perpetual rush

Note: Below is something that I wrote for NaNoWriMo back in 2006. I was busy with work then (still am actually), and so only managed to write about 2 chapters, with the 2nd chapters still stuck in outline mode. I had a vague outline of what the whole story should be, but no, I don’t have a proper story (with no ending either) Except for some grammatical corrections here and there, below is what I wrote almost 2 years ago. I hope you gonna like it.

~*~

It was raining when Edan gets home. He is soaked from head to toe, no thanks to a car driver who just drove through the rain puddle and splashed him. He, at that unfortunate moment, was walking on the sidewalk from the train station. ‘I bet he did it on purpose, that bastard’, Edan was thinking, as he peeled off his wets socks from his left foot while balancing himself on his right, wobbling slightly as he did so. His new shoes, his expensive new shoes (Dunhill, which he just bought yesterday) lay sadly on the shoe rack, the rain drops glistening on its shiny leather surface, a few grass stains at the left toe. ‘That bastard!’, he’s thinking again angrily. In his mind he’s convinced that the driver was out to get him. Then he realized how absurd the thought is, how outlandish, and yet can’t shake off the feeling from his head. He rebuked himself for these crazy thoughts.

Today has not been a good day. This morning on the way to his office, he stepped on dog shit just as he was about to cross the road. ‘My precious new shoes!’, he unconsciously blurted out (did he really use the word ‘precious’? How pretentious!), then started to vigorously shuffle his left foot on the grass. To and fro, to and fro he shuffled. When he’s convinced his shoes is clean, he resumed walking to the train station, all the while muttering curses under his breath.

From there on it just got worse, everything turned shitty. The train that he took to work broke down for half an hour in the middle of the track, making him late for work. He should have taken his car instead to work, but this morning he didn’t feel like driving. After all, why should he stress himself with the traffic? But he wished, how he wished he was driving to work this morning. Being stuck in a train is nothing like being stuck in traffic, the stress is greater, and it’s simply killing him. The helplessness of not knowing when the metal contraption will start moving again, people all around him looking bored, or stressed out just like him. The voice from the tiny intercom overhead kept saying that the train would move again in ten minutes, but from experience he knows it’s not true at all. Ten minutes, what a comforting short amount of time, but when stuck underground in a train with hundreds of other people and running late, ten minutes seems like eternity, an eternity that Edan wished would end sooner than ten minutes.

He didn’t understand why he felt so upset by the train breaking down this morning. It’s not like it has never happened before, it’s not a glitch so uncommon it should rock his world. But there he was, angry and upset and also a little bit sweaty just because the train broke down again, he who has experienced it a lot of times. Why should the incident this morning be different than any other times? (and there was nothing different about it either) But there he was, standing in a train with a face that can curdle milk (his mother is fond of saying that whenever he sulks), just because a train broke down. You’re not a true city dweller if you haven’t got stuck in a broken train at least once, someone told that to him when he said to him (or was it her?) that he’s late because of that. This was back when he first started living in the city. What a bold statement, he had thought then, thinking how he could never make a statement like that. What a confident way of putting things in perspective! But now, now he knows it’s not a bold statement at all, the man (why he keeps feeling that it may be a woman who said that to him?) was simply stating the truth - in the city, shit always happen.

He’s supposed he was upset from not being able to control the situation, from not knowing what’s next, from helplessness. There was nothing he can do to make the train moves again (short of telekinesis, but that’s just his fantasy. After all, he’s not convinced there’s such a thing anyway). How long will it last? Did something happen on the ground that the people in the train, deep in the underground, are oblivious about it? So many questions, and yet so little answers. All these questions in his head, swimming around, just increased his irritation even more. Yes, that’s it! It’s not stress, it’s irritation! (how very not him to be upset over a broken train) Irritated because this was not how his morning supposed to be, this was not how his morning usually goes.

