The Little Voice by Joss Sheldon

Author:Joss Sheldon [Sheldon, Joss]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-11-22T23:00:00+00:00

SIXTEEN

I was good at my job. I wasn’t the best fundraiser, but I was far from the worst. I usually found myself in the top five of the leader-board which ranked us according to the ‘sales’ we’d made.

That made me feel proud. It made me feel warm and cosy.

I needed to be good. Fundraisers who didn’t meet their targets weren’t ‘offered any more work’. They weren’t sacked, as such, they just stopped being employed.

But I’m not sure that my success ever made me happy. It’s not that it made me unhappy, please understand. It’s just that I didn’t really feel anything at all. I suppose you could say I was apathetic.

Gone were the highs. Beethoven never provided a soundtrack for my soul. My heart never surged and my adrenaline never pumped.

And gone were the lows; the punishments; the dread, pain and fear.

I think it was the egot’s absence which bred that apathy.

You may have noticed that I haven’t mentioned the egot during the last few pages. And that may seem strange to you. The first half of my story totally revolved around that character, and now it’s completely disappeared. I’ve barely mentioned it. Perhaps that seems odd. Peculiar. Inconsistent. Perhaps it’s left you feeling a little unfulfilled.

But the truth is that the egot didn’t play a role in my adult life. I barely thought of it. I pretty much forgot that it had ever existed. I never heard its little voice. And that’s why the egot is absent in these chapters.

Well, when the egot died it took my dissidence with it. My free-spirit. It took my ability to break free from my shackles. My ability to feel like I was on top of the world. And it also took the crushing pain I felt whenever I was reprimanded and punished. The anxiety and distress. It took the highs and the lows.

I was left with an extreme sort of neutrality. A sort of neutrality which sucked every ounce of life from my being. But a sort of neutrality which, at the same time, also pretended to be my friend. I was grateful for it. I was grateful for being able to get by, steadily, without ever experiencing any emotional extremes such as elation or euphoria, despair or fear.

That neutrality bred a certain sort of numbness within me.

Days merged into weeks and weeks merged into years. The present ate the past and then excreted the future. I literally killed time; lining up coloured sweets on my phone, reading trashy stories, and completing the daily Sudoku. Putting a ‘nine’ in this box and a ‘two’ in that one.

Every day was the same.

I spent an hour getting ready for work, an hour travelling to work, nine hours at work, and an hour travelling home. By the time I got back, I’d be so tired that I’d just eat my dinner, watch some dumbed-down television and browse the internet. I’d fall asleep. Then I’d wake up and repeat the whole process again the next day.

Living that way helped me to fit in.

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