Little Men - The E Book (4 page)

Sam was late for work. Monday morning, and it had been a heavy weekend.
No, please! It can’t be!

Sam despaired as the alarm sounded, forcing him to wake from his fitful slumber. The tinny music from his clock-radio felt like it was piercing his brain. His eyelids were seemingly glued together as the grey morning daylight tried to force them apart, and it was strange how he couldn’t remember the point during the night when his tongue had been replaced by carpet.

The previous evening Sam had felt exhausted, but the remains of the MDMA and alcohol danced in his system as he’d tried to sleep. It had been a terrible night. As soon as he dozed, horrible coloured images flashed before his eyes. He was cold, yet sweat soaked the sheets.

He tried not to think how many hours it was until Monday morning and he would have to face the world again, the fun memories of Saturday night disappearing with the working week that stretched out in front of him.

Now the radio cheerfully blared out in his right ear, oblivious to the pain Sam felt. He couldn’t
possibly
get up now on this freezing morning. The whole idea was insane. Sam closed his eyes once more. A computer screen with his bank balance flashed before his eyes, especially the letters
DR.
He tried to push the thought out of his head when Dean, his boss’s sweating head appeared, spitting the words as he’d done about a month ago when Sam was last off sick.

“Consider this your final warning. I’ve been very patient with you, Sam. Now you’re really starting to irritate me. You’ve made it quite clear how you view this job. To be honest, I’ll be pleased when you finally do piss off. But right now I pay your wages and I expect a certain standard. Is that too much to ask? For you to actually turn up for work on a Monday morning?”

Wanker
thought Sam, not for the first time. He somehow began to drag himself through the torture of a Monday morning with a pill comedown. Monday bore the physical pain. The headaches, the sweating, the dry mouth, the stomach doing somersaults. Irritability brought on by lack of sleep.

The psychological torment would come later. It was in the post. ETA Tuesday-ish. The depression. The midweek blues. Suicide Tuesday. Sam would swear to himself that he would never go clubbing again. Never touch pills. They were a waste of time. He would focus on getting his life back on track. He would get a decent job and start earning proper money. He would meet the girl of his dreams and leave all this crap behind. No more of that fucker Dean treating him like shit at work in the Energize! gym in dreary Dartford. No more earning something just above what was laughingly called the minimum wage. No more helplessly watching his overdraft grow bigger and bigger after a weekend spent caning it. Maybe he could actually get paid enough to live on and still go out on the razz every so often.

But on this hellish grey Monday morning all that seemed a very long way off. Somehow Sam hauled himself out of bed and made it to the bathroom. He looked in the mirror, not a pretty sight. His greasy skin was a pallid, grey colour. Daylight tried to force his red, watering, bloodshot eyes open properly, but they were protesting vigorously. His pupils, huge and dilated twenty-four hours ago, were now pin-prick small as they tried to adjust to the harsh glare of the winter sun through the frosted glass. The area beneath his eyes was swollen and dark.

Sam poked his tongue out. Saliva was non-existent, and his tongue had a white coating on it that was starting to tinge brown due to the length of time it had been there. His teeth felt sensitive and were the colour of an old newspaper that had been left out in the sun too long.

He was usually proud of his head of thick brown hair, but this morning it looked anything but cool. Sam had washed it last night to rid it from the filth of the club, and now it was shapelessly perched on top of his head, bouffant style. It needed cutting, Sam would’ve thought, if he could think straight.

He made his way to the kitchen. The floor was cold and hadn’t been cleaned in a long time. It was sticky and he felt food debris attach itself to the soles of his feet. He was dehydrated, and his thirst raged. This was the first priority. With some effort Sam found a clean glass and a plastic bottle of orange squash. He turned the tap on until it ran cold, and with shaking hands somehow fixed himself the drink. He necked the glassful in one go, and made another and swallowed every drop. His shagpile-like mouth demanded still more. He made another glassful and drank half of it, then wandered back to his bedroom. Collapsing on the bed, he pulled the duvet back over himself.
Just five minutes more to warm up again
, he thought.

