"W....."
"WRE.."
"WREN."
Wren jolted upright, her senses slowly coming back to her. Her eyes now wide open. They burned from the shallow, exhausted sleep she'd slipped into without meaning to. She subconsciously rubbed her neck, trying to ease the throbbing caused by the angle she'd collapsed into.
The office lights hummed overhead, a sharp bright white light cold and unforgiving.
She groaned as she turned her chair with a leg that had long gone numb and asleep before her senses were fully aware of the presence beside her.
The figure standing over her was the same one that haunted her every anxious morning. A presence the office felt before anyone ever saw.
Her boss.
His face was flushed a permanent angry red and veins crawled up his neck as if straining toward his temples. His eyes small, sharp, and beady, almost rodent like, were hidden behind thick black smudged glasses. He was a small, stout man, whose older age showed.
Age hadn't softened him; it had turned him into something ugly, jagged, and merciless. His mouth curled downward, as if displeasure was the only expression the world allowed him to take, and it was the only one Wren had ever seen.
Her stomach tightened at the sight of him, and her pulsed spiked in a familiar awful way that only ever associated with him. She sat frozen, waiting.
"Sleeping, while you're behind," he said, voice hoarse and rough, scraping her ears in an unpleasant way. "For the second time this week Wren." He spat her name like venom.
She kept her eyes low, shoulders tightening as every word landed like a blow. She did not mean to fall asleep, it's just that lately exhaustion seemed to linger even with proper rest. One second, she was doing corrections and the next she was pulled into the darkness of dreamless sleep.
The office around her shifted and quickly quieted. No one dared to make a peep. No one dared to look directly at the boss.
But they looked at her.
Soft pitying glances flickered and vanished before her boss could notice. He dropped a thick folder onto her desk. The thud making her flinch and recoil slightly from the impact on the desk.
"You need to finish all of this tonight," he said. "The reports, the revision, the projections, everything. And don't forget the corrections to the revisions you submitted last week."
Wren's throat tightened. "Tonight..All of it?" her voice was barely above a whisper as she gazed at the stack of papers.
His eyes narrowed behind smudged glasses, "Is there a problem?"
Wren swallowed hard. "No, sir.."
He stared at her for a moment longer, long enough for her skin to crawl, long enough for her breath to stutter.
The office watched with heads down as he huffed, "Get to work then."
Her boss then turned, and walked away down the office corridor, disappearing behind a doorway that connected the office to the main hall. His footsteps slow, heavy, and demanding
A moments later the office stirred to life again. Typing continued, clicking sounds erupted, and paper fluttered.
Behind all that she heard the whispers.
"She fell asleep again…"
"At this point she practically volunteers to be his punching bag.…"
"He's going to tear her apart next time…"
"He dumped all his extra work on her again..."
"No wonder she's so exhausted..."
The words weren't meant to hurt, but they did. They pressed against her ribs, heavy and suffocating. Wren sat alone, surrounded by the weight of everything she couldn't carry anymore. Her hands trembled as she reached for her mouse.
Time passed, and hours went by. The office emptied slowly.
Chairs scraped back and computers clicked off one by one. Soft murmurs drifted through the room, not conversation, but quiet tired groans and grievances of the day followed by simple goodbyes.
A few coworkers paused glancing her way with soft helpless expressions.
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Someone whispered, "Honestly? I wouldn't be surprised if she just stopped showing up one day...." but it sounded like a prayer, not advice.
Wren kept her eyes on her screen, though the numbers blurred and swam. She heard every word anyway.
The door closed behind the last person.
Silence finally settled over the office. Heavy, stale, and suffocating.
Wren sat alone beneath the humming lights, surrounded by the heavy folders and towering stacks of paper. She forced herself to keep typing, even as her hands trembled and her vision swam. Hours passed in a blur of numbers, corrections, and the quiet sound of her own breathing.
By the time she finished, the sky outside had long fallen dark on the now quiet city, and through the putrid brown tinted haze that hugged the city like a thick blanket, a few stars dazzled in the night sky.
Her legs felt unsteady as she stood and her coat felt heavier than usual. She walked out of the building with the slow dragging steps of someone who had nothing more to give.
Wren gazed at the sky as she slowly made her way down the street. She slowly released a cold exhausted breath, which escaped in front of her in a small cloud of warm air fighting against the cold of the night, as she wrapped her arms around herself a little harder than she did before.
As she walked, fluorescent buzzing lights of a nearby convenience store shone ahead like a beacon in the night, growing sharper and more mind-numbing the closer she got.
