Adam - Glenn Landy (books to read this summer txt) 📗

CHAPTER ONE

There is a man, let’s call him Adam. For all intents and purposes, Adam has ticked all the boxes a man his age should have ticked. He has a reasonably acceptable job which affords him a reasonably acceptable pay which affords him a reasonably acceptable standard of living. Adam maintains several social media accounts and has an appropriate amount of friends. He had an above average childhood and two above average parents. Adam socialises on a frequent basis and documents this online so that his friends or maybe someone he went to high school with twelve years ago might acknowledge it. Adam is as content with life as he feels someone his age should be.

He isn’t depressed. He isn’t unhappy. He knows that,

But there’s an itch.

It’s an itch that began poking it’s head some years ago, soon after he started his job. An itch that could not be located nor it demand being scratched. It was the type of itch that only really surfaced when time seemed to stand still. When he took the train to work and forgot his earphones, late at night when watching a seven minute long teleshopping advertisement, when colouring in the white parts of the font on his newspaper. At first he wasn’t even aware that it was occurring, a simple yawn or stretch would scratch it. As time passed however, the itch, as itches have a tendency to do, became more pronounced the more it was neglected. It began to surface when he would listen to a particular type of music or when watching people pass from the window of the coffee shop. It became so intense that he would find himself zoning out of entire conversations. Glancing intently at each person in four second intervals, nodding in agreement, but completely oblivious to what any of them were saying. Like he was on autopilot but didn’t know why. These lapses from reality weren’t filled with anything else. It was just nothingness.

Until one day, all at once......

It was the most typical morning a person could have. It was the kind of morning that matures into the kind of day that concludes with the kind of evening you would not reminisce of on your death bed. At least you hope you wouldn’t. More than Adam liked to admit to himself, he already wanted it to be over.

The Tuesday morning melody sounded from his phone at 0630. Adam had recently devised a theory that if he programmed a different alarm tone from Monday to Friday, each progressively more upbeat than the last, then by the time Thursday and Friday rolled around his buoyancy for life would be regenerated for the weekend – This did not work.

By purposely choosing the most unfavourable possible melody on his phone for a Monday he always began the week with a repellent attitude. The Monday melody, Cat Fight, was by far the worst. Midweek he had moved on to a more mellow tone, Ocean Breeze, clearly resembling whale songs and by Friday he would wake up to the sounds of Boogie Time. His best friend Marcus had, on hearing this theory, suggested that a complete reversal of this system would probably prove more effective.

Adam showers, shaves, brushes his teeth, dons his red, blue and white vertically striped shirt ironed and worn yesterday - still good. Walks to the train, and throws on his Tuesday playlist for the thirty six minute train journey to work. There is nothing unorthodox about today.

It was somewhere after his third coffee that morning in the staff room of the Supermarket he managed. It was Michelle, 47, the checkout operator; poor Michelle. It could have been anyone to be fair. Michelle has three children whose pictures she keeps taped to her cash register, a great conversation starter. Michelle is mortgage free because her husband is successful doing something Adam does not care enough about to remember. Michelle is also about seven stone overweight and has, as far as Adam is concerned, checked out. She has checked out of trying and checked out of life. In fact Adam is quite sure she has never really tried to do anything. Instead her existence revolves around talking about her offspring and the pride she takes in belittling her husband.

Michelle is currently poured into ‘her’ chair in he corner of the room. The chair does in fact not belong to Michelle, she did not pay for it, it was not assigned specifically to her. About four months ago, having squeezed out her latest seasonally named calf, she was back. Amongst the four thousand photographs Michelle had something else suffocating under her arm. Somewhere between where her mass meets one of those all encompassing tents that she frequently passes off as clothing, Adam could see this contraption. He didn’t care what it was, but he was already annoyed that he was going to find out. It was her conversation piece for the day, there was always one. The criteria for what qualified as interesting with Michelle wasn’t too stringent. Today’s piece is lingering under her arm, tactically placed to not necessarily warrant attention yet still visible enough to be noticed. It is simply a back support that she intends to fit to her chair – that’s it. Adam had seen them before, it was not interesting and it did not merit an explanation. Adams gaze is fixed on it although curiosity is not high on his list of reasons for doing so.

