Correct Change

The car door slammed shut like a gunshot. Tim was behind the wheel and he sighed to himself softly, noticing the soft cloud of his warm breath floating around him. Tim was a delicate man on this bitingly cold morning, emotionally delicate and slightly unsure of himself. He sat in his dark blue, 2001 Vauxhall Corsa, mentally preparing himself for another day of work amongst his fellow co-workers, who Tim regarded as a brain-dead hoard of wankers, by vacantly staring through the foggy mists of his breath at the dark wooden slats walling off the cul-de-sac of where he lived. Tim didn’t know what he did for a job. He knew how to do his day’s work, though he didn’t know to what possible ends his job could take him. Tim had no idea how any of this effort went into creating a better society, a world he would be proud to live in. He shook his head slightly, to shake off the drudging tiredness that enveloped his whole being, dismissing the idea of yet another Monday as just another Monday. And so Tim slid the key in the ignition and turned. The car came alive after a few slick coughs. He clicked down the handbrake. He put the car in reverse and readied his feet against the accelerator pedal and the clutch, throwing his arm around the empty passenger seat next to him with grim determination to crane his neck around and look out the rear window, except it was completely fogged up. It seemed that he would have to wait for the air conditioning. Tim blinked. Tim remembered his seatbelt, wrapped himself with it with a rustle of his waterproof jacket, and clicked it in. Tim looked at his watch. 8.22. Fine by him. Tim looked at his hands resting on the top of the steering wheel. He imagined them covered in blood after stabbing someone brutally. He started to shake his hands as if wracked with guilt, as if acting in a play, wet crimson trails running through crags and down his pale wrists like a river through a desert, his mouth contorted in a silent scream. Tim stopped himself and glanced up at the rear view mirror. A small patch had cleared on the window behind him, revealing two story semi-detached houses, made of sandy beige bricks, and sitting in a pleasant, symmetrical line all the way down the road. That small patch would have to do. Tim had seen enough. And so with a buzzing whirr, the car reversed, did a U-turn, and bumbled on towards work.    

Tim walked down the empty corridor towards his cubicle in the main office space. He was looking down. He hadn’t noticed that the carpet was actually fuzzier than he had previously realised. It was the little things he supposed. Sandra came out of an office to his left. Tim looked up at her, alarmed, as she walked by. “Morning Sandra.” “Morning Tim!” The smell of her shampoo lingered in the breeze she created as she walked past him. Tim relaxed, safer in the knowledge of a completed social interaction. He then carried on walking down the corridor, lazily looking through the door of the empty office that Sandra had emerged from. Tim caught himself in the middle of his next step. There was a vending machine? Tim took a step back and peered through the door with a confused and intense gaze. There was a vending machine. It stood like a monolith. Its shiny glass unbelievably clean, it echoed the names of the products it bore within as the harsh fluorescent lights reflected upon it and dazzled his eyes. Bottles of drink and packets of crisps nested delicately amongst perfectly created spirals that seemed to stretch into the infinite reaches of the depths of the machine. Its rectangular form was perfectly aligned to the centre of the room. But on the machine itself, offset, on the right side of this box a small blue display rang out in digitally formed words that beckoned. Insert coin. Tim felt a jolt through his core, as if the sound of the words within in his mind were formed of the resonant frequency of his soul. And then the words had changed. Select product. “Morning Tim!” Tim whipped round, startled and terrified, to the source of the clear and bright voice to his right, and locked eyes with Peter, who had appeared. “OH GOD. Um. Sorry. Morning Peter.” Peter paused, confused, and looked at Tim with a thinly veiled sadness, before carrying on down the corridor. Tim watched him leave. He was left alone with the vending machine again. Suddenly, without recognising what he was doing, he had flicked off the light switch of the office, and was walking swiftly towards his desk. He watched his feet shuffle on the carpet beneath him. Each step felt like he was walking on sandpaper. Tim reached his desk and turned on his computer hurriedly. He looked at his watch. 9.01. Of course.

