Tag: Creative Writing

# The day of bor­rowed shirts

Nate walked through the morn­ing city rain under a small bright­ly coloured umbrel­la that was clear­ly not the sort he would nor­mal­ly use. His most­ly dull black and blue clothes con­trast­ed with the bright rain­bow of the umbrel­la. His shoes and the low­er half of his jeans were soaked.

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Christ­mas Fac­to­ry — Chap­ter 1”

1:23 AM
Tues­day, 25th Octo­ber 2011

Nate was alone, stand­ing on the foot­path out­side of his apart­ment build­ing, con­fused and unsure of him­self or of the future.

He slow­ly walked up the three flights of stairs. His con­fu­sion was most­ly caused by feel­ings he had nev­er felt before and did­n’t know the right names of. Not know­ing what to call these strange new feel­ings was both­er­ing him far more at the moment, than what these feel­ing might mean.

Deep down in the being he was sure he had made the biggest fool of him­self, and screwed up his one and only chance of true hap­pi­ness. The per­fect­ly messed up end­ing to a tru­ly crap­py day.

Falling out of bed, orange juice on the cere­al, cof­fee in the office shirt, black out, can­cer, and now this, the date from hell.

Maybe he would be in luck, maybe Glen would be asleep and he could just sneak in and…

“Nate! Your back!” Glen chirped.

Nate shrugged and slumped down in the couch, there was no way he was get­ting out of this.

“So… how did the date go?”

“Worst date ever.” Nate mum­bled.

Glen frowned. “Oh real­ly? I’ve told you about that guy whose aunt pulled a knife on me?”

Nate nod­ded. “Okay, maybe not ever. But MY worst date.”

“Nate, don’t take this the wrong way, but you haven’t got a clue what your talk­ing about. Tell me every­thing.”

The last thing Nate want­ed to do.

“Besides,” con­tin­ued Glen, “I did lend you my ‘lucky’ shirt.”

Nate nod­ded.

“Well… it all start­ed with your so called lucky shirt did­n’t it.”

Glen frowned and raised one eye­brow.

“We meet at the cof­fee shop. Turns out his name isn’t Bri­an. So I made a fool out of myself there.”


Glen inter­rupt­ed. “So what is his name?”

“Er, Lex. Any­way, so I kept get­ting his name wrong, after about the tenth time he cor­rect­ed me. So embar­rass­ing. But then he said he did­n’t like my shirt. He said some­thing about ‘lik­ing what I had been wear­ing ear­li­er’.”

Glen smirked. “When you where shirt­less?”


Nate frowned. “Oh… that makes a lot more sense.”

Glen shock his head and got up and went into the kitchen and turned on the ket­tle. “So then what hap­pened?” He shout­ed out.

“Well. We ordered cof­fee. He ordered decaf with soy.”

Glen stuck his head out of the kitchen. “Does­n’t mean he’s a stinky hip­py.”

Nate nod­ded and went into the kitchen so he could con­tin­ue this con­ver­sa­tion with­out hav­ing to shout. “Yeah. Well, turns out he’s lac­tose intol­er­ant. And the wait­er got the order wrong. He downed half his cof­fee before he noticed it was milk and then he ran to the bath­room. I was left sit­ting there for 25 min­utes wait­ing for him to return.”

Glen made two large mugs of black tee, one in his bright blue mug, the oth­er in Nate’s pink mug. “Sounds like Lex might have had a crap date too then.”

Nate sipped his tea. “That’s the point. The first time we meet and he gets sick. Why would he come back for more?”

Glen lead the way back to the lounge room. “So… this was at what 8? 8:30? Its now 1:30. What have you been up to for the last five hours? Just mop­ing around and feel­ing sor­ry for your­self?”

Nate shock his head. “No, Lex walked me to the front door. We’ve been talk­ing and had more cof­fee and food and walked around a lot.”

“I’ve had rela­tion­ships that did­n’t last that long.”

Nate sipped at his tea slow­ly.

“So what else did you do wrong?”

Nate frowned. “Crit­i­cised his reli­gion, and a few of his oth­er stu­pid beliefs, his pol­i­tics, you know… all the sub­jects to avoid.”

