Prisoner

TW: alcohol dependency

I won’t be able to do that today, I’m sorry.

That’s what she was thinking to herself over and over as she lay in bed that morning.

Apologies, but I won’t be able to do that today.

She stretched out her feet from under the covers and clicked the joints in her ankles. Her body expanded for a moment in satisfaction and then flattened itself out again. The ache around her temples wasn’t so bad this time.

I won’t do that today. I’m not sorry. I don’t apologise.

Her eyes fixated on the ceiling as the shape of the shadows strewn across it gradually shifted. The sun was creeping in behind the blinds and there were long, rectangular blots of darkness striping her ivory painted walls. For a moment it looked like a prison.

I’m a prisoner.

I’m a prisoner trapped inside my own discontent.

She rolled over and let the flickers of sunlight warm her face. In that moment the brightness might have tricked someone into thinking it was summer, she thought.

There was no use setting an alarm in the mornings these days. Her body seemed to know what was coming. Sleeping in late by mistake would not be an issue but more of a blessing. If she were to miss her train then she would get into trouble, trouble that might lead to action. Action that might change her situation. It might even make her feel like she is worth more than the numbers under her name. Worth more than just the secrets she can keep.

She could hear the sound of people on the street outside. It was usually quiet at this time of morning but some people took shortcuts down her road. Most of the other people were probably still sleeping in their homes.

I’m not fucking doing that today.

She let out a yawn and flopped her arms either side of her onto the covers. Then, with a sigh, she plucked herself from the warm bed. She hoisted the blinds, turning her prison into a light box brimming with potential for the day ahead.

--

Seventeen people were in her train carriage that morning. Two she didn’t recognise, but every other face she had seen many times before. One man was on a phone call, like he was most mornings. He was loud and got progressively louder when the train passed through a weak reception area.

She was sat facing two other women, one was looking out of the window with her headphones in. She gets off at the same stop. The other woman was asleep. Closing your eyes on the morning train, even for a second, was a bad idea, she thought. If you liked where you were going, that is.

Maybe I should close my eyes then.

She thought about what she would say when she sat down at her desk. She had to say good morning because it would be rude not to. She had to make niceties with them even though she did not want to. As soon as she took one step into that building, she would conceal her true self. Her eyes would glaze over. Her lips would purse. Her walk would stiffen.

The train pulled up to her stop and she watched as the woman with the headphones gently tapped the sleeping woman next to her. She jolted upright, smiled and shuffled out into the aisle.

Sorry you had to wake up.

--

The building was a short walk from the station. She quite liked this part of the journey. It was an adequate amount of time for her to gather herself before she began her day. This part of the city had less of a rush about it. She could walk at a pace which didn’t feel like she was getting in the way of anyone behind her.

Part of the reason she had put up with what she had for so long was due to the location of where she worked. It gave her some disconnect from the bustle that consumed so many other parts of her life.

The building loomed overhead and she braced herself for what was to come that day. It was a tall building and not unpleasant to look at from the outside. What went on inside told a different story. From the outside you couldn’t smell the lingering stench of a used bottle. You couldn’t hear the clinking of two small glasses crammed inside the desk drawer.

--

She watched from her desk as everyone went about their morning routine. Coffee machines were filling the quiet with their familiar sound. Cups were sliding in and out of the plastic hold, one after another. No one paid much attention to her before they had indulged in their morning caffeine intake. The second for those who had ample time to drink one before they left home.

Then she saw her. Jenny. Walking out of her office, dressed in bright turquoise with heavy black heels. She swept her hair back as she made her way down the corridor, smiling at anyone that fell into her line of sight. Being the boss of a business like this one would wear anyone down. Luckily for her, it didn’t show in how she dressed.

Just in what she did.

The two of them clocked eyes from across the main printing area. Jenny’s eyes lit up and she let out a knowing smile, one that could be identified even from all the way across the room. That look she gave was all too familiar.

I’m not doing that. Today I’m not doing that.

She smiled back at her boss and turned around to her laptop. It was 9:02. It was too early for that look.

--

Shortly before lunch, she started to prepare herself. She had somehow got through the morning without having to go in to Jenny’s office to speak to her. On a busy day, she would have been in and out of there at least three times already by this time.

She wanted to avoid having the conversation all together. Dip out for lunch. Try and time it so she got back into the office after everyone else.

But if you don’t have the conversation now you won’t ever have it.

She was half way out of her chair when she heard her name called out alongside a loud noise. The sound of metal on glass. She turned around to see Jenny opening the door. On her way to open it, she had probably knocked into the blinds, causing one of them to fall down, covering the office from view.

That’s convenient.

She braved a smile as she made eye contact with her boss. There was that look again, this time accompanied by a gesture that was welcoming her inside.

Her body froze up with a tension she had grown to ignore. Today it was unavoidable.