Tim was obviously distracted all day. He watched over the top of his computer monitor, his eyes following his co-workers who would come in and out of that office like bees to a hive. They came with nothing. They left with snacks, all smiling at eachother like they were in some kind of sick, demented club. All day Tim heard the thunk of yet more bottles hitting the retrival tray of that foul machine, each time felt a little louder than the last, as if they were shells coming ever closer to his little trench, zeroing in on his position. To cope, Tim began to play a game where he would guess who in the office would buy which product, who was more likely to go for savoury snacks rather than sweet. Tim thought of himself as an expert at this game of his own design. This however, forced Tim to develop an intensity of emotion towards that room which he could not pick apart. This emotional knot developed inside him and clawed at his ribs all day, desperately trying to escape, perhaps, he fantasised as a scream so fierce as to shred his throat, and vomit up a torrent of blood, with little flaps of skin and lung into his small, plastic office bin. And he would tie up the minituare bin bag with a dainty little bow knot and carry it, fit to burst and bulging with his hot guts down that corridor. But Tim could do nothing, and as such, he was being driven towards radical action. 

It was now the end of the working day. Tim looked at his watch. It was 4.58. It would have to do. He had completed literally no work, and felt ashamed of himself. The excel sheet in front of him lied bare, its boxes lined up pristine, save for a single entry in A1 that simply said "fuck". He stared at the blinking line after the k. He felt for a moment that it might match his heartbeat. A figure blocked the light above him "You coming to the pub, Tim?" He looked up past his monitor at Sandra, her auburn hair hanging silkily down across a lovely blue pea-coat, buttoned up. Tim opened his mouth too quickly. "No" he said, "I think I'm just going to try and finish this, you know." A nervous laugh bubbled out of his mouth and fell flat. Sandra did not blink. She didnt look dissapointed at all. In fact she looked exactly the same, as if he hadn't said anything at all. "All right then Tim, I'll see you tomorrow!" Sandra spun on her heels and walked down the corridor. Tim watched her leave, for the second time, and looked back down at his monitor. Perhaps now he could finally complete at least a little bit of work. All day he had been fixated on what lay down that corridor. The office was now empty. Nobody would be buying any more snacks until tomorrow. There was quiet in the work environment, and Tim was at last, resolute. Tim began to press the backspace button very deliberately with his index finger, each press a step towards a brand new day, back through time, each press erasing the horrors of the previous hours. Fuck. Fuc. Fu. F. "You coming to the pub, Tim?" said a voice from behind him. He span around in frustration. It was Pete. "No." Tim turned to his monitor again, and paused, before turning around to Pete once more. "Sorry." he said. Pete's face was extremely blank, a mask, a perfect diguise. A smile appeared on top of it all. "OK well, if you change your mind we will all be down there." he said, extremely earnestly. And so Pete walked down the corridor, his gait laced with an added spring and enthusiasm, seemingly wishing for a landmine.

Tim looked at his watch. 10.33. Shit, is it that late? At least he had completed a substantial amount of work. Tim decided it was time to finish for the night. He saved what he had done, and shut down the computer. The monitor switched off and the computer fans stopped whirring. His territory was now silent, amd only the dull hum of the air conditioning in the office remained. Tim stretched at his desk and got up. It was time to leave. Tim began to walk down the corridor, and as he went, he became extremely self aware and introspective. He thought upon his day, how he had been so affected by what lay just within the office in front of him and to the right, how much he had viscerally hated every second of his existence behind his monitor, staring at the hungry coworkers marching in and out of that very doorframe. Tim then found himself in front of this door, and it was very nearly closed. That emotional knot, which had loosened itself throughout the evening, which Tim had managed to put out of his mind now bound itself tighter and tighter as he stood there, and Tim began to feel likewise constricted in his movement, in his thoughts. Each attempt to convince himself of the realities of the situation, of the car waiting for him downstairs, of the success he had sown for himself by completing most of his work for the day, was an attempt that came up against this dense and painful feeling, as if he was listless, beached, only to be washed away by huge waves of a cold sea. He felt that he could not allow himself to think of anything else except what lay before that closed door in front of him. Tim began to shake, and tears welled up in his eyes. These tears were borne of this frustration of emotion, and the office began to feel more empty, as if he himself were dissapearing, as if his presence was uprooting itself and soon there would be absolutely nothing. Tim closed his eyes and his tears, dangling delicately on his eyelashes, fell onto the carpet noiselessly. He leaned forward, and with a thunk, opened the door with his forehead.