“But he kept talk­ing to you?”

“Well… yeah.”

“And he walked you home?”

Nate nod­ded.

“The there is only one ques­tion that real­ly mat­ters.”

Nate frowned, a lit­tle wor­ried about what this ques­tion could be.

Glen smiled. “Was the kiss any good?”

Nate blushed deeply at this and just nod­ded.

Glen smiled more. “Going to see him again?”

Nate shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Glen smirked, a strange lit­tle smirk that made him look more like an elf. “Can I have his num­ber then?”

This caught Nate by sur­prise. “What, no way. No.” He almost yelled. The con­vic­tion in his voice sur­prised him­self.

Glen nod­ded and got up. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. ‘Worst date ever’ my arse! I’m going to bed.” And with that Glen head­ed off to his room.

Nate sat on the couch and fin­ished his tea. He was still con­fused.

Noth­ing had gone right today. He was sure as he sat there in the dark­ened room and tal­lied up all the things that had hap­pened.

Fear and anx­i­ety kept rat­tling around in his head, but so did these new feel­ing. He still was­n’t sure what they were called. But he had nar­rowed it down to two labels. It was either love or lust. That just con­fused him more.

He got up, put his emp­ty tea mug in the sink and fell into his unmade bed.

It had been a bad day. One of the worst. He was sure. Had­n’t it?

—
Part of my cre­ative writ­ing class. Week­ly Assign­ment 7.

The hail pound­ed on the fac­to­ry’s tin roof, fill­ing the emp­ty fac­to­ry floor with a deaf­en­ing roar. The offices were bet­ter pro­tect­ed, but the noise was still oppres­sive­ly loud.

The lack of pow­er was a big­ger prob­lem.

Nate went down stairs and walked through the unused machin­ery, leav­ing foot­prints in the dust. He unlocked and opened the door to the pow­er room and went in and checked the fus­es. Every­thing was in full work­ing order. The build­ing was sim­ply not get­ting any pow­er.

The black­out must be out­side some­where. He head­ed over to the front door of the fac­to­ry and opened it. The lit­tle design­er swimwear shop across the road was in dark­ness too. He leaned out the door and looked up and down the street. Every­thing was out.

Well at least it was­n’t some­thing he would be expect­ed to fix. He went back up to the offices and found Jock.

“Looks like pow­er is out for the whole block at least.”

Jock nod­ded.

Nate went on. “The web­site is down, and even if some­one rings to place an order by phone, with the com­put­ers down we can’t do any­thing.”

Jock was clear­ly not thrilled about this. “So we’re screwed?”

Nate shrugged. “Until the pow­er comes back on yeah.” He paused. “Even if we had that gen­er­a­tor you want­ed, that would only give us an hour of pow­er.”

Nate looked at his watch. It was 3.14pm. The chance that he would get out of here before five today were almost non-exis­tent.

Jock shock his head. “Mains will prob­a­bly be back on in an hour.”

“Wan­na bet?” Nate asked as he walked over to the door.

Jock­’s reply was drowned out but deaf­en­ing boom of thun­der.

This sort of thing had hap­pened to Jock before. 29 times before. He only remem­bered three. The human mem­o­ry is a fick­le thing, and he did­n’t even remem­ber that he did­n’t remem­ber.

On the occa­sions he did­n’t remem­ber he had sim­ple repeat­ed what­ev­er he had been say­ing that got drowned out by the back­ground noise. Some­times this had been the right thing to say, some­times it had­n’t.

How­ev­er three times in his life he had stopped, recon­sid­ered and changed his mind. Coin­ci­den­tal­ly all three times this had turned out to be the best thing to do. These were the only three occa­sions that Jock remem­bered.

To Jock this was proof pos­i­tive. Every sin­gle time he had had to repeat him­self due to loud noise, chang­ing what he said had been the right thing to do. It was the only option. His poor mem­o­ry was proof of that.

So as Nate polite­ly wait­ed for the thun­der to pass and asked the seem­ing­ly sim­ple ques­tion. “What was that?” There was noth­ing sim­ple or accu­rate about the thoughts that bounced through Jock­’s brain.