Her mind was foggy with exhaustion as she wandered inside and scanned the aisles without really seeing them. She picked up a frozen microwaveable dish with a long faded 50% off sticker on it, and a small bottle of cold green tea. A bland, forgettable meal, but a cheap one, and one that would fill her empty stomach.
She quickly checked out, then started the walk back home in the cold, clutching the small plastic bag like it was the last thing tethering her to this world.
She had walked a few streets down before she hurried inside a worn-down apartment building.
The building was a bland five story building smushed between two more modern looking apartment complexes. It had cracks that ran the dirty reddish-brown brick walls and ivy threatening to take over the lower floors.
The courtyard, if you could call it that, was a cracked concrete slab, that looked aged and worn down from exposure to the elements over countless years. Weeds waged war for the little space left along the edges of the slab. The dim outside light flickered, and a scent of mildew and decay permeated the air closest to the front door and windows.
Wren rushed inside as the chilling air snapped at her ankles.
The main hallway was small and narrow, with peeling lament flooring, and dirty unkept wallpaper that looked like it was dissolving into nothingness.
Near the front entrance was a small staircase leading up to the apartments. Sitting next to it was the apartment mailboxes, a large rusty container with compartments for each apartment.
As exhaustion shook her to her core, she used her shaky hands to open the lockbox stationed by the front door with her apartment number 301 on it. The mailbox creaked as she opened it. Inside sat a messy stack of envelopes and notices.
A single bland white envelope sat on top of the pile, it had her name printed neatly on the front, and a return address being the clinic she had visited weeks ago.
Her stomach dropped as she carried the envelope with shaky hands up the stairs and into her apartment. Her apartment was situated on the third floor, it was dim, quiet, and too small.
It was a simple one room apartment. That was it. The bathroom was at the end of the hall, and was shared with the rest of the floor. In the right corner of the small room was a bed covered in aged, faded blankets that Wren used to fight the cold that seeped into the walls every winter.
The left corner of the room housed a small desk and chair, and sitting beside it was a small wooden dresser with a microwave resting on top of it. The tops both littered with the few personal belongings Wren had. The only other thing in the room was a small bookcase that hugged the wall closest to the door. It looked like it could collapse at any moment and send the contents flying. It was held up with loose nails, duct-tape, and prayers.
The inside of the bookcase held Wrens most treasured possessions, and the one hobby Wren occasionally enjoyed, light novels, and a small collection of teacups on the top shelf. Every year on Wren's birthday, if money allowed, she splurged and bought herself either a new volume of whatever she found interesting in the secondhand section of the bookstore, or a cheap tea blend that she could enjoy.
Wren made her way inside the room and slowly put her things on top of the desk.
She sat on the edge of her bed and quietly held the envelope a moment. As she released a nervous sigh, she slowly opened the letter and took out the contents, a single white page with black inked letters covering it.
The words blurred at first.
'Test results and Diagnosis.'
Then sharpened.
'Estimation: One year and four months.'
Likely less.
Not likely more.
Her breath hitched, her throat closed, and the room around her tilted.
She pressed the papers to her chest and curled herself, holding her knees to her chest while she fell into the bed. The tears came silently at first, no sobbing, no sound, as they rushed down her face.
Of course... She thought bitterly. Of course, this would happen to her.
Not because she thought she deserved it. Not because she believed the world was cruel enough to single her out. But because it felt strangely fitting. One last insult from a life that had never quite gone right.
Her parents had abandoned her at an early age.
Her grandfather who took her in, the only one in her life that truly cared for her, had died not long after, leaving her to raise herself through the most troubling years of growing up.
The bills never stopped coming.
Work consumed whatever energy she had left.
And now she was running out of time.
It wasn't the thought of dying that hurt, no, it was everything she'd never done.
Somehow, somewhere between surviving and struggling, the years had slipped past her.
When had she stopped living?
When had every day become something, she simply endured?
She clutched her knees closer to her chest as the paper crumbled from the contact.
She'd never traveled.
Never fallen in love.
Never built anything worth remembering.
Never found people she could truly call friends or family.
Her shoulders shook as another wave of tears broke free.
Then came the collapse of someone who had been holding too much for too long.
A broken jagged sob broke free, and she sobbed with her entire core. She cried until her throat hurt, her eyes burned, the corners of her nose rubbed raw, until she couldn't feel anything at all.
She wasn't afraid of dying alone, no, she was afraid she had already been alone her entire life, and now she had no time left to dream for anything different.
Eventually, exhaustion took hold and dragged her under while she still clutched the papers in her hands, and the last of her tears ran down her face.