Young Writers Society

~ This is just an extract of a novel I've been working on. I'm not uploading the full thing on here unless people really want it - but I mainly just want to know what people think of the style. It's completely different to anything else I've written and I just want to know if it works or not. This is Chapter 2 - the first chapter is written from a different POV...  Enjoy! 

It’s 9.07. My appointment was at 9.00. If it gets to 9.10 I’m gonna go talk to the receptionist. He expects me here at 9.00 and he’s not even ready for me? I have stuff to do! Well, actually, it’s Sunday so all I plan to do today is get in my sweats, grab some snacks and binge watch Netflix. But he doesn’t know that, does he? I could have some serious stuff that needs to be done and he’s having me sit here twiddling my thumbs. People of authority, what arseholes.

Right, it’s 9.09, I’m going to complain.

“Miss Quinn?”

My heart jumps and I stand up. He’s stood right behind me. “Hi, Doctor Hyde.”

“Sorry to keep you waiting.” He gestures to his room. “Do come in and take a seat.”

I just smile to be polite and go in.

He shuts the door behind him and takes his seat behind his desk. I sit before him, trying to relax back into the chair but it always feels so stuffy in here. I’m a lot more comfortable than I was the first time though. How long ago was that? Geeze, pretty long ago.

“How are you feeling, Kassidy?” he asks, readjusting his glasses.

It’s a loaded question, always is with doctors. Well, doctors/therapists. They never want to discuss the weather.

“I dunno.” I shrug but he stares me down.

“Is the new medication working well for you?”

“I’ve been feeling pretty tired, I guess.”

This perks him up and he grabs a pen. “As in drowsy?”

“No. Not drowsy, really. Just like I haven’t been sleeping well.”

“Have you been sleeping well?”

“Yes. I make sure I get at least eight hours a night.”

He ponders over this for a moment then scribbles something down.

“Is that a common side effect?”

He peers at me over his pad. “P2-17 is an experimental drug, you were informed about this. We are still collecting data from other patients.”

“You mean you don’t know if it’s normal?”

“All the information you give us is valuable, Kassidy. You did agree to this. Do you want to come off the medication?”

“No.” I blurt a little too quickly. His blonde eyebrow quirks up. “They’re working for me.”

He smiles, like he really cares that I’m doing well. Maybe he does. I’ve been in and out his office more times than I care to count. I’ve probably seen him more that I’ve seen my parents (don’t think about them, Kass.)

“You’ve had no more episodes?”

Episodes, hah, I always love how he calls them that. A cutesy name to cushion the blow.

I nod. “Not for over a month.”

Now he really does smile. He has a nice smile and it makes me regret calling him an arsehole earlier. He’s probably double my age but he wears it well. I may have had a slight crush on him in my early years and I had thought that there may have been a slight chance that there was something there right up until I had one of my ‘episodes’ and made him see me in a very unflattering light. I don’t dwell on that now. He’s a doctor. I bet he’s seen a whole lot of crazy shit in his life.

“I’m glad to hear that, Kassidy.”

We chat a little more and then he prints out my prescription. He sends me to the desk, bidding me farewell and giving me an encouraging shoulder squeeze as I leave.

I do like Doctor Hyde. But that doesn’t make up for the fact that I had to get up at 8.00am on a Sunday!

I try to make the most of the day seeing as I have a whole lot more of it now. But my bed calls for me and I’m still feeling super tired like always so I slip back under the covers. It’s light outside and my curtains aren’t blackout so I’m just lying here really, wanting to sleep but not being able to.

Am I an insomniac? But I sleep. I do sleep. Maybe I sleep too much and that’s why I’m always tired? Or maybe it is the meds, though Doctor Hyde didn’t really confirm that it could be.

I’ve read up on insomnia and it doesn’t sound like me. Okay, maybe it does a little with the mood swings and whatnot, but I’m not an insomniac!