“Err, noth­ing. Just let me know when every­thing is back online.” Jock answered.

Nate went back to his office, stop­ping at the front desk and the lit­tle wait­ing vestibule to pick up an old news­pa­per. He fold­ed the paper open to the cross­word sec­tion and realise Scar­let had already fin­ished the cross­word. Per­haps ‘fin­ished’ was­n’t the right word, filled-in was more accu­rate. She always wrote ran­dom colours and num­bers into the cross­words.

One hour and four min­utes lat­er the lights came back on. Time to get to work. Nate head­ed to the broom clos­et he mock­ing­ly called the ‘serv­er room’, and start­ed the process of bring­ing the web­site back online.

Jock opened the door as Nate was down on his hands and knees reset­ting the pow­er suply. The over­ly tight yel­low shirt rid­ing up and lit­tle, and Nate’s jeans rid­ing down, reveal­ing his plumbers-crack.

Jock, just like any­one else in this posi­tion could­n’t help but look. As he did he noticed a large mole above Nate’s left but­tock.

He point­ed at the mole. “You should get that looked at, it looks can­cer­ous.”

Nate yelped in sur­prise at Jock being there, and at the com­ment Jock had made. He tried to twist around to see what Jock was point­ing at.

“Are you seri­ous?”

Jock nodes. “I nev­er jock about can­cer. Just got your doc­tor to have a look at it.”

Nate stood up and dust­ed his knees off as the sev­ers start­ed to hum back to life.

“Great, just what I need­ed.” Nate checked the com­put­er screen and nod­ded. “The web­site will be back online in about 10 min­utes.”

Jock wound­ed off, sat­is­fied that his super­vi­sion had fixed the prob­lem, and went to find some­thing else that need­ed his man­age­ment.

Nate twist­ed around, try­ing to look at the spot on his low­er back, but it was in just the wrong place. He went to the men’s room to check it in the mir­ror. Small, black, irreg­u­lar shaped mole. Had it always been there? Had it always been that shape? He would have to get it looked at.

5.29pm and Nate was still at his desk, the web­site up and run­ning smooth­ly, every­thing going as it should. He could final­ly go home and relax after the strange day.

He looked out the win­dow. It was still rain­ing. He pulled on his damp shirt over the top of the bright yel­low t‑shirt, picked up his shoul­der bag and his rain­bow umbrel­la and head­ed out into the rain.

A 5 minute to the sta­tion, a 10 minute wait for the train, a 12 minute train ride into town, change train, 6 minute more wait­ing, a 18 minute train ride home, and final­ly a 4 minute walk to his flat.

He climbed the three flights of stair to the top floor apart­ment, side the key into the lock and turned it, and stopped.

“Ah crap.” He shout­ed to him­self, sud­den­ly remem­ber­ing his date plans for the evening. He had planned to stop in the city and get a new shirt. He looked at his watch. 6.27 not enough time. He pushed the apart­ment door open and went inside.

Before he got three steps in the door he was stopped by his flat­mate. Glen.

Glen was a nice guy, a real­ly nice guy, a bit of a flake, but a nice guy. With­out a doubt the best flat­mate Nate had ever had. And Nate had had a few in the past few years. But Glen was camp­i­est lit­tle queen Nate had ever meet.

“Okay, before you freak out, it’s not as bad as it looks.”

Nate frowned and raised an eye­brow. “What’s not as bad as it looks?”

“The dam­age.”

Nate’s frown deep­ened. “What dam­age.”

Glen point­ed towards the kitchen. “From that super scary hail storm.”

Nate dumped his bag and umbrel­la in the hall­way and stepped into the kitchen. The win­dow had been smashed, and sev­er­al plates and cups were shat­tered on the floor among the win­dow glass.

Glen walked into the kitchen too, pulling on a pair of kitchen gloves.

“Bro­ken stuff.” Glen said, as if that was some­how help­ful.

Nate nod­ded.

“Do I, just put all the bits in the bin?”

Nate nod­ded again.

“And then… mop or some­thing?”

Nate nod­ded. “Yeah… and I’ll find some­thing to put over the bro­ken win­dow.”

