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TomorrowIt seemed like an ordinary day to Jeremy Handover as he awoke from another dreamless night. Somewhere on the floors above him he could hear the muffled sound of a baby either laughing or crying, but he couldn't be sure which. Before he could decide, the sound was drowned out by the more overwhelming sounds of the city awakening from another restless night. A dissonant symphony of horns, whistles, and movement began to fill the air, along with the ever-present stench of the city. The light, what little managed to filter through the tangled branches of the opaque buildings beside his own, lacked its usual rudeness. Usually the streams that made it in barged into his room, announced their presence and rendered any further hope of sleep impossible. But today it seemed as though a haze had settled over Jeremy Handover's world, almost as if his mind had become aware of every minute detail of existence yet unable to take it in, settled for half-images with blurry edges. Jeremy realized there was a dream-like quality to this morning and to his movements as he attempted to lift himself from bed. His thoughts and movements seemed only the after-thoughts of another person, who only occasionally stopped in to complete them. He found that he could not move his head despite the greatest of efforts, but thought nothing of it. Many mornings had been spent in similar fashion as he prodded his body back to life after a particularly intense night of drinking. Jeremy was not prone to such bouts on a regular basis but since the previous day had been particularly frustrating, he had indulged his more self-destructive side and drank rather heavily. Try as he might he could not bring himself to remember all of the events of the previous night but did remember something having to do with mixing liquor and various other drugs and a prostitute whom he sometimes frequented when he was particularly inebriated. Still he did feel slightly uneasy about the way he felt this morning. It almost felt as though he had not yet woken up, but was instead still dreaming. Then, quite unexpectedly a sudden feeling of panic and fear flashed through Jeremy for no apparent reason. His first reaction was to scream out for help but quickly realized there would be no one to hear his cry since he lived by himself and the overpowering noises of the newly awakened city would suffocate his cries. Then just as suddenly as it had started the feeling passed and Jeremy sank into the most peaceful sleep he had ever experienced and closed his eyes.
The next thing Jeremy realized, he was walking through the street on his usual route to work. Little about the quality of the day had changed since this morning when he awoke, except the fact that the haze was now almost blindingly bright. As Jeremy walked he seemed not to notice that not a single person who walked pass him gave his so much as a passing glance. Then again this really wasn't surprising since hardly anybody ever did. It was not that Jeremy himself was unremarkable. In fact Jeremy was the type of person who, if you could get him talking, could talk knowledgeably for hours on a number of subjects. However although Jeremy possessed the gift of wit and humor combined with an above average intellect, he had few friends and even fewer instances for which to display his talents. He did not particularly enjoy social events nor the type of gatherings where he could both display his talents and meet new people. His features, although not striking, were adequate enough to have produced a number of forgettable relationships with various women of higher than average social standing and beauty. However all of the relationships, if they could be called such, ended rather quickly and abruptly. The biggest single cause of these breakups laid not in the fact that those women which had dated him had anything bad to say about Jeremy, but rather in the fact that they did not have anything to say about him at all. He possessed neither the passions of a jealous lover when he made love, nor the touch of a romantic when he kissed. Jeremy could always be counted on to remember a birthday or anniversary, but would only go so far as to give the customary gift appropriate for the occasion, an example being a dozen roses and a box of chocolates on Valentine's day. "What Jeremy lacks in imagination, he makes up for in dependability and punctuality," one of his ex's was fond of saying when reminded about her brief fling with Jeremy. Another ex was not so kind. She used to say about Jeremy,"he lives like he fucks, eyes closed, groping for the right spot." Jeremy usually dressed in comfortable, loose fitting clothes which always seemed to be in-between washes or ironings. He tended to walk with the air of being in a desperate hurry to go somewhere without having a place to go. His situation was analogous to the construction worker who is always seen hurrying around the construction site with a hammer, nail, and piece of wood. The problem being that it was always the same piece of wood, hammer and nail he carried around all of the time. Both always seemed to be in the middle of doing something important but were never actually accomplishing anything. At work, few people knew what Jeremy's first name was since he was only occasionally referred to as "Mr. Handover" in memos. He was known, more often than not, as " that guy in the office down the hall" to the majority of people. He worked as a story researcher for a relatively small magazine. He was quite good at his job. He particularly enjoyed the fact that his job required that he spend much of his time by himself either searching the web for information which pertained to his current assignment, or at the library making sure the references checked out. In either setting he felt infinitely more comfortable than he did socializing with other people. Nobody who did work with him had a complaint about his work since he was always punctual and did quite a through job in his research. Very often his name was not cited in the credits for the story, but Jeremy didn't really mind. He never had a strong appetite for those sort of motives which drove other people in the office to fight tooth and nail for recognition and their name in print. He was quite content knowing he did his job well and that no one could say a bad thing about him.
