothing. When the lift dinged, Kyle, Clyde and two women dressed in skirts and jackets that were buttoned just once and who Kyle did not recognise stepped in, and they took the lift down to the bottom floor to go to the canteen. When they stepped out, the two women walked ahead out of the front door, it’s electronic doors opening silently while Kyle took the right turn towards the canteen.

When he got there, he perused the menu and selected Meal Deal Three, tapping his employee card on the point of service. Beside him, Clyde ordered the same thing. Kyle had never seen him in the canteen before. Kyle walked to an empty table and Clyde followed, sitting opposite. They ate their meals; noodles and fried pork with a sweet sauce, in silence for a few minutes before Clyde set his cutlery down and exhaled.

‘s**t’s f****d, pal.’

Kyle looked up at him, a noodle hanging from his lip. He slurped it up and took a sip of water.

‘s**t?’

‘You not hear? They sacked, no, had to let go, a bunch of people. The office is a f*****g ghost town. I’m bored as anything.’

Kyle stared. He set his cutlery down, also. ‘They’re sacking people?’

Clyde leant towards him, he didn’t look both ways and he said loudly, ‘Yeah, Friday, a few Thursday, but really there was most gone on Friday. Must have done.’ He reached for his fork and stabbed towards his plate and twisted sauce soaked noodles with it, twisting them around the prongs.

‘f**k,’ is all Kyle could think to say.

‘Yeah, no idea why. Spoke to the only person left in my department. Apparently, you data chaps are alright for the time being, but -’ He stuffed the noodles into his mouth and chewed. Onions crunched and sauce hung from his bottom lip as he chewed, wobbling and threatening to drip onto his fork-hand. ‘But you know, who knows. Proper downsize, like.’

‘Maybe it was just the first wave and they’re waiting a few months to evaluate the rest,’ Kyle said. Clyde looked at him, still chewing. He blinked, chewed, looked at the top of Kyle’s head, which forced Kyle’s hand to his hair and he tangled it in his fingers and pulled slightly. Clyde gulped and stifled a burp with his hand, nearly poking himself in the eye.

‘Still.’ He pushed his tray away and stood up, nodded at Kyle and then again after he leant down to place his empty drink on his tray and pick it up.

This was why he could not concentrate. He stood at his desk, peering around and listening for any footsteps walking behind him. As he waited in the lift, the two women from before had stood in front of him and exited on his office floor. They turned left and walked towards the small kitchen for a coffee. Later, they had walked past him and slowed down, watching him input numbers with the screen half focused. These numbers, he knew, were wrong but his hands were without feeling.

This had been the last forty minutes or so for Kyle. In place of the usual, he thought about losing his job, but also about Halloween.

He thought of Halloweens he had as a child. He would always dress the same, as a superhero. And he thought of this girl that he knew at the time. She was his best friend. Every year, she wore something different. She had been a superhero too, one year but others she had been a spider, a puppet, a man-eating flower. A man-eating hibiscus.

And during these times where they would go together, meeting at five PM, with enough time after school to get home and change and meet up and plan their route and while it was still light. As the evening darkened and they had begun to exhaust their options, they sat on the side of the road and watched stragglers, sharing sweets and chocolate and stopping only when their stomachs started to hurt. Later that night, while they were in their own beds, they struggled to sleep and stared up at the ceiling until they didn’t and at school the next day, red-eyed and restless, they would sneak the leftover sweets during classes and expel all of their energy at playtime.

They slept well that next night.

Kyle could only recall some details but he knew the more he thought about it, the more he would remember.

He thought of this for the rest of the day and stayed longer to edit some of his mistakes and listening to people leave the office. He heard Clyde walk past him, but he didn’t say anything. As he heard the lift ding, Kyle peered towards the closing doors and caught the smallest half-glimpse of shirts and legs and bags but the space did not seem as crowded as he was used to the day’s end. The people in there looked like they could breathe.

Kyle waited at his desk. He counted down from fifteen, which was how long the lift took to descend, even when people on the lower floors entered. He looked at the clock, it was nearly twenty past and he switched off his screen, knowing the idleness alert will do the rest. He picked his bag up and waited for the doors of the lift, someone he did not recognise stood beside him making half-hearted attempts to suppress sobs.

Walking home via the cemetery, he walked past an electronic poster on the side of the road. On it had a picture of a bloody hand through a window of an underground carriage, a remake of a film popular in the early millennium. It was released just before Christmas. Heading the poster were reviews that gave it four stars, five stars, four stars, with little quotes that were too small for Kyle to read as he passed.

One year, his last before moving away, they had not gone door-to-door begging for sweets. Instead, she had invited him round to watch a scary movie. He packed snacks and fizzy drinks and when he got there, the living room was dark except for the eerie blue glow of the television that was frozen on a frame of titles. He peered through the window before knocking on the door, but couldn’t see anyone. There were no cars on the driveway through the side windows, next to the door, it was dark in the hallway on the other side.

He knocked on the door and waited. When there was no answer immediately, he knocked again, this time louder and with a different knocking tune. Again, there was no answer.

He leant down and flicked open the letterbox, peering through the bristles and into the darkness. He called her name and when there was no answer, he called for his majesty, for his man-eating flower, for his web-spinning queen.

There was still no answer and he nearly started walking away but decided to knock one last time.

‘Hey.’

The noise came from above.

‘You scared me, I thought I was going to get murdered.’

‘I brought snacks, you ready?’

‘Wait there, I’ll open the door.’