She wanted the words to come out. She had rehearsed them in her head. They shouldn’t be hard to say.

Today. I’m. Not. Doing. That.

Nothing. She loosened her body and uncovered a smile that she didn’t think was there. Then she walked into Jenny’s office.

--

It started a year ago on her first day.

She was learning how to get used to everything, as the systems they used at this place were a slight upgrade from her last job. The people in her team were friendly, if a little disinterested with welcoming another new person. She had got the impression that there had been a fair few people before her who hadn’t lasted that long.

Just before the end of the day, Jenny had called her into her office to go over everything. It was a lot of general chit-chat, a bit of eye-rolling about certain software complexities and it ended with an offering.

Jenny placed two glasses on the desk before her. She pulled out a big, dark-green bottle masking the brown-coloured spirit inside. Before she could object, Jenny was pouring her a glass. She wanted to decline, to tell Jenny that she wasn’t drinking anymore. That she had stopped when she found herself having a glass every night before she went to bed. When she crashed her sister’s car into a lamppost on a late-night run to the shop.

She held the glass and they toasted to a successful day.

Maybe one is fine.

But it turned out to be more than one. What started as a celebratory drink with Jenny, the bright and bubbly, successful business woman, ended up becoming a weekly drink. Every Friday Jenny would call her in, they would toast to the week, good or bad. Jenny began to find out more and more about her life, who she was dating, what she thought about everyone else in the office.

Then the Friday drinks became daily, and after not too long Jenny was calling her into the office during lunch.

She didn’t know how to say no. She had told Jenny things that a boss should not know. But Jenny still didn’t know about the car crash, or about the mornings she would wake up wishing she could remember what she had said the night before. Jenny didn’t know that it made her feel like a prisoner.

--

She closed the office door behind her as Jenny muttered something under her breath about the mess. It was a mess. Stained, sticky rings circled the wooden desk and piles of paper with curled edges littered the sofa. The plant atop the filing cabinet was withered and dead, like the smell lingering from the empty coffee mugs.

Jenny asked her how her day was going so far.

Today I –

Before she could answer, Jenny started talking about how ugly the receptionist’s hair was today. She was wearing a new colour that she had had done the day before. Jenny made a comparison to a rusted saw that ‘you might find in the back of the garden shed’.

She was uncapping the freshly bought bottle, probably picked up on the way in that morning.

You were in the shop buying alcohol before I had even left my bed.

As the drink slid into the glass, the rich and robust smell of toxicity filled the air. She looked at the level rising, the measurement increasing with the amount of time that would be needed to finish it.

She wanted to put her hand out and cover the bottle. She wanted to push the glass off of the table. She didn’t want it but she didn’t know how to say she didn’t.

I am not. I’m –

The room had gone silent. She hadn’t responded to a single word Jenny had said since she had entered the office. She hadn’t even sat down. Now the silence had crept up on her. Jenny was staring at her.

Right then there was so much that needed to be said. There was a silence that needed to be filled with small talk, with drinking and toasting to unnecessary achievements or commiserations. But suddenly she saw in Jenny’s face all she needed to make her act. To make her walk into the trouble.

Jenny sat, head back and slightly angled to show a look of confusion. Her whole body was illuminated by the midday sun outside, the rays of orange lighting up her whole complexion. So bright, so piercing in their revelations. As her boss stared on in disbelief that her companion was blankly ignoring everything she said, long rectangular shapes darkened and striped her whole body.

In that exact moment, Jenny; the powerful, vibrant boss clutching her glass of room temperature scotch looked like a prisoner. Just like the ceiling in her bedroom this morning.

Jenny was behind bars, her own bars that she put up herself. She couldn’t get out because her fellow inmate was keeping her going, enabling her problem, extending her sentence.

This time she knew what she needed to say. There was no moment before then that was more perfect.

“I’m not doing that today.

“I’m not doing that with you today or any day. This isn’t normal behaviour. We are prisoners to it, Jenny. There needs to be a point where we say ‘enough’.

Jenny sat in silence, the drink inside the glass still swirling from being poured mere seconds before.

“I actually only agreed to come in here today because I wanted to tell you that I am leaving. This place is not good for me. I wake up every day and feel like I’m already sliding down the neck of that horrible bottle before I have even brushed my teeth”.

There was silence in the room again except for the faint sound of people outside the building, heading to have lunch. She could feel herself moving with them. She could sense her feet taking light strides with everyone else unconsumed by Jenny’s poisonous habit. Her poisonous habit.

She had been treading the dark waters of this room for so long she was close to drowning. Now she could feel herself beginning to swim.

She breathed out a deep sigh that felt like it had drained the tension away. She felt warm, in her mind and in her body. She felt like she had broken out of jail and, from the look in Jenny’s eyes as she backed out of her office door, no one was going to stop her.