This Darkness Mine by G.R. Yeates Page A

drone of black traffic.
    ****** 
    My email pings and dings and I am awake. I have been in the office for hours, maybe days. Having nodded off at my desk it takes me a few minutes to collect myself, pull the last trailing threads of my consciousness out of sleep’s black peace. I draw in a breath of unrecycled air. The numb light of the office interior sends needle-shocks through my brain. Dull, I move the mouse. Point. And. Click. An e-mail is waiting for me. I click into it. I see the latest corporate catchphrase.
    Life is a pitch meeting. We need you to sparkle.
    It makes no sense, this tasteless bullshit, so I ignore it.
    Enter the password. Another spreadsheet. Something in me snaps and groans as I open it. Click. And. Click. Scarlet numbers smear their way down the monitor screen. Formulas are embedded in the document. The work of invisible men. Letters, numbers, signs and symbols in a mathematical higgledy-piggledy that I don’t understand, never will, don’t want to. It’s my job to go through them though. It’s what they pay me for.
    Wiping at my eyes, wishing I could get more than four hours sleep in a night, I set to work. Point. Click. Scroll. Check. Re-check. Type in. Enter. Point. Click. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. The numbers on the screen are a churning river, slowly turning to a soothing black series of streams as I check them, correct them. The screen flickers and fades as do the lights above.
    I wait, pointing with my tongue, clicking with my teeth.
    Light is restored.
    Everything in the building is breaking down, wearing out. It’s hot in here so I unbutton my shirt collar, loosening it. My fingers are damp with tepid sweat, the air I breathe tastes of body odour and old cheese. We haven’t had air conditioning for three weeks. At this rate, we’ll be growing mushrooms in our hair. I wipe my brow dry and the back of my hand comes away shiny, slathered. My eyes flick up to the moon-dial disc of the office clock.
    Five hours to go.
    Shit. I extinguish every last trace of red from the spreadsheet. I paint it black.
    Job done.
    I stifle a yawn, feeling no sense of success, tasting the acrid afterbirth of the night before. The afternoon drags on by. The atmosphere in the office thickens until its charnel taste catches in the back of my throat. The whites and washed-out yellow of the walls hurt my eyes. The spreadsheets keep on coming. Ping. Ding. Point. And. Click. Shooting pains ricochet from fingertips to knuckles, writhing through the tight muscles of my arms and shoulders, striking home at the base of my neck. I work at the tissue there, feeling how it’s set and hard.
    The onscreen formulas cloud over, red and numinous. Jolting out of my chair, I’m walking away from my desk. The burr of my deskphone bothering my guilt responses. Someone else can answer it.
    I need a break.
    ****** 
    The day’s work left me seedy and tired. A snoring whore sleeps at the back of the train carriage, the jiggery-joltering rocking me to sleep, embracing me with the warm felt night. The doors creep closed. Awake, I see where I am, where I’m leaving. My station, this is my stop, wiping grains from my tear ducts, I’m on my feet, hurling myself forward too late, watching the doors snap tight against one another. Someone behind me inhales, shocked. Someone, somewhere else, giggles at my expletive. I thump at the door. The train is moving, concrete angle and edge gives way to grass and hedgerows.
    Claustrophobia to agoraphobia.
    I have miles to go before I can get home.
    ****** 
    As a later train picks me up, sullen, from the platform and chunters me home, my skull is brimming with glowing red numbers. Angry bright embers. Another day has been ill-spent. I emit a low tone as I feel the sensation of waste wash over me. I feel the vibration of it. It’s not a pleasant one.
    We could call it all a machine and I think we will. It has its stages, its developments and it is based on models that glisten with sweat and beads.