The liquid and sugar in his body very slightly eased his pain and he felt a little more alert. Suddenly, confused thoughts were aggressively vying for attention in his mind. He tried to concentrate on the main problem of the moment. Getting ready for work. It felt like an insurmountable task.
Just go through the
motions
,
the sensible part of Sam was saying.
It’s not difficult
.
Just get out of bed and get dressed and get to work. You’ve done it a hundred times before. It’s just routine, just get through it, there’s nothing to tax you today, just get on with it and no-one will know any different. Then you can get back home to sleep.

Sam attempted to get dressed. He so wished he could detach his body from his mind and not feel the pain it was causing him. If only he could leave his brain sleeping on his pillow while his body got on with the day.

Eventually Sam felt presentable enough to leave the flat. He usually drove to work, but not today. He felt too rough. He would wait for a bus. He was already late, and the bus would probably be quicker during rush hour.

It was a cold, crisp February morning. The air entering his lungs tried determinedly to force him from his stupor as his breath made large clouds in front of him.

He managed to doze at the back of the bus during the fifteen-minute journey to Energise!
in Dartford. He was only about twenty minutes late. Sam prayed Dean wasn’t around.

“Morning!” Sam called as he gingerly entered the building through the front door. His two colleagues were stood behind the reception desk. Unfortunately there were no customers.

“Good morning, sleepyhead.” It was Tanya, one of Sam’s workmates.

“Heavy weekend?” Tanya was about the same age as Sam and she knew all about his weekend escapades.

“Yeah, mental.” Sam tried to smile. Any enthusiasm for the previous few days had vanished along with the energy from his body.

“You’re lucky. Dean’s out this morning. But he’ll be back this afternoon. Hopefully you’ll be able to put yourself back together by then.” Sam was doubtful.

“Sarah and I’ll do the front desk,” she went on. “You can do a bit of cleaning or something, we can’t have you dealing with customers in that state.”

Was it really that obvious?
But Sam appreciated Tanya’s kindness. She was a good friend. Normally Sam hated cleaning, but this morning he was grateful. No-one breathing down his neck. And Monday mornings were normally quiet, customer-wise. He could get on with his tasks in peace, taking regular breaks. If he could just put up with the smell of the cleaning products he might just survive, he thought.

It was about eighteen months since Sam had left university. He felt he’d reached the proverbial brick wall as far as his career was going.
A couple of months
he’d thought when he took the job in the fitness centre.

He was sensible enough to realise that few people walk straight into well-paid jobs in advertising immediately after college, and he understood good careers don’t grow on trees, but a year and a half? And there didn’t seem to be much on the horizon, either.

He’d attended several interviews, some of which he had really thought he’d been close to clinching, but alas. Sam knew how many others there were in his shoes, how many he was competing against, something the tutors had failed to mention when he enrolled on his course. He’d been a little naive back then, at nineteen years old. He’d certainly had no idea that, four and half years down the line, he would find himself in this position. Still, he tried to keep positive. Keep at it. After all, he did have a job of sorts. It paid the bills (almost) and he could keep looking. Things were bound to pick up soon. Just not this cold February day with the comedown from hell and a bucket in one hand and a mop in the other.

Sam somehow survived the morning. On several occasions nausea swept over him and he had to breath deeply and move to a window to avoid puking. It was touch-and-go a few times, but he managed to keep it together to just about appear normal to those he encountered.

Food would make him feel worlds better, he knew that, but his mouth still felt like the bottom of a birdcage. Sam managed to force down a sandwich with the aid of two bottles of sweet fizzy-orange, a tried and tested recovery formula. There was a battle going on in his body, the toxins were being forced out. There was no home for them anymore. He still sweated profusely at the slightest exertion, but that was good, he thought. Sweat ’em out and guzzle fluids all day. He was winning the battle.

Then Dean came back.

“Sam, I want you on the front desk. Tanya and Sarah have got inductions.”
Fuck
,
thought Sam. He would have to speak to people, and at the moment that involved concentration. At least there might be a woman or two in a tight-fitting leotard passing through. The thought raised his spirits. And, he remembered, he would be
sitting down
.

