SHANEGORMLEY

The alarm woke Douglas with a start. Familiar dull surroundings greeted his blurry vision. Clumsily he swiped at the irritatingly precise alarm clock on his bed side table. After battling blindly in the gloom for several moments the clock conceded defeat and the alarm ceased. He lay his head down on the pillow and closed his eyes - several minutes passed by. Abruptly Douglas threw back the bed sheets and sat upright, his torso and legs immediately forming a perfect right angle at the hip. Had any religious fanatics been watching they may have assume him to be possessed, he mused, as he often did when waking in this manner.
 

His right foot followed his left from the warmth of the bed to the harsh cold of the mahogany floor. The room though barely visible through the breaking light of dawn was clean, albeit perhaps a little empty.  The bed on which he now sat lay in the exact centre of the room directly opposite a door. In one corner of the room there was a solitary chair with clothes folded neatly across the supple dark leather. There was a small table beside the bed that boasted an alarm clock and a crumpled picture of a woman that appeared to have been roughly clipped from a newspaper. Next to the curtainless windows stood a dark mahogany set of drawers that glinted eerily in the morning gloom; it was specifically positioned opposite to another door.  That was all Douglas required: no pictures, no ornaments, no needless adornments, lamps, rugs, or pillows. He had no need for pointless sentimental vestiges of the past, present or future. Simple functionality was all he required. His walls were painted grey.
 

Picking up the alarm clock Douglas ogled it with intent then carefully examined the table from which he had removed it. A faint silhouette of the clock lingered in the dust that peppered the table leaving a faint trace of where it had stood like the foot print of a ghost. Once the clock was perfectly repositioned Douglas rose to his feet and meandered to the bathroom. His morning ritual continued in a systematic yet lackadaisical manner. Seven minutes were allocated to a rigorous shower. He emerged alert and pink, brushed his teeth for two minutes and left the bathroom precisely ten minutes after having entered (the surplus minute being used to pat himself dry). Douglas glanced at the clock. He pulled on the outfit that lay prepared on the back of the chair in the corner of the room. Black was the theme. Trousers, shirt, socks, shoes. Not so much as a speck of colour was evident. He picked up a badge that read ‘Douglas’ and pinned it to his shirt.
 

Moving to the kitchen he now eyed the clock above the window. The street outside was barely visible. A small glimmer of early morning light had turned night into an unwelcome grey fog. Wishing he had time for a coffee and a piece of dry toast Douglas pulled a coat from the rack and carelessly thrust one arm into it. As he fought against the folds of the fabric he retreated into the fortress of his mind – Douglas considered himself a thinker. He had few friends to speak of, largely due to his bitter distaste for other members of the human race. Despite the immense diversity of humans it was startling to him how each and every individual was a manifestation of some heinous quality: vain, stupid, ignorant, selfish, greedy creatures – with very few exceptions. Of course, there were exceptions, as with all rules. The speed of light is thought to be a universal constant that cannot be surpassed. Any attempt to do so slows the passage of time until you reach the universal speed limit – 299792.458 km/s – the speed of light. However, experiments found that communication between entangled quantum systems happens faster than 10,000 times the speed of light. There are always exceptions.
 

Douglas began to ponder time in relation to himself, his routine. Each night he would set his alarm. Each morning he would wake up. And each morning would feature a frantic, yet calculated rush to be on time. Why didn’t he just set the alarm earlier so he could take his time? A wry smirk crossed his lips as the answer dawned upon him: sleep. Sleep was his one solace, his one retreat; a place where he was free, without pressure, without needs and demands, without people.
 

 With his trench coat half dragging on the floor Douglas opened the door to his apartment and crossed the threshold. Nothing spectacular happened on his journey from his apartment to the front door. How he longed for a meteorite to strike the roof of the building, a strange woman with alluring perfume to seduce him, a masked gun man to blaze past him with sirens looming in the distance. Anything. Anything to break the mundane repetition of life.
 

He stepped out into the stale grey air. He stopped for a moment as he heard foot steps pounding hard on the pavement heading towards him. Was today the day? He peered into the dreary smog that enclosed around him. An invisible stranger was running towards him. Douglas felt his heart pulsing nervously in his chest as the distant panting became loud as an engine. It wasn’t until the stranger was nearly upon him that Douglas was able to make him out. Fighting back a wince with a lopsided smile an elderly man jogged past him and off into the morning. Douglas pulled his coat tighter to his body and strode off in the opposite direction.
 