Half an hour lat­er, the mess all cleaned up and Nate had tapped a large piece of card­board over the win­dow. It was­n’t a good solu­tion, but it would see the night through.

Nate slumped down on the couch and Glen turned on the tel­ly.

“So… what you up to tonight Nate?”

Nate shrugged and then yelled. “Oh crap.” He got back to his feet and rushed to his room. “I’ve got a date tonight.”

Glen frowned and turned the tel­ly off again. “Did you just say ‘date’.”

Nate’s dashed across the small apart­ment, unbut­ton­ing his still damp work shirt as he walked into the bath­room. “Yeah, and I’ve got noth­ing to wear.”

Glen smirked. “OMG, you are gay after all.”

Nate stuck his head out of the bath­room door. “Why does every­one always think I’m straight?”

Glen shrugged. “That does­n’t mat­ter right now. Right now you have to tell me every­thing, about this date, about this guy… it is a guy right?”

Nate grum­bled from the bath­room. “Yes it’s a guy. Fine. I’ll tell you, but you have to lend me a shirt to wear.”

—
Sto­ry con­tin­ues in part 6.

Part of my cre­ative writ­ing class. Week­ly Assign­ment 6.

After lunch Nate found it dif­fi­cult to con­cen­trate. Ner­vous­ness about the evenings date kept him for focus­ing on his work. He need­ed some­thing to take his mind of it.

Cof­fee.

He reached for the half full mug on his desk, lift­ed it to his lips and sipped. Cold cof­fee filled his mouth and he spat it back into the mug, real­is­ing he had made the cof­fee hours ago. Time for a refill.

The rain con­tin­ued to pour down on the fac­to­ries tin roof, fill­ing the build­ing with loud sooth­ing sounds. Much bet­ter than the con­tin­u­os christ­mas music that was piped though the fac­to­ries PA sys­tem.

He returned to his office, fresh cof­fee in hand and was sur­prised to find his boss wait­ing for him. More wor­ry­ing was that his boss was idling turn­ing the pack­age on Nate’s desk over and exam­in­ing it.

“Can I help you Jock?”

The old man jumped slight­ly, hav­ing been caught doing some­thing he should­n’t. He turned and frowned notic­ing Nate’s shirt­less­ness.

“Um, yeah, Scar­let said you got a pack­age.”

Nate nod­ded. “Yes. For me. Just some­thing I brought online.”

Nate reached over and picked up the pack­age and put it in his shoul­der bag under the desk as he final­ly fig­ure out what Jock was look­ing for.

“Is the new pro­to­type sup­posed to get here today?”

Jock nod­ded.

“Well, I’m sure it will turn up. I’m keen to see this thing myself.”

Jock nod­ded again. “Okay, well you will let me know if you get it.”

Nate shrugs. “Won’t it be addressed to you?”

Jock shrugged back. “The elves don’t always get this stuff right.” And he turned and left the room.

The rain start­ed to ease out­side and the sounds of ‘Jin­gle Bells’ Caribbean style could be heard through the loud­speak­ers. Nate reached over and turned on his radio to lis­ten to some­thing else, any­thing else.

He sipped at his cof­fee.

Scar­let knocked on his door and he frowns.

“Yes Miss Scar­let?”

She smiled and toss­es a bright yel­low t‑shirt at Nate.

“Found this in the store room.”

Nate lift­ed the shirt up and looked at it. On the shirt in gar­ish green and red let­ters is read: “Maxwell’s Where it’s Christ­mas every­day!”

“Um, thanks.”

Scar­let just shrugged. “Incase your shirt isn’t dry in time.”

Nate raised an eye­brow. “Well, i guess I could turn it inside out or some­thing. Thank Scar­let.”

Scar­let smiled bright­ly. “No prob­lems sug­ar.” And she turned and bounced off down the hall­way.

Nate eyed his trash bin, but decid­ed that would­n’t look good if Jock came back in, he shrugged and pulled the t‑shirt on, find­ing it was a size too small and hugs tight to his body. He was­n’t sure if this was bet­ter or worse than going shirt­less.

He was about to pull the shirt back over his head when he heard shout­ing from the oth­er end of the hall­way.

