The Chain

A note from Challenging Challenges: We accept everything here, poems, fictional stories, personal journies. The piece below comes from a friend of ours who has written a short story for you.

January 2016

He writes to her on the long journey from Aviemore to Glasgow. She has bundled herself up into the corner of the Megabus, her head curled into the blanket scarf made of camel wool. It itches slightly but she doesn’t mind. She is trying to doze off to fast forward the hours wasted stuck on the motorway.

Her phone vibrates.

Alec: “So… I’m a shit boss. I totally forgot ‘til Billy reminded me. Happy birthday.”

Then comes the noticeable jolt in the stomach. She hasn’t heard from him for the whole two weeks of the Christmas holiday. She makes a determined decision not to reply, biting back the feelings of resentment creeping up her neck. She grits and grinds her teeth.

Up until this point, he had been calling her his ‘little star’. The favourite in his constellation.

The lack of responses or initiations in his conversations had made her feel like she was falling straight out of the sky.

The steam on the window has made her hair damp. She rubs at her head with her palm, wiping the moisture away, and snuggling further into the scarf, she tries to sleep. It has been a long two weeks, and she is anxious to get back to her routine, normality, the city.

January rain drenches the road, and the growling bus thunders down the motorway. Mountains on either side of the river of traffic stand cold and dark, sharp scree on the side of the slopes — tumbling.

She clenches her fists as she resists the urge to reply to the birthday message.

February 2016

Alec: hey

Me: Hey. You OK?

Alec: No, fucking sick of it.

Me: What do you mean?

Alec: The staff. It’s all a fucking joke. No one takes it seriously.

Me: Well I can’t speak on their behalf, but I do. This job is really important to me.

Alec: Only because you need to start in this sector, it’s just like the rest of them. I can’t believe the fucking stupid conversations I have to have with the staff. Why can’t anyone understand the massive responsibility that’s involved with a job like this?

Me: I don’t understand…

Alec: You all think you’re doing a good job, helping the poor kids but actually you don’t realise that your lack of professionalism means that you’re actually doing more harm than good. I can’t be a good leader when the people I have working for me don’t get it.

Me: Well I really do feel that everyone does get it. And I think we’re hard working.

Alec: Pfft well what the hell was that with Louise today talking to Kathleen about her book? Total time wasting. You think you can get away with anything.

Alec is typing…

Alec: I’m just sick of it. I should have left ages ago but the organisation will be fucked without me. You know I used to say the company was like a family? Well families are dysfunctional and so it has to stop.

Me: It would be. Maybe everyone is stuck in a rut, maybe they are too comfortable? And to be fair to me and Meg and Ciara, it was like that when we started. We got used to the whole dysfunctional family thing. Sean said that every workplace has that whole recapitulation of the family unit thing going on and not to be surprised.

Alec is typing…

April 2016

The change had begun in those dark months of winter. When late January crawls into February — a stretch of cold days framed between darkness. On nights with enveloping blackness, where weak pools of orange light reflected trickling rain. During lonely hours staring bleakly at a screen — waiting. It was now April and things had gotten worse.

Lock button, unlock pattern, scroll, scroll, lock button.

Wait.

Lock button, unlock pattern, scroll, scroll, retweet, check profile, lock button.

Wait.

Before, there had been messages. Vibrations coming from the phone like a series of angry bees. That grinding, gnawing noise of a message received. ‘Attend to me’, ‘deal with me’ ‘answer me’, the vibrations seemed to say. She knew it was him. For the longest time, those buzzing noises coming from the phone on the bedside table gave her a thrill.

He wanted to talk to her. To discuss his deepest concerns, his private ideas, his darkest rants.

Until he didn’t anymore.

July 2016

He stands in the corridor to the office. His tall, slender figure filling the door frame. He stares, waiting for his employees to notice him. She types furiously, her head down, hoping that he won’t issue the signal for her to follow him to his ‘room’. His eyes are tired and dark, hers are already pricking with the heat of tears. She knows. She has been here before, and on this Wednesday morning she knows that it’s her turn to be dragged into Alec’s ‘room’.

She tries to reply to emails, her fingers darting across the keyboard. She is willing the phone to ring just so that she can answer it and delay the inevitable.

It’s too late. She glances up and sees the short, sharp nod of the head that indicates she needs to come. With dread filling her heart, and her colleagues furtively looking up from their desks, she follows him down the corridor and into his room.

It begins like it begins every other time. Alec taking a deep breath, the disappointed sigh. Then comes the tide of sentences strung together like the speech of a well-rehearsed dictator.

“I don’t know how to keep explaining things to you like this. I don’t enjoy having these conversations with you about this. And I don’t actually have time for it either. I mean, you know why we’re here again don’t you?”

