You don’t even have your own toilet, the little voice gripes. Whoever heard of an apartment where you have to go outside it and down a flight of stairs for a shared toilet? It’s utterly demeaning.
“At least the hot shower water is plentiful and I don’t have to fear being perved on while I am in it.”
That’s a pathetic thing to be grateful for.
I sigh. There is no arguing with her. I push her towards the back of my mind, determined to no longer speak to her. She goes resentfully. I get out of the shower and put on my fuzzy pajamas. Beastie yowls in protest.
“I haven’t forgotten you,” I murmur. “Sit with me for just a moment will you?”
I scoop her up and carry her to my bed. “Just five minutes,” I tell her.
Yawning, I place my head on my pillow. She curls up next to me, already purring. In five minutes I will get up and let her out and then open a can of sardines for my dinner.
I wake up gasping and drenched in perspiration. The dream. I had the dream.
I was walking down a street. I came to a large house. I went to a window and looked in. Inside a woman and man were curled up on a sofa drinking red wine and laughing about some piece of wicked gossip that I could not hear. The woman got up and left the room. I walked to the front door and rang the doorbell. The man answered and greeted me, looking surprised and a little wary. He turned and went inside, towards the foot of the stairs. He called up to the woman. I walked in and shut the door. I picked up a solid-looking statue of a sleek black cat from the ground. I came up behind him and whacked it into his head. Upstairs the woman came out of her bedroom. She looked downstairs and she screamed.
This is the same nightmare I’ve had every night for the past few weeks. It has the feel of a true vision, rather than an ordinary dream. I don’t know what to do with it. The woman had looked familiar to me but I’ve had no spare time to research her. I’ve checked the headlines on every newspaper I’ve seen, but no murder has been reported.
Times like this I wish I had a smart phone so I could google it. Today I wish it more than ever. If only I could stop it from happening. I’d save their lives. Storm could read about my heroics in a newspaper. He could regret firing me.
You wish, says the little voice.
I sit up in bed yawning. AngelBeastie wriggles a little but continues purr-snoring. Clearly she is no longer in the mood to be let out. Morning light is coming through the window. “Crap!” I cry, leaping out of bed to check my alarm clock. It is Saturday morning already. I am late.
In a flurry I get ready for work, pour some dry food for Beastie and refresh her water, and dash out of my room. I waste money getting a bus because there is no way I will arrive on time if I walk.
When the bus reaches my stop I dash off it, into my building, and rush towards my locker. My phone beeps as I am hanging up my jacket. I hastily check it. It is a text from Rosalie.
‘Diane, Mr Smithers says your shift today is cancelled. No need for you to come in.’
I stare at it with my mouth open as it sinks in. Today is Rosalie’s day off on the rota. She shouldn’t even be at work.
The sneak thief. The dirty rotten sneak thief.
In a fury I charge towards Smithers’s office to demand an explanation. I find no Smithers, but Rosalie is in there tapping away at his computer.
“What are you doing here?” she says cattily.
“You stole my shift,” I snarl.
“I did no such thing. Mr Smithers decides the schedule and he’s chosen to reward my dedication. You shouldn’t have let us all down yesterday, should you?”
“I went to a funeral.”
“So what? Your personal problems are your personal problems. But you made them into our problem, and we just don’t need staff with that kind of attitude.”
“My shift has been on the roster all week. It was mine!”
“Why are you even here? You got my text, didn’t you?”
“I got it two minutes ago,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Not my problem,” she says, speaking in tune with her tapping fingers, her head jerking from side to side smugly. It makes me want to throttle her. She knows she only sent that text message two minutes ago. I stand in the doorway glowering, my fists bunched.
You could punch that smile from her face, suggests the little voice.
I could. I really could.