“Its hear, its hear!” bel­lowed Jock­’s voice.

An appear­ance at these sort of events was manda­to­ry. He had learnt that on his first week on the job.

Every­one gath­ered in the meet­ing room, a lit­tle over 20 peo­ple, squeezed into a room meant to hold 12. Nate looked around, some were like him and only turned up at these unveil­ings out of oblig­a­tion. Oth­ers, like Jock him­self, were actu­al­ly gen­uine­ly eager to see what the next major devel­op­ment in christ­mas dec­o­ra­tion tech­nol­o­gy was.

Jock was too eager to wait, he opened the large box and dove his arms into the poly­styrene pack­ag­ing peanuts and pulled out a tru­ly grotesque 2ft tall san­ta stat­ue.

Jock set it down on the table. The san­ta look old and stooped over, his cloak and clothes dark brown, his hair and beard unkept, a large hock nose and a grin that said “I’m going to steal your chil­dren” on his face.

Nate had nev­er seen such an un-christ­mas christ­mas dec­o­ra­tion. He loved it.

Jock was exam­in­ing it in great detail. To Nate’s total sur­prise Jocks first com­ment was:

“I expect­ed it to be ugli­er than that.”

Nobody else said any­thing, it seemed every­one was a lit­tle sur­prised at the idea of an ugly dec­o­ra­tion.

In this awk­ward silence blast­ed a flash of light­ning, fol­lowed less than a sec­ond lat­er by a loud boom of thun­der.

Then the lights went out.

Nate turned and ran out of the room and down the hall­ways and into the small util­i­ty clos­et that now housed the web serv­er. The machine was beep­ing loud­ly, its back­up bat­tery only good for 5 min­utes at most.

Nate pushed the big red ’emer­gency shut down’ but­ton. The but­ton did­n’t do any­thing, it was­n’t hocked up. But it felt good to press it any­way. He the pushed the small sil­ver but­ton on the front of each machine caus­ing them to save and shut­down safe­ly.

Anoth­er rum­ble of thun­der echoed through the build­ing.

Then the hail start­ed.

—
Sto­ry con­tin­ues in part 5.

Part of my cre­ative writ­ing class. Week­ly Assign­ment 5.

Nate walked back to his office, set the pack­age down on his desk and exam­ined the card. Turn­ing the small cheap busi­ness card over in his fin­gers, exam­in­ing the hand writ­ten phone num­ber.

His mind was fix­at­ed with the ten dig­its. Before he could stop him­self images of ‘hap­pi­ly ever after’ flood­ed his imag­i­na­tion. Bri­an and him buy­ing a small apart­ment in Bronte, grow­ing old togeth­er and spend­ing evening hav­ing din­ner par­ties and enter­tain­ing the friends that a cou­ple would have. Feel­ings of a per­fect first date, where every sen­tence Bri­an says is wry and clever and insight­ful, and Nate hav­ing the per­fect response.

He turned the card over again.

Visions of the worst date of all time flashed through his mind equal­ly unbid­den. What if he made a fool of him­self, what if Bri­an was a moron. What if his par­ents didn’t like him. What if they spit up in ten years time and couldn’t decid­ed who should keep the dog.

He turned the card over again.

He looked at the sim­ple phone num­ber. The one though that rang true in his head was:

“Your 29. And this is the first time that any­one has ever giv­en you their num­ber.”

There was a knock on his door and Nate looked up. Scar­let was stand­ing in his door­way.

“So?”

Nate frowned. “So what?”

Scar­let smiled. “So, its been 20 min­utes.”

Nate blinked and glanced at his watch.

“Are you going to ring him or not?”

Nate looked at the card.

“What if your wrong, what if he wasn’t hit­ting on me?”

Scar­let shrugged. “What if I’m not?” She smiled and then reached over and pulled the door closed, leav­ing Nate in his small office alone, shirt­less, and resolved to make the call.

He picked up the phone and punched in 4 dig­its, got the 5th dig­it wrong and slammed the phone down ner­vous­ly.

He tried again, this time mak­ing it all the way to the end and wait­ing for the phone to answer.

