Excerpt: Travels with Annie

Sun warm on her face. Grass cool and fragrant, spice smell wafting up as her body crushed the blades. She stretched her arms out side to side, one set of fingers digging into the green coolness and the other into the sun-warm sand. She lay just short of the beach; waves breaking making a simple sound that lulled her into sleep. Even the blare of a ship’s horn in the distance was gentle, warm, soothing.

The horn seemed to be getting closer quickly, unnaturally fast. It devolved into an irritating buzz that demanded her attention. She was being told to open her eyes, which she sorely didn’t want. Her island didn’t have insects so what could...she remembered where she was, a place she didn’t want to be. The alarm clock fell to the floor, swatted at like a fly.

It continued to buzz but at a different pitch; it sounded desperate to hold on to its functionality while apologetic for its ability to perform its work. This object of Annie’s irritation ceased upon close and violent contact with the bottom of the wall, a contact she initiated with her socked foot. But it was too late, and the island had receded. She tried to catch the cinnamon scent of the grass but all she got was some strong cleaning fluid smell from the bathroom.

“Crap. Double crap.”

No matter. She silently took back the ugly words and decided to launch herself into her day. Breakfast, consultations, meetings, lunch, then more meetings. Perhaps she’d work on her quilt after the last meeting, have dinner, then watch a little TV and go to bed. Same pattern every day, same dialogues in the meetings, same consultations reaching the same conclusions.

She did not suffer from mere boredom; she bore a cross of the ultimate in boredom. There was a dim idea of how to break out of this pattern, this tedious mental country she lived in, but the idea was too vague. Perhaps it was vague intentionally, mocking her? She chose clothes for the day and shuffled into the bathroom, stepping on pieces of broken plastic from the alarm clock face.