I mean, I wake up so that means I must have been asleep, right? But sometimes I feel like I have woken from a dream that was just as exhausting as reality. Maybe even more so as I don’t actually do much day to day. I can never really remember my dreams though, yet I feel like I should. That they’re important. When there’s a slow day at work, I try and piece them together by jotting down things on post-it notes and cover the interiors of my desk drawers with them. They’re mostly just doodles because I come up with diddly-squat. But the pictures brighten up my drawers anyway. And it’s a good way to avoid my boss. Whenever he looks over at me as he sits in his fishbowl of an office, I’ll look like I’ll be working away like a little worker bee when really I’m just drawing weirdly shaped palm trees that look like grabbing claws.

It’s 1.00pm when I move from my bed to the sofa and watch three episodes of Dexter.

This is my Sunday. It was also my Saturday. It’s pretty much all of my weekends unless someone has made plans for me that I can’t wriggle my way out of.

I’m not a people person. I’m the definition of not a people person.

People just…annoy the crap out of me. I feel constantly tense around them, like I’m expecting a punch, or withholding a punch. Probably the latter. Most definitely the latter.

My default setting in public places is: irritable. But it’s irritable within reason. Or so I tell myself. I get irritated by people for rational reasons. Not for stupid stuff like…the way the pronounce certain words or how they don’t look at me in the eyes when the talk to me. It’s real things like…they are just constantly impolite.

Or they refuse to help you when it is easily in their ability.

Or they try and get you so drunk at the Christmas party every year so that you’ll forget all your inhibitions and go home with them.

(One time that happened!)

Or they give you up for adoption and wash their hands of you.

Or they spread rumours about you.

Or they abuse their power.

Or they blatantly ignore you.

Or they touch you too much even when you tell them to stop.

Even when you cry.

Even when you scream.

Real stuff like that.

I’m not a people person because of real stuff like that.

So I live alone in a two bedroom terrace, wrestling with the idea of getting a dog. I’m constantly stuck in a state between wanting to be alone, and being incredibly lonely. But I can’t risk having anyone close in case I relapse and have an episode. Another reason why I’m not a people person. They get in the way. In the way of me.

People might irritate me on a daily basis, but that doesn’t mean I want to hurt them.

(Well, not most of them)

And what’s worse than hurting a defenceless person? Hurting a defenceless animal.

I live in a two bedroom terrace, alone with no dog, and I’ve been kidding myself for the past seven years that this is exactly how I like it.

Monday rolls by sooner than I would have liked and I’m dumped back into my stupid cramped cubicle with my boss watching over me like a hawk. He swivels around in his chair behind his desk, fiddling with his fancy pen then probably costs more than the entirety of my stationary plus my outfit.

I work for a web-designing company which is one of those massive, oppressive firms where you’re treated more as a number than a person. I don’t mind that. It keeps people out of your business. But it also subjects you to a lot of rumours because no one actually really knows anyone else. And when your boss has a thing for you and is constantly looking you up and down as if he already knows what hidden underneath your smart pantsuit (does he?), you’ve basically got a massive bull’s-eye painted on your back.

He calls me into his office approximately forty minutes after I have arrived. He does this all the time, waits for me to get comfortable then makes me go near him. I hide my eye roll behind my plasterboard cubicle wall and stand up. People watch me over their shoulders with their phones to their ears.

There she goes again.

Office slut.

Going back for more, aye?

(That happened one time!)

You never know how to act when everyone is watching you. You feel like you’re putting on a performance. Okay, Miss Quinn, give me the confident worker. No, not the awkward, bashful worker. I said confident. Why are you blushing?

Holy crap is it hot in here? I want to open the top button of my blouse but I don’t. Not as I head over to Mr. Richard Reeves. Dick Reeves. Yes, he prefers people calling him Dick. And he is not above smirking whenever someone does. Especially when that person is me. Like it’s our little inside joke. Like when I call him Dick, I’m thinking about the one that’s in his pants. When I’m actually thinking about the one on his head.

Dick Reeves.

Dickhead Reeves.