The back support is luminous pink as a contingency to the slim chance nobody will notice it - but nobody has. Michelle has paraded this contraption past just about everybody in the store since she arrived and nobody has passed comment, her demeanour is noticeably changing. As she greets each staff member with a “Good morning” the sincerity suffers. Adam is captivated. He notices everything she does. He even notices how, as time has moved on Michelle has allowed the device to protrude a little more from under her arm. She is desperate now, her shift started five minutes ago and she still has her rain jacket on. Adam watches in astonishment as she shamelessly attempts to have the piece noticed by gesturing with it during conversations and even going so far as to use it as a means of directing somebody. In the case of Michelle, Adam often secretly compares himself to someone who has devoted their life to studying another species. He is an expert on every move she makes or word she speaks. He knows when to challenge her and, more commonly, when to back down. As he ponders his findings on the subjects behaviour today he unwillingly gives Michelle the opening she has been looking for. Whilst preoccupied with his wandering contemplation it has not occurred to Adam that whilst staring at this back support he has been inadvertently staring at her sandbag of a breast.

“Eh...... Can I help you?”

It is loud enough to get the attention of the staff room - clever move. In one perfect strike she has delivered a devastating blow. Simultaneously bringing attention to her latest purchase whilst accusing Adam of being the store pervert. He is furious.

“No, I was, I was looking at......the eh... the...."

The words do not find him in time. Everybody within a thirty metre radius is now looking.

"Mm hmm" Michelle purrs, as if there was any other realistic explanation to be had. As if Adam was actually looking at her with anything other than loathing. She looks at him in a manner that nobody but Michelle has done since his primary school French teacher. She tilts her head slightly forward so as her glasses drop about half an inch down her nose, peers over the lenses and holds the stare - it's impressive. It is a look that immediately discredits any combination of words you could conceive before they even begin their journey from your brain to your lips.

"Okay Adam." The tone is sarcastic and patronising and accompanied with a grin, reaffirming to her loyal subjects that Adam is indeed infatuated with her. The sniggers from her most devoted followers are muffled yet deliberately loud enough for Michelle to hear. This place is a well-oiled machine - her machine. Governed by fear of banishment if you do not cheer the fat clown.

"It's a back support Adam, you'd know about back pain if you'd had three kids in the last five years.....Oh..... and that’s also why my breasts are larger."

No muffling this time. Her subjects laugh openly – Ducks to bread.

He reminds himself that he is in fact the manager, "O...Okay everyone, back to work." The delivery is poor and weak.

"Yes Boss!!!" Michelle barks.

Realistically, Michelle hasn’t done a whole lot wrong. Not by a long shot. Nothing she couldn't defend as playful fun. In fact, poor Michelle is less at fault for what is about to happen than Adam is.

But what is wrong with Adam? Why does he feel this disdain toward Michelle? What has she ever actually done to him other than the odd jibe here and there? Everybody else seems to enjoy her company. She orchestrates a relatively joyous lunch break atmosphere. Realistically she is harmless.

That’s just it though. Who assigned her the composer of the daily conversations, the conductor of the colourless? And perhaps, the most irritating part of it all; Why? Why is Adam the only person in this building who feels like Michelle is the host to a virus. A virus so toxic that he is petrified at the thought of surrendering to it. This virus, as Adam sees it, is not a virus as we know it. It is more in the line of a sickness of the senses. The effects of which are an absolute removal of the conscious from the last ounce of natural human fibre. If Adam submits to stomaching much more of her drivel, he will sooner or later become one of them. Infected with a state of paralysis, floating through life in an unaware condition of content. Satisfied that the prospect that shitting out a couple of kids is grounds enough to take your foot off the gas and sail straight into an early grave with a big stupid smile on your face.

Janet, 29, works at the Deli, she is lovely. Janet, who used to have some substance to her, has been infected. She has her first on the way and unknowingly, apparently, to Janet, she has become one of Michelle’s zombies. Hanging on her every word and fuelling the fires of the dictator’s favourite topic of conversation - herself.

Lunch Break.

Michelle, who is seemingly the only woman on the planet to have given birth, lowers herself into her throne in the corner. She ritualistically shuffles her excess body mass into the spaces between the armrests. As she performs this dance, she carries out a balancing act, like a puppeteer. In one paw she clutches her monstrous serving of salad, because she’s on a diet, marinated in full fat dressing. In the other, she wields a conversation piece from six months ago, a Spork.

That one piece of plastic irrelevance was responsible, in the not too distant past, for an entire episode of the Michelle Show. It literally encompassed the entire seventy minutes of one of her lunch time lectures. Adam counted during that particular session, and in total the collective contribution to conversation from anyone else in the room comprised of five words. Five words in seventy minutes. Now lunch break is only an hour long but Michelle had not yet dismissed her class.

Today however, there are only the three of them on break. Michelle, Janet, Adam - in that order. He knows what is coming. He can feel a sharp pain originating from the centre of his forehead and resonating uniformly. She hasn’t even begun