Standing in the train this morning amid others just like him, he saw a man in the corner near the door, a man so calm he was almost smiling. He looked utterly unaffected at all by what is happening. There’s no annoyed look, no angry tsking, no constantly looking at his watch, no making calls, no nervous fiddling with his fingers, in fact he looks happy. No, not happy, content, yes, that’s it. Oh, that content look! Edan had this urge to hit this man, this man who looks so calm, so content. He felt he should slap him silly and shake him and scream at him, ‘WHY ARE YOU SO CALM!’. The thought took him by surprise then, like he himself was the one who was slapped on the face. What prompted such crazy thought?

Is it crazy for him to envy this man, this stranger that he saw on the train, a stranger that hasn’t spoken a word to him, to envy him for his calmness? Could he have envied this man because instead of being calm (he has always been a calm person, why couldn’t he be calm this morning?) he did all the things the man in the corner didn’t do: he looked annoyed, and angrily tsking and looking at his watch every few minutes. When the crackly voice from the intercom overhead announced that the train was experiencing technical difficulties, he had immediately whipped out his mobile phone and called his office, telling his secretary about the damn train broken down, and could she push all his appointments for the morning an hour later, and oh, just rescheduled his meeting with that Daud guy, thank you. And then 15 minutes after the announcement, he found himself looking at his fingernails as if it’s an object that truly interests him, something that’s truly precious. He needs a manicure, he couldn’t help thinking about that then(oh vanity!) When the train finally moved, he breathed a sigh of relief (finally!), but still wearing the annoyed expression.

Now that he’s home, the bad mood persist, like an odor that lingers long after the carcass is gone. Instead of picking his socks and putting it in the laundry hamper, Edan left his wet socks next to shoe rack. He just couldn’t be bothered about some wet socks today. What’s the harm in leaving it there anyway? He could always throw it into the laundry hamper later.

Oh, he couldn’t be bothered with a lot of things lately. There’s always this and that and a whole lot of other things – things, hah! – that seems to get in the way, that makes him angry and sad. How can you describe a situation that looks right, but in your heart of hearts you know isn’t?

The truth is – and he knows how truth hurts – is that he’s not happy with his life. Sure, he got a nice house, owned and is being paid for monthly by him (“…bought a townhouse that cost a fortune, and he’s only 30!”, he overheard someone said that about him at a party last month. Presumably there were talking about his house-ownership status) Then there’s the nice car, more than nice really (Iz, his car freak friend said it’s a 2.0 turbo-something beauty but he couldn’t be bothered about that. It works, isn’t it?) that he hardly drives. When was the last time he drove that “beauty” anyway? He’s in relatively good health, constantly going to the gym and eating right (to the point of being obsessive, Iz had pointed out, that fat bastard with hanging gut and double chins) His career is going up and up, which is why he could afford the nice home and that beautiful car.

He knows he should be grateful for the way things are. Friends his age are not that lucky, some of them are still paying off their student loans (he got a scholarship) His life, as somebody told him right to his face, with a mixture of proud and envy, is perfect.

“Perfect my ass!”, Edan whispered to himself.

Why oh why he couldn’t master enough courage to tell these people, all these people that had told him that his life is perfect, that his life is far from perfect. That his life is far from functioning really. No, it’s not from lack of courage, but it’s because he likes to keep that illusion of perfection. I’m perfect! (oh vanity here you are again!)

He moved to the kitchen, peered into the fridge and got himself a bottle of mineral water. He stood next to the sink, opened the kitchen cupboard above it, and got himself a glass. He poured the water into the glass, slowly watching it rising. Halfway through he stopped, picked up the now half-full glass and thirstily gulped down the water.

“The thing is…”, he mused to himself, aware that he sounds like a crazy man talking to himself in this way, but he just couldn’t seem to stop. “The thing is…”, he repeated again to himself - this time with much more conviction, no longer barely audible – “… is that…”.

His mobile phone rings. Soon after, he’s lost in conversation, the thought pushed to the back of his mind.