Hell's Circus: One in purgatory one in prison two battles, fought alone by Dan Garrett

Author:Dan Garrett [Garrett, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-04-13T00:00:00+00:00

DAY FORTY-THREE – Friday, 27th March

Marty shivered in his shirtsleeves as the rain hammered on the roof of the plastic smoking shelter and bounced off the ground, soaking his new shoes.

Two other dejected wretches from Accounts were huddled with him for the five-minute smoke break, but neither had anything to say. Eyes to the ground, they inhaled hot smoke as if their lives depended on it.

The figures had to be in by the last Friday of each month, and the pressure was crushing. Fingers trembling on his lighter, Marty lit a second cigarette and rocked on the spot. The other men eyed him warily, so he stuffed his left hand into his trouser pocket and pinched his thigh through the fabric. Physical pain usually helped him channel emotional distress elsewhere, but his mind was overwhelmed. He’d inherited a massive backlog of work from someone on sick leave and could scarcely understand the man’s writing. The boss didn’t want excuses, though – he seemed to expect miracles. No human being could have finished that spreadsheet by the close of play, but the man didn’t seem able to grasp that fact. With only one day’s training, he’d been expected to get on with it, but the team was chronically short-staffed, and no one had time to help …

He kicked gently at a chunk of broken tarmac, recalling how excited he’d been to get off CMP’s Welfare-to-Work scheme and become a ‘normal’ staff member rather than the token employee with special needs.

Now, though, his stimming was back with a vengeance, and his confidence was in tatters.

He checked the time on his phone. Two minutes remained. Soon, he would have to forge back in and cope with four more insanely unpleasant hours. Staff members were crammed in side-by-side, invading his personal space, and no one understood how horrifying he found the concept of ‘hot-desking’. He’d gone to all the trouble of sanitising his work area and setting his seat to the correct height just to learn that another employee sat there at weekends. With office space at a premium, they had to share, meaning that come Monday morning, he’d have to arrive early and once again clean and reset everything to suit his needs. Loneliness flooded his heart, but he scolded himself silently. He’d asked for the job, hadn’t he? Jumped at the opportunity without even checking the place out. And some people were in a far worse situation. At least he wasn’t eating slop in a grim prison with bars at the windows …

He checked his phone again, hoping for a happy distraction, but there were no more messages from the family. They’d all sent good wishes on his first morning, but they’d left him to it after that. And understandably so, when they had busy lives to get on with.

He skimmed a dry tongue over even drier lips.

Smoking always left him thirsty, and for the fifth day on the trot, he wondered how to secure a drink. On Monday morning, a big

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.