She held the horrible feeling in her heart, a tightly wound knot of confusion. The soup of uncomfortable thoughts and questions sloshed in her stomach, and the sick feelings crept up into her throat. A bitter tasting bile.

In truth, she had no idea.

Then came the stinging of tears behind her eyes as he continued to berate her. She tried so hard to breathe away the inevitable crying, to stave off the pathetic woman. He will call her this in his messages to her colleagues later that day. He will tell her he has no time for her tears. That she manipulates him with her emotions, and that he won’t be held accountable for the way he makes her react.

“You cannot go on behaving like this.”

October 2016

There was a murder on the motorway. A gangland shooting at the traffic lights. Her route to the office was blocked off — evidence still being gathered. The bitterly cold morning exacerbated the panic which was caused by her lateness. Eventually, she made it into work without comment. She’d followed procedures, told Alec she was going to be late and he’d replied that he was “aware of the situation.”

Before she left for the day, she popped her head into Alec’s room to say goodbye. They exchanged conversation, and his tone was pleasant and conversational. They discussed the murder. She hung on the door frame, conscious of the time slipping away but also feeling a warmth coming from Alec that she hadn’t felt in months.

But it was too good to be true, and the conversation quickly became about the failings of her colleagues.

With a guilty sigh of relief, she thought: At least it’s not me.

November 2016

The wind was biting at her, as she clutched at her oversized denim jacket, pulling it around her sides. Grey clouds were scudding quickly across the black sky, as the bright, almost-full moon shone glaringly down on the filthy streets paved with broken glass and dog shit. She shuddered as she tried to drag on her cigarette. The nicotine hit not-exactly the hit she had hoped for. Disappointed, she dropped the half-finished fag in the bin. It had been a long day, and the biting cold was like a corset, constricting her breath, cracking her ribs.

Alec was gone. Suspended. Pending investigation. There had been a mass exodus of her colleagues, and the fallout had crashed on to her shoulders. His empty room was full of his possessions, but no clues as to how to begin covering his duties. She paced it, calling the board members furtively, trying to protect the remaining colleagues from the mess that the organisation was in.

Time to go.

The wind caught in her lungs as she took a deep breath. Into the darkness of Pollokshields she went.

July 2017

The Kelvin stinks on a hot summer’s day. The days began stretching together in the merge of heat hazed afternoons and humid sweaty mornings, and the stench began emanating from the West End’s winding waterway. It was at this time that she decided to make contact with her old boss. She had a logical reason for doing so. He has my book and I want it back. She knew she was overreacting — she could live without her copy of White Teeth. However, her curiosity could not be sated by stalking him on Twitter. She knew that there was too much to say, it had been festering too long.

She ran along Kelvin Way, trainers pounding the parched ground. Her breathing, already erratic, was not steadied by her racing thoughts. The heat haze persisted. The West Enders passed her without a second glance. She was one of many; part of the scenery. Her feet took her around a bend, and as she tried to continue uphill, her quadriceps failed her. She wasn’t concentrating.

She stopped, gasping for breath.

“Fuck.”

August 2017

She stood at her bedroom window, with her fingers pressed against the cold glass, staring out at the rain. The downpour outside — a tropical storm. A rushing of water from the sky, filling the Kelvin that raced on through the city. The thumping of the upstairs neighbours had desisted. It left a ringing quiet. The only noises were from the rain… inches away from her fingertips. The outside world was a wash of green and grey, her view was obscured by a wall of trees. It was summer, early evening. Her tired mind and tight muscles were urging her to sleep… but her mind was racing with the conversations she had just had, all the foregone conclusions and missed opportunities of things to say. She breathed shallow breaths, attempts at comprehension, calm and coherence for her muddled mind. She anxiously tugged at her hair.

It had not been a good meeting.

She tried to push it from her mind, but like the floods which were inevitable after the storm, the memory rushed to the forefront of her mind. It dragged the biting, self-critical thoughts with it.

The fucking… It wasn’t my fault…

I shouldn’t have gone.

Exhale.

She breathed forcefully out through her nose. As the condensation from the window stuck to her fingertips, she grasped for the thing she was most upset and frustrated at.

She hadn’t the words, the ability to communicate the damage he’d done. The gaping holes he’d torn in her unsuspectingly fragile self-confidence. He’d spoken so extensively about his mental wellbeing that she’d barely been able to mention the fact that his words had sent her straight into therapists’ chair. The words he’d thrown at her in hope of causing effect or damage were now ringing in her ears. It was an ironic reminder that she’d intended to force him to listen to her finally. That she had suffered depression because of his games; manipulations. She’d been crippled by self-doubt and constant second-guessing her decisions. How dare he make the same comparison for what he had suffered?

He had brought it on himself.

Alone in that room, a familiar and dreaded lump in her chest appeared, stealing her breath with surprising ease.

Her flat palm on the glass made a fist.