“Er, hi, is that Bri­an?”

Nate lis­tened close­ly, his eye­brows fur­row with the stress.

“It’s Nate here, the, um, shirt­less guy.”

He paused and his pos­ture tens­ing a lit­tle.

“Um, no, I haven’t opened it yet. Um, I was won­der­ing-” he stopped, inter­rupt­ed.

“Yeah, cof­fee.” He nod­ded to him­self.

“New­town?” He nod­ded again.

“Yeah I know the place. What-” inter­rupt­ed again.

“Okay. See you then.”

He hung up the phone and sighed and slumped into his chair.

That had actu­al­ly gone a lot bet­ter than expect­ed. He glanced at his still damp shirt. It was actu­al­ly his best shirt and he had noth­ing clean at home to wear. More prob­lems. Was it overkill to buy a new shirt for a date?

Nate sat back in his chair and notices his still untouched sand­wich. Final­ly, time for lunch.

—
Sto­ry con­tin­ues in part 4.

Part of my cre­ative writ­ing class. Week­ly Assign­ment 4.

Nate looked down at his cof­fee soaked busi­ness shirt and then at his emp­ty cof­fee mug. The wet shirt did­n’t real­ly both­er him, but the emp­ty mug did.

He put the mug into the sink and unbut­toned his shirt and took it off.

Scar­let made her­self a cup of hot water and dropped in a sug­ar cube while she watched Nate dis­robe. She made a point of look­ing him up and down.

“Not bad for a nerd.”

Nate smiled as he put the plug in the sink and turned on the taps. “Thanks, I think.” He replied as he soaked his shirt in the warm water.

Scar­let sipped at her sug­ar water and shrugged and left Nate to do his laun­dry.

With a fresh cup of instant cof­fee, and his wet shirt over his shoul­der, Nate final­ly made it back to his office. He hung the shirt up in the hope that it would dry before the end of the day. Know­ing it was unlike­ly, a prob­lem to wor­ry about lat­er.

Despite the lack of a shirt it was time to get to work. Check­ing the web­site and his emails kept him busy for a few hours. A few peo­ple came up to his door, as if about to ask him a ques­tion. But they would notice he was sit­ting semi-naked at this desk and they would just turn around and leave again. He actu­al­ly got a lot more work done than usu­al.

Around lunch time he checked the shirt, it was still damp, and it was still rain­ing heav­i­ly out­side. Sand­wich at his desk for lunch.

Again.

Just as he was about to take his first bite, his inter­com buzzed and Scar­let’s voice filled his small office.

“Nate, deliv­ery here for you, guy wants you to sign for it.”

He set his untouched sand­wich down and reached over and pushed the buzzer. “I’ll be right out.”

The deliv­ery guy smirked at Nate’s lack of shirt an hand­ed Nate the elec­tron­ic-clip­board.

“Nice out­fit.” He said.

“Er, thanks.” Replied Nate as he glanced at the deliv­ery guy.

He was short­er than aver­age, fit­ter than aver­age, his wet uni­form show­ing of than it should, sandy brown hair that did­n’t look nat­ur­al and bright green eyes that did­n’t look nat­ur­al either, the creas­es around his eyes when he smiled said he was over 30, but not by much, his name badge read ‘Bri­an’, but he did­n’t look like a Bri­an.

Nate signed the clip­board and took the pack­age and was about to leave, when the deliv­ery guy, Bri­an, stopped him.

“Oh, and here’s my card.” Bri­an said, scrib­bling a phone num­ber on the back and hand­ing it to Nate. “In case there are any, erm, prob­lems.”

Nate frowned at the card and shrugged. “Okay then. Thanks.”

The deliv­ery guy turned and bound­ed down the stairs two at a time, and head­ed back out into the rain.

Nate was still look­ing at the card. “That was a lit­tle weird, right?”

Scar­let smiled look­ing over the edge of her news­pa­per. “Only if you think get­ting hit-on by a super cute man in uni­form is ‘weird’.”

Nate looked up. “He was hit­ting on me?”

Scar­let added a thir­teen to her sudoku. “I was flirt­ing with him, yet you end­ed up with his num­ber, its not rock­et sci­ence you know.”