The first hours of the afternoon passed slowly but uneventfully. Thankfully, Mondays were quiet generally, but they always got busier later in the afternoon as people finished work.

As the afternoon wore on, Sam’s morning exertions and general tiredness were making themselves felt in his body and he began to doze in his chair. The heaters were on full blast as it was such a cold day. He would get up in a minute and splash his face with water.

“Sam!” Dean glared across the counter, his face pink with rage. Sam could see the veins throbbing at his temples. “What’s wrong with you? This is a health and fitness club and the receptionist is dozing off at the front desk!” Sam bristled at the word
receptionist
,
and he really wasn’t in the mood for Dean today.

“Oh, er, sorry. It’s just, erm, I’m not sleeping very well at the moment. A lot on my mind, you know.” Sam thought he would try the sympathy angle.

“But you have no trouble sleeping at work, is that it?” Dean always did this, stated the obvious and tried to back you into a corner. Luckily, today it seemed he had something else on his mind. “You want to buck your ideas up. I don’t pay you to nod off on the bloody front desk!”

This was another thing that irritated Sam. Dean always made it sound like he paid the employees personally, that anything they did wrong would cost Dean money out of his own pocket.

“Okay, sorry, it won’t happen again.” For once Dean let the matter lie.

Sam was more alert now. The run-in with Dean had woken the resentment inside him which he always felt after such incidents. His relationship with his boss had deteriorated gradually over the past eighteen months. The main problem was that Dean knew Sam viewed the job merely as a stopgap. Sam was often loud and outspoken and regularly made his feelings clear about the job. It angered Dean. He understood people had ambition and wanted to move on, but did he have to go on about it all the time? It undermined him and devalued the position. It affected staff morale, as they often got the impression that Sam wasn’t pulling his weight. Add to this the fact that Sam would often come in, as he had today, suffering the after-effects of a long weekend abusing his body. Working relations between the two had reached an all-time low. Deep down, Sam felt he should try to make amends with Dean, he knew it was mainly his fault for the way in which his boss viewed him. Dean was just trying to run a business. It wasn’t Dean’s fault that Sam couldn’t get the job he wanted. It also wasn’t his fault that Sam got paid crap money, that decision was taken at some head office somewhere. Sam knew he should take more pride in his work, he would certainly have to change his attitude if he got the job in advertising he so hankered after. All this played on Sam’s strung-out mind as he tried to get through the last hour of Monday afternoon.

As predicted, the gym steadily got busier as people knocked off work. Sam felt pleased, time passed quickly.
Nearly home and dry
he thought as he swiped the membership card of a petite, attractive blonde woman. He turned to his next customer. His heart sank. The huge frame of Don Quigley made a dark shadow over Sam’s work area. Don had been a member at the centre for a long time. A keen user of the free-weights. His huge biceps bulged and his chest- and back-muscles stretched the flimsy singlet he was wearing. Like Dean earlier, his face was thunder and veins bulged out of his bald head, stretching his sunbed-enhanced brown skin. A feeling of dread engulfed Sam as Quigley spoke.

“I’ve been charged twice. Again! What’s the matter with you people? There’s plenty of other gyms ‘round ‘ere, you know. I can take my business elsewhere!”

“You’ve been charged twice? What for?” Sam could hear the lack of enthusiasm in his own voice.

“What do you think? Me bleedin’ membership, of course! This keeps happening. You lot debit my account each month, and each time two lots of forty quid come out instead of one. Look!” Quigley thrust a piece of paper in front of Sam. A bank statement.

“There!” Quigley’s thick finger hammered at the numbers in question. Sam did indeed see very clearly two debits for £40 under the heading of Energise! - Dartford branch.

“That’s a bank error,” Sam finally said, his voice a monotone.

“A bank error? Don’t be ridiculous!” Quigley was fuming now. Flecks of spit rained down on Sam as he tried to keep his attention on the statement. “I had this problem before and your manager said he’d sorted it out! Now look!”