From the prompt: “Begin your story with a character having a gut feeling they cannot explain.”

There it was again, that feeling. It was turning my stomach. Was it something I ate? 

I got up from my desk and stretched. Quickly looking around at my colleagues all staring at their screens, I looked at the time. Only 11am. I sighed to myself. 

I grabbed my branded company mug and slowly walked through the office floor. Nodding to people along the way. 

What am I going to have for dinner tonight? I knew I had a full fridge of ingredients but the idea of going home at the end of the work day and spending another hour not laying down in front of the TV was entirely fatiguing just to imagine. I smiled to myself sarcastically. 

I walked into the small office kitchenette and poured myself a cup of coffee. As I was spooning sugar into my cup someone walked in behind me.

“Hi, Jane!”

I turned around with a smile readily pasted across my face to return the greeting. Roy, who worked a few cubicles over from me, was standing in the doorway.

“Hey Roy. How’s your day going?” I said in my best small talk voice.

“Oh y’know, working on that project we talked about at yesterday’s meeting,” he said as he grabbed a drink from the fridge.

“How’s that coming along?” I asked.

“Good, good…” He trailed off awkwardly.

“That’s good… Doing anything fun for the weekend?” I asked before taking a sip of coffee. I didn’t care but it was the next piece of dialogue in our pre-determined script.

He smiled slightly, “spending time with my family. It’s my daughter’s birthday on Sunday,” he continued, talking about the surprise party his wife had planned and I went back to thinking about what I wanted for dinner. 

I could go to that new italian place that just opened up around the corner and get takeout. Or go to my regular sushi place. 

“…She’s been doing really well at the piano lessons we’ve been sending her to,” he was saying as I tuned him back in, I nodded quickly as if I had been listening the whole time. 

“That’s great!” My voice sounded foreign to my own ears.

“How about you?” He asked, slowly backing away, signaling he was ready to return back to his desk.

“Spend time with my boyfriend, watch some Netflix, maybe go for a day trip to see some friends” I said.

I sat down on the hard plastic chairs surrounding a table and grimaced slightly. The chairs were an obvious attempt to thwart employees like myself taking longer breaks away from our desks, but it wasn’t going to stop me.

“Sounds relaxing!” He said, walking out of the room, “I’ll see you later at the meeting, enjoy your break!”

“Thanks,” I said, the feeling in my gut was coming back again. 

It felt like my insides were being twisted into a braid. The taste of the coffee was making me queasy. I became hyper aware of the fluorescent lights buzzing, the ring of a telephone somewhere feeling miles away.

It was a sudden feeling, a heavy weight on my body, pushing down on me, making me feel exhausted. An overwhelming sense of loneliness, of quiet doom. I closed my eyes for a moment and imagined myself. I’m sitting at home in comfortable clothes, with my favorite food, and my boyfriend sitting next to me. We’d ignore each other and enjoy the comfortable silence, I smiled, my body relaxing slightly.

I felt as if I was a rat trapped in one of those silly mazes, unaware of the higher purpose, unaware of the scientists staring down. Maybe the feeling was the realization that I would be having the same boring conversation with Roy or Leslie or any other colleague every day for the next 30 years. The same off-white walls surrounding me from nine to five, Monday to Friday for that long; it was almost unimaginable.

The money was good, and it meant I had stability. I could be content with the hours at home, the hours I could spend with my boyfriend, or doing ‘whatever I wanted’. But yet it was so overwhelmingly banal. I knew that if I went back to my desk, back to my work the hours would go by faster so I did just that. 

As I sat back down in my ergonomic office chair and stared at the documents open on my screen trying to catch a thread of productivity. After only a few minutes I started smelling something foreign, it smelled like smoke. The low din of chaos slowly got louder, people were getting up from their desks, I could hear yelling and a loud crunching. It was extremely loud but it all sounded so far away. The sickening smell of iron penetrated my brain and then the world was shifting. I was floating and the floor dropped from under me and was angled downwards as if the whole building was just falling over like a domino.

The window which had a view of the other office buildings and gray sky was starting to become the floor and I was falling. Looking up I saw desks, and furniture falling along with me. I felt myself slam through the glass and felt the cool fall air rushing around me. 

The feeling of doom was gone, maybe it was the shock, maybe it was the understanding of what would happen next but that feeling was replaced by a sense of peace.