Silas leaned back in his chair, stretching and yawning. Turning to his co-worker next to him he said, "Hey, I'm going to go take a break, see if I can wake up."
Keith looked at him and grunted an affirmative.
Silas yawned again as he pulled his keys out and opened the locked door leading out of the resident hall and into the rest of the building. It had been two months since he had started working on the night shift, and he still had not gotten used to the crazy sleep schedule.
As he walked towards the bathroom something caught his attention in the corner of his eye. He turned quickly in that direction, peering out the large floor to ceiling window to the outside, searching for whatever had caught his attention.
The shadowy landscape out the window, barely illuminated by the soft pools of light from a couple of nearby street lights, revealed nothing to his scanning eyes. After a few seconds he shrugged and turned to continue down the hall. It was probably just one of the stray cats that hung around the building.
The bathroom light flickered on and off a couple of times before resolving into a solid, humming glare. Silas shook his head in annoyance. The maintenance worker here was really slow about getting things fixed. Though in all fairness there was a lot of stuff broken in Pickman Hills Center.
After washing his hands he turned the faucet to cold and left it running. He looked at his face in the mirror, sighing at the dark circles under his bloodshot eyes. He had to do something to get his sleeping back under control.
He cupped his hands under the flow of cold water and splashed his face. With his eyes closed he splashed his face again and then groped for the paper towels. Drying his face off with a couple he opened his eyes and jumped back as he met the gaze of a striped tabby, staring out at him from the other side of the mirror.
"Hello," said the cat, grinning broadly.
They say write what you know, and you know all about sleep deprivation! Cool story.
ReplyDelete