Tall buildings loomed around him making him feel trapped. Douglas was all too familiar with feelings of anxiety. He had suffered his first panic attack when he was little more than fourteen. He remembered the uncomfortable feeling that had arisen in him like a python being charmed by a sinister melody. Side to side it had swayed in his chest until the angst within him erupted in basilisk form. His heart felt as though it were splitting at the seams. Each ventricle was forced to pulsate heroically to cope with the building pressure. His head began to spin dizzyingly. The room whirled in and out of focus before his blurry eyes. His torso began to burn with the vicious thrashing of his heart, as though it were trying to break free from the ribs that kept it caged in its murderous prison. Bile rose in the back of his throat as he realised he was having a heart attack. He was too young to die. The nausea grew until he was overwhelmed. The only thing preventing him from retching was the thunderous hammer blows within his chest.  It built to an agonizing climax; by this time he found himself on his feet, his bare chest exposed, pleading for mercy. With one almighty beat that he feared was his last the anxiety vanished and his heart stopped the destructive dance in his rib cage. He slumped back into his seat and his breathing began to slow. All he remembered of the next few minutes was thinking: am I dead?
 

Since that day anxiety came and went from Douglas like an old friend. Sometimes they would be apart for months at a time – but it always came back. The streets were unforgiving. They were always a source of unease for Douglas. Far too many times had he seen news reports of innocent people being attacked on those harsh streets; he wouldn’t lower his guard, he wouldn’t be the next unsuspecting victim. With his coat still wrapped tightly around him as a shield from the world, Douglas hurried towards his destination.

 Amid the myriad of imposing skyscrapers was one that held particular significance for Douglas. It was a marvel of glass and steel that rose over a kilometre into the sky. The Kingdom Tower dominated the skyline. Gleaming in the first rays of the sun it towered above every other building within the city. Owing to its colossal size and the rays of sunlight that intensified within its interior and bathed the landscape in a shroud of golden warmth the building appeared to almost transcend reality. To further add to its abstract mystery the Kingdom Tower protruded from the summit of a golden ziggurat. Douglas remembered how he had marvelled at the Kingdom Tower the first time he had seen it. The golden ziggurat alone stood hundreds of feet high. He had thought it impossible that such a structure could have been crafted from gold until he had heard rumour that sheets of graphene had been weaved into the gold imbuing it with vast tensile strength as well as incredible hardness which allowed it to support the vast kilometre tall Kingdom Tower.
 

Yet in spite of Douglas’ awe for the building it was with no small amount of trepidation that he passed the Kingdom Tower each morning. In the dawn light it shone like a beacon. Light radiated from the tower in powerful arcs and formed undulating pools as the base of the ziggurat. Employees were beginning to sporadically climb the golden steps that led to the main entrance filling Douglas with a sense of unease that made him nauseous. Gagging deep within his throat he spurred himself forward. The people entering the building seemed to be oblivious to him as they strode confidently past. Each of them was formidably dressed. Slick hair cuts sat atop well groomed faces that wore expression of deadest concentration and showed no emotion. Douglas could never decide whether he envied these people or pitied them. He turned to take one last glance at the golden ziggurat and as he did his body collided with something hard and he was bundled over backwards. His trench coat flailed open and for a moment Douglas felt naked and exposed. Grabbing his coat and pulling it back around him Douglas looked up to see a disgruntled man glaring down at him. His hair was fashionably greased back just like the others and like the others the man did not smile. He wore a pair of designer glasses that made the green eyes that ogled Douglas seem slightly larger than they should have. Douglas saw hatred in those eyes. He looked down to the floor, averting his gaze and stammered, “I’m… I’m sorry”. The man made no reply but continued to stare at him, seething, his hands balled into mighty fists. “I didn’t mean to”, continued Douglas in little more than a whisper. For several moments he surveyed the floor between his thighs in silence focusing on a piece of gum that had turned black from years of decay.
 

Douglas finally plucked up the courage to look at the man again but he found to his relief he was gone. Whirling his head around he tried to pick him out of the growing crowd. It was no use. Everyone looked the same. How could he hope to avoid the man if everyone looked the same? Douglas scratched his chin as he contemplated, but suddenly his rambling thoughts were broken as a set of jet black high-heels walked directly towards him. His eyes followed the legs up past the knee, past the skirt that playfully tickled her thigh, past the blazer and blouse that wrestled to hide her ample bosoms, past a slender neck adorned with an elegant diamond necklace to see a beautiful woman striding past. He looked at her and for a moment he felt his heart stop. Her face was pale, with magenta lips that sprang to life and screamed KISS ME! Her eyes danced with bright blues and vivid greens. Her cheek bones were pronounced and flushed with the slightest tint of rose that made them seem all the more alluring and her hair fell like auburn silk, gently frolicking in the spring breeze. As she made to pass Douglas he gazed directly up at her and they briefly made eye contact. He tried to smile, but he was so nervous that he could only muster what must have looked like a wince and as he did her beautiful nose wrinkled with what could only be disgust and Douglas dry heaved. A long glob of saliva drooled helplessly from his mouth and trickled down the front of his trench coat. “Urgh, you filthy bum”, declared the beautiful woman as she strode past him at a brisk pace. Pulling himself to his feet Douglas wiped at the spit with the palm of his hand and continued on towards work. Strangely Douglas took a renewed sense of satisfaction at his daily routine from this incident. He was glad he hadn’t had time to eat breakfast after all.