“Kassidy,” Dick almost cheers when I swing open the glass door of his office as if he’s surprised to see me. Like I’ve come here on my own accord. He does this every time. And every time I smile like it amuses me.

I approach his desk. My heels clip against the shiny tiles and I hate the sound. It makes me sound like I’m doing it on purpose.

Hey, Dick, check out my hooker heels! I wore them especially for you!

I’m not wearing hooker heels. But I might as well be.

“You called?” I say.

“Why yes I did.” He tries his sultry eyes on me and I look down at my hands as if my unpolished nails are interesting.

The flapping sound of paper makes me look back up and he hands me a wad of letters. “I need you to give these to reception for me.”

I’m not your secretary.

“Sure.” I take them.

He always gives me menial jobs to do. I think he likes me running around for him.

I whistle, you come running.

It’s not my job to run around for him.

It’s my job to sit at my desk until my bum goes numb and I get cramp in my legs. It’s my job to stare at a screen and clickity-click my mouse. It’s not my job to traipse up and down three floors handing things into the front desk.

But Dick pays my bills.

Okay, there I did sound like a hooker.

“Did you have a nice weekend?” he asks.

“It was okay. Nothing special.” I shift through the pile of letters, pretending to read them.

“No dates?”

“I don’t date.”

“Come on, Kassie. Everyone dates.”

Don’t call me Kassie. I breathe slowly.

“I don’t date.”

I feel his eyes on me and I look up. He’s grinning. “Oh, I get it.”

He bloody winks at me.

“I can’t stop thinking about last Christmas either.”

I wish I knew what happened last Christmas.

“I just don’t date,” is all I say. Because what can I say? He’s my boss. Without this job…I don’t know what I’d do. I’m not exactly brimming with achievements. The only reason I got this job was because it was Dick who interviewed me. And from the start I knew he didn’t hire me for my appalling CV.

It was in highschool when my episodes really took off and people realised they weren’t just the behaviours of a hormonal teenager. There was something seriously wrong with me.

So being in and out of hospitals, counselling sessions and switching from one hopeless drug to another, I didn’t really have the time or the frame of mind to study. I even came back to resit my GCSE’s but it was no use. In fact, I managed to do even worse. Not only did I fail, but I also gave my ex-teacher a bloody nose and a fractured skull.

I was a D average student. One that didn’t even try to make up for herself by going to college. What was the point? I just wasn’t fit to study.

Dick just grins some more, as if that is exactly what he wanted me to say and his eyes do that wandering thing again. Like he knows.

I’ve reported him for sexual harassment several times and nothing has come from it. My guess is that the bitches at human resources probably think I’ve brought it all on myself. They hate me because I’m prettier than them. Me, with my long, honey blonde hair, cat-like eyes, small mouth and my athlete’s physique acquired by my early years of team sports that kept me out of the house for as long as I could. And them with their old crone beady eyes, uppity raised chins and disappointing sex lives with their husbands that they married way too young.

Of course it’s my fault. With me looking like I do, I’m practically begging for it.

Never mind that I cover up as much skin as possible and hold as little eye-contact as I can.

But of course it’s my fault.

Mr. Richard Reeves, with his Hugh Grant looks and his bulging bank account. Why would he ever stoop so low as to rufi my Bailey’s and whisk me back to his place for some late night unconscious fondling?

He would never.

She’s making things up.

Attention seeking whore.

“Is that all, Dick?” I ask.

He even glances down at his crotch and tries to disguise it by scrubbing a hand through his dark, wavy Hugh Grant hair.

“That’ll be all, Kassie.”

I feel his eyes on my behind as I leave and it makes me want to hurry my steps. But I don’t because everyone is looking at me again and if I rush, I’ll look guilty of something. Guilty of what, exactly? His office is complete floor-to-ceiling glass. It’s not as if we could have had a quickie on his desk.

But by the way everyone is watching me, it’s as if I have ruffled sex-hair and my knickers hanging out of my pocket.

I hate working here.

I hate my life.