Jeremy felt disoriented and somewhat dizzy for a moment as he began to concentrate on his location. Since he took the same route everyday to work it had become as automatic as breathing for him, and as such he was frequently prone to day-dreaming. Quite often because of this, he would not know exactly where he was. When his head cleared he noticed that he was standing in the doorway to his office. Jeremy naturally assumed that he must have either been lost in thought or had begun to unconsciously walk with his head lowered, which he was frequently known to do, and had made it to his office unnoticed even to himself. His name was not posted on the door to his office. He had been told at the time he began working, that there were no available name plates. Since so few people actually needed to find his office who did not already know where it was, there had been no reason to push the issue. The few who did need Jeremy knew that his office was the third door on the left down the hall that lead to the employee lunch room. Ironically, despite his office being located in such a heavily trafficated area, most of the employees in the office never had the time to stop and say "hi", and consequently none ever did. But today something seemed out of place and for a moment. Jeremy was not positive that he was standing in his doorway, or for that matter was in the right building. He turned around and saw that the other researcher's name was posted on the door across the hall as he remembered. He also noted that the door to the employee's lunch room was open. Satisfied that this was the right room, Jeremy turned back to look at his desk. The few personal belongings which he had on it were no longer there. Gone were the pictures of his long deceased parents and relatives he didn't really know, a number of research and literary guides and a number of other assorted items he used for distractions during particularly long stretches of work. Of these things only the loss of his parents picture really bothered him. His parents had died while he was quite young. After their death he moved in with his grandparents who provided a stable environment for him to grow up in. Jeremy was never in want of food or clothing, or any of the other things a young person growing up could want. Although Jeremy had no doubt of his grandparents love for him, he could not bring himself to return the love he received since he never particularly felt close to them. Not that he was ungrateful for the sacrifice they made. It was just that Jeremy always felt more like a puppy dog, whose parents were mistakenly run over, taken in more out of sense of moral or humanitarian duty than like a member of a real family. Perhaps, Jeremy thought to himself, there was a new cleaning lady on the previous shift. There had been quite a janitorial shake up recently and it was not unheard of for a new janitor to mistakenly throw out something of importance. If the person was new they might have believed the room had been recently vacated, since his door was the only one not to have its own name plate, and mistakenly cleaned out his office. Whatever the cause Jeremy had no doubt the removal of his items boiled down to a clear case of misunderstanding and there was little danger of losing those items if action was taken immediately. Jeremy made a mental note that he should speak to someone in the janitorial staff at the earliest possible convenience. Reassured, Jeremy walked down the hall past Susan's door. Susan was a writer for the magazine with whom Jeremy had recently worked. She was a strikingly beautiful woman in an unconventional way. She had large almond eyes and auburn hair which fell shoulder length. She had a subtle sexuality in her movements without being overly flirtatious in her mannerisms, while at the same time reveling in habits and pastimes more associated with the male sex. When she worked she had an air of invulnerability around her which would quickly melt whenever she laughed and reveal her true kind hearted-nature. Jeremy had been instantly enthralled by her the moment he saw her and now was constantly preoccupied by thoughts of her. Often he had silently passed by her door, which she often kept open, just to catch a glimpse of her deep in thought over her current story. Often he had gone over to her determined to declare his love for her for all the world to hear, or at the very least to ask her out, but each time he would end up making a complete fool of himself and leave only after asking for some office supply he didn't really need. As Jeremy came up to her door he said, to no one in particular but himself, "I'll tell her tomorrow, for sure tomorrow."