Nate nod­ded. “No, much more com­pli­cat­ed.” And he turned and head­ed out of the room.

From behind him Scar­let shout­ed out. “Wait 20 min­utes, ring him, ask him for a cof­fee, tonight. If he says yes, can­cel what­ev­er bor­ing thing you were going to do.”

Nate stoped at the door and looked back at her. “Real­ly?”

Scar­let shrugged. “Or you could do noth­ing at all and go home tonight and play com­put­er games. Up to you. But next time you feel lone­ly you’ll know it was because you could­n’t make a phone call.”

Nate walked back to his office, even less sure what to make of Scar­let.

—
Sto­ry con­tin­ues in part 3.

Part of my cre­ative writ­ing class. Week­ly Assign­ment 3.

He walked through the morn­ing city rain under a small rain­bow coloured umbrel­la that was clear­ly not the sort of umbrel­la he would nor­mal­ly have used. His most­ly dull blue and black clothes con­trast­ed with the bright rain­bow of the umbrel­la. His shoes and the low­er half of his jeans were soaked.

Five min­utes ear­li­er he at the train-sta­tion with all the oth­er ill-pre­pared com­muters as the rain had start­ed. He had looked at his watch and then back to the sky, try­ing to deter­mine if he could wait out the down­pour. But he was already run­ning a few min­utes late. The only thing for it was to buy an over­priced umbrel­la from the near­by con­ve­nience store and con­tin­ue on.

So he arrived at the old fac­to­ry, most­ly wet any­way and with an umbrel­la he would prob­a­bly nev­er use again. He stood under a small awning and pushed the inter­com but­ton. The small speak­er hummed soft­ly and then splut­tered sta­t­ic.

A dis­tort­ed voice crack­led through the sta­t­ic. “Maxwell’s Christ­mas Fac­to­ry.”

“Jen­ny, it’s Nate.”

More sta­t­ic: “Jenny’s’not in today. Who is it?”

He leaned in clos­er to the speak­er grill. “Nate, Nathaniel.”

The sta­t­ic blast­ed again. “Nate’s not in yet.”

He actu­al­ly groaned. “No. I’m Nate. Come on, I’ve worked here for 4 months, its pour­ing down out here, just let me in.”

Noth­ing, not even sta­t­ic. He leaned against the door as he reached into his pock­et to retrieve his phone. The door buzzed as it unlocked and swung open behind him, he fell through and land­ed on his butt in a pud­dle of water on the cold con­crete floor.

He cursed loud­ly, got back to his feet and slammed the door closed behind. The sound echoed through the emp­ty fac­to­ry floor and for­got­ten machines, it had been over a decade since this fac­to­ry had actu­al­ly made any­thing. He tried to brush him­self off and head­ed up the stairs to the offices.

At the front desk sat the over­ly perky Scar­let. She smiled sweet­ly.

“Oh, Nate, it’s you.”

He nod­ded. “Yeah, me, wet, but still me.” He smiled back, hap­py to at least be in out of the weath­er. Even after 4 months he didn’t know what to make of Scar­let, she was always hap­py and sin­cere, but total­ly inef­fi­cient and unable to do the sim­plest of office tasks. He had no idea why she still had a job.

He head­ed into his office, set­ting down the very wet rain­bow umbrel­la and tak­ing off his most­ly wet jack­et. He push­es the ‘pow­er’ but­ton on the com­put­er and picks up his emp­ty cof­fee mug and leav­ing the com­put­er to start­up as he makes his way to the small kitch­enette at the end of the long nar­row hall.

First cof­fee of the day. Only instant, but still very impor­tant, as was the rit­u­al of mak­ing it. He turns quick­ly, fresh hot cof­fee in his mug, to return to his office and runs into Scar­let as she walks into the kitch­enette. Hot cof­fee goes all over his shirt.

“Oh, opps, that was clum­sy.” Scar­let smiles and push­es past him.

He could just tell. It was going to be one of those days.

—
Sto­ry con­tin­ues in part 2.

Part of my cre­ative writ­ing class. Week­ly Assign­ment 2.