Stuck in the Middle With You
Who: Samuel and Richard What: Apparently everything in Pax is pristine except the elevator. Getting stuck seems to be a habit for that thing. Where: The Pax Letale Elevator When: Thursday, October 6, 2011, around 6:00 p.m. Warnings: Contents Under Pressure
Richard felt his eyes drift shut and his head nod as if from a long ways away. The clank and howl of the bus seemed unimportant, the pervasive odor of stale beer and sweat from the man next to him a mere annoyance. He was already back in the hall that he had been dreaming of for nearly a week, pushing back his huge wooden seat from the table and locking eyes with a form on the other side of the room. He cleared his throat, ready to hurl a taunt...
And smack. Richard's face fell right into the frozen peas. The whole grocery bag threatened to slip off his lap and, only half awake, he scrambled to hold the various frozen foods in one place. Someone a few seats down laughed, and Richard looked up just in time to see the Pax slide by outside his window. Cursing, he yanked on the break cable and the bus slowly ground to a halt at the next stop. The driver eyed him darkly as he gathered up his bags and awkwardly made his way to the door. By the time he made it out he was pretty sure that he had beaned at least the man in the ball cap with his gallon of milk.
As he stood in the smell of exhaust, Richard swore to himself that he would make a doctor's appointment. Soon. The dreams he could understand. Stress could cause strange dreams, and that taken together with the way he had messed up his sleep schedule during the trip could even explain away the one or two real screaming nightmares over the past week. But the sudden shifts, those made no sense. They seemed completely random, and they left him either absolutely exhausted or as wide-awake as if he had just slept for hours. Right now, he was in the middle of one of the first kind. They were annoying, they were inexplicable, and they were going to cost him his job. A whole week of guzzling coffee-and-Red Bull cocktails which kept him barely functional at some points and left him almost vibrating at others had worn down the patience of even the friendliest of his associates. If this didn't get better soon he would have to figure some other way of dealing or start looking at the wanted ads. Again.
He yawned and headed off towards the Pax. In the middle of the second block, in between one step and the next, the heavy feeling of tiredness fell away. He was refreshed, jazzed even, and the worry turned almost immediately into annoyance. This was stupid. At least now he could get the groceries inside without passing out on the sidewalk.
The building seemed quiet for a Thursday evening. He nodded to the doorman as cheerily as he could manage (after all, the poor guy never seemed to leave his post) but just kept on towards the elevator. Five floors up was hardly worth it, but if he got hit with the need to sleep on the stairs he might end up with worse problems than unemployment. He jammed the corner of a pizza box into the up arrow and waited impatiently for the doors to open.