As he entered her door he noticed that she wasn't in. At that moment a thought occurred to Jeremy that stopped him in his tracks; there was no one in the building. As Jeremy stood he could not remember seeing a single person since the episode on the street that now seemed but a distant dream. Quickly Jeremy began a systematic search of each room on the floor. As he searched for any signs of people having been there he also tried to remember the date, hoping that perhaps that it was a holiday or the weekend and he was here by mistake. However, as hard as he tried he could not remember the date and strangely he could not find a calendar in any of the rooms. He looked at the clock on the wall which showed that it was 9:00am, well into the working day, but yet not a single person was to be found anywhere. Jeremy also now noticed how deathly quiet everything was. Even the familiar hum of the ventilation system was silent. Jeremy began to feel claustrophobic in the hallways which suddenly seemed much too clinical in their emptiness and smaller by the moment. He began to move slowly toward the elevators at the far end of the hall. As he moved along the hallway a strange feeling of deja vu filled him. The suddenly much too bright lights which covered everything with a pasty-white glare reminded Jeremy of a trip down another hallway. He could vaguely remember a number of unfamiliar voices in uniforms speaking all at once, but couldn't bring his mind to focus on what they were saying. The urgent need to leave the hallway now bordered on panic as the elevator seemed no closer than a few moments ago. The lights began to swim along with Jeremy's head. His stomach lurched as the queasiness he felt in his head raced thought his body. Jeremy began to break into a run but could not move fast enough to avoid disgorging the contents of his stomach on the clean waxy floor. However, despite the momentary feeling of relief that accompanied this, the need to leave the hallway grew. Once he reached the elevator he began to bang furiously at the buttons but the elevator stared back at him unmoved. Desperately wanting to leave the building, he struck the emergency exit door causing the fire alarm to scream all around him. He was momentarily unable to see as his eyes attempted to adjust to the reddish glow of the emergency lights which lit the stairwell. He could see no more than a few steps in front of him as the dark-room glow of the lights soaked up what little light crept through the cracks along the stairwell. As he descended down the stairs Jeremy almost laughed as he imagined Dante's descent into hell. Why he would think such a thought at that particular moment might have been worthy of analysis some other time but at this moment the overwhelming need was to exit the building, make his way home, and figure out what was happening. As he hurried down the stairs the only sounds now were the echoes of his steps and the sound of his labored breathing. Quickly the exhaustion that Jeremy began to feel, combined with his disorientation, made transversing the stairs hazardous and Jeremy came close numerous times to falling face first down the stairs. However he managed to keep moving despite his breathing now coming in short uncontrolled gasps. Finally, he could see the emergency exit door looming ahead. As he struck it at full speed, nothing could have prepared him for what he saw. Jeremy began to panic as his world spun around him. The haze which had been blinding earlier now took on an incredible physical weight and he collapsed to his knees. The sight of the empty city, where earlier it had been teeming with life sent a shock to his senses that he could not comprehend. At that moment, Jeremy felt that he would surely go mad. For no man should ever have to see the nothingness that is his soul stare at him with such unfeeling eyes. Jeremy simply went limp, closed his eyes, and slipped into the wonderful void that marks the end of dreams and nightmares and the beginning of his reality.
It seemed like an ordinary day to Jeremy Handover as he awoke from another dreamless night. Somewhere on the floors above him he could hear the muffled sound of a baby either laughing or crying, but he couldn't be sure which. Before he could decide the sound was drowned out by the more overwhelming sounds of the city awakening form another restless night. A dissonant symphony of horns, whistles, and movement began to fill the air, along with the ever-present stench of the city. The light, what little managed to filter through the tangled branches of the opaque buildings beside his own, lacked its usual rudeness. Usually the streams that made it in barged into his room, announcing their presence and rendering any further hope of sleep impossible. But today it seemed as though a haze had settled over Jeremy Handover's world, almost as if his mind had become aware of every minute detail of existence and unable to take it in, settled for half-images with blurry sides. Jeremy realized there was a dream-like quality to this morning and to his movements as he attempted to lift himself from bed. His thoughts and movements seemed only the after-thoughts of another person, who only occasionally stopped in to complete them. He found that he could not move his head despite the greatest of efforts, but thought nothing of it. Many mornings had been spent in similar fashion as he prodded his body back to life after a particularly intense night of drinking. Jeremy was not prone to such bouts on a regular basis but since the previous day had been particularly frustrating he had indulged his more self-destructive side and drank rather heavily. Try as he might he could not bring himself to remember all of the events of the previous night but did remember something having to do with mixing liquor and various other drugs and a prostitute whom he sometimes frequented when he was particularly inebriated.
Still he did feel slightly uneasy about the way he felt this morning.
It almost felt as though he had not yet woken up, but was instead still
dreaming. Then, quite unexpectedly a sudden feeling of panic and fear
flashed through Jeremy for no apparent reason. His first reaction was
to scream out for help but quickly realized there would be no one to
hear his cry since he lived by himself and the overpowering noises of
the newly awakened city would suffocate his cries.
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© Omar Leal