Just one of those Days

Just One of those Days by KC Jones

The day seemed to start like any other Monday, with whatever songs Mindy from hot 106.9 was feeling that morning. Normally it was something poppy and fun, but today was clearly going to be different. When she started her 6 am segment, she declared it – “Emo Monday” and apologized to her “90’s ‘normies’” as she called them because today she was going to dip into the 2000’s. Her first song was “I’m not okay” by My Chemical Romance, and from the moment it came on, listeners could have gotten a good glimpse of how the morning would go.

“Woah boy, something happened” Emily thought to herself as she got dressed.

Her theory was confirmed almost immediately, when Mindy’s second song started to play, but not before Mindy dedicated it “to anyone out there that’s going through some shit”.

“Knew it”, she said aloud as ‘the Kill’ by 30 Seconds to Mars began blasting.

Making her way downstairs, she made her coffee and a pack of strawberry frosted pop tarts and took a seat at the table while she ate. Flipping on the tv, she had only taken a single sip, when out of nowhere, her rascal of a cat Morpheus made a jump from the top of her sofa onto her back and shoulder.

Latching onto her, the impact of his fall drove her backwards and sent her hot coffee spilling all over her works clothes and onto the sofa.

“Dude, what the fuck!” she yelled, “Morph that’s a new sofa, we talked about this!” she finished, glaring at the cat, who just gave her a blank look back in return seemingly not understanding….

“Ugh, now I have to make more coffee, get changed, soak up and spray down the couch. Fuck”, she thought to herself, shooting one more look at Morpheus.

It was in that very moment that she remembered she had an early meeting that morning and almost frantically, she began to rush. Throwing out a k-cup and getting a new one set up and started, she flew up the stairs to get changed and was back down 3 minutes later to access the couch.

“Oh shit, oh fuck” she exclaimed the major stain came into view. Getting a towel and the spray-and-wash out of the laundry room, she ran back and soaked up as much coffee as she could, then doused the shit out of the couch cover with it, all while Morpheus shot her what she interpreted as smug ass looks from the arm rest. She shook her head at him and said “notttttt cool” as she got up, and tore off to the mud room to get on her jacket and gather her stuff for work.

“Keys, wallet, phone, gemstones, work bag — boom” she said as she located and pocketed the rest of her necessities for the day. As she left and went into the garage, she was startled by what she found sitting on the mat at the bottom of her 2 step stairs.

“Morpheus you fucking turd” she screamed, for in front of her lay a dead full-size rabbit mangled and chewed up with its blood and guts spilling all over the floor. Better yet, it seemed that there was blood all over the garage as if it had led Morpheus on a wild chase before kicking the bucket.

“What a psycho” she thought to herself as she wondered if taking in a feral cat had been a bad idea. He had been a mere kitten when she found him hiding under her front porch the past summer. Rocking a fully black coat with the exception of one white paw, he was like a ghost in the night and had shown a certain aptitude for small animal murder and fuckery in general. But damn was he cute.

She grabbed her old hockey stick and a dust pan and after first looking around for witnesses, she gave the dead rabbit a new resting place in the neighbors’ pachysandra that lined the edge of her side yard.

Finally getting into her car, she turned it on and ripped it into reverse. She had only made it to the end of her driveway when she heard a thud on the top of the car, followed shortly by her morning newspaper sliding down the front windshield. Parking and getting out, she saw the paper boy racing down the street and found herself hoping he’d hit a small rock and go tumbling over the handlebars. Retrieving the badly aimed paper and throwing it into her passenger seat, she tore off down her road, looking at the clock nearly every 30 seconds, as if that would somehow help with her stress.

She had gotten just over half way to work, when the person in front of her slammed on their breaks and forced her to do the same. Skidding a bit, but avoiding a collision, she had simultaneously impulse grabbed for her mug, thinking it would go flying, but found her cupholder empty. A modern tragedy.

This was when the shit really hit the fan.

“MY COFFEE!” she yelled….. “FUUUUUCCCCCKKKKKKK, fucking fuckers!”

She had left it sitting on the Keurig at home, completely untouched.

“I only got one fucking sip of coffee that’s it”, she realized, thinking about the morning, and Morpheus, and how she was slowly falling apart. “Okay I need to stop real quick, this is a must.”

Pulling up to a Dunkin, aka the only place she could get a quick cup to go, she found herself in a line that went on for 10 cars just to get into the drive thru. And though that was the norm for her small town and because she normally was good about bringing her own, she had never been personally impacted by it until now, of course.

While waiting for a minute there, she decided to try something out. Moving out of the line, she passed the Dunkin and parked at the dentist office next door. She got out and made to sprint across the grass. It was in that mad dash that the ground underneath her right foot seemed to slip out from under her. Sliding, but managing not to wipe out, she went into a small split before coming to a halt. Looking down, she could see the culprit of her slide, a hefty steaming pile of dog shit, all over her white Nikes. She spun around, looking in all directions for the dog and master responsible, but there was no one to be seen.

She wiped off her shoe with help from the dew on the grass as best as she could and made her way to where the grass met the drive-thru lane. Stopping to let a farm truck pass her and she couldn’t help but to noticed that on the back was a single sticker.

Shit Happens

Making her way into the Dunkin, Emily gave her shit shoes a few good scrapes on the front carpet and was delighted to see that there was only 2 people in line and found it ironic that coming inside rather than going through drive thru was somehow a faster process.

The first man in line had been in the process of ordering a few donuts and a ‘dunkachino’ — a mix of coffee and hot chocolate. Only he made it clear that he wanted a stronger consistency of coffee to hot chocolate.

“70-30 ratio buddy” were his exact words to the stoney teenager behind the counter who didn’t give a single fuck about his job, let alone customer satisfaction. This guy was just 1 of the several hundred people he would have to deal with until he could clock out at noon. He didn’t get paid enough to care. With that being the case, this high maintenance male customer’s CUSTOM ORDER was going to be impacted.

And it was.

It began when the young lad brought over the man’s donuts, 2 of which were the wrong kind and one was with sprinkles.

“I said no fucking sprinkles Bozo” barked the man.

The worker apologized, mentioned how he had been up since 4, and hustled off to swap them out. The kid handed the man his large ‘dunkachino’ and the woman in front of Emily began to order when the man stormed back in.

“What is this cocktail you’ve made me kid, I said 70-30 coffee to hot chocolate, not the other way around. Make me another one, this is bullshit and I’m late”.

Emily looked down at her watch, being reminded by this ass hat of her own time crunch – 20 minutes from work, 30 minutes until meeting started.

“Tits” she thought to herself, “do I stay?”…. “I need coffee or I’ll be a fucking ghoul at this meeting”.

Realizing the time she had committed already, she made herself stay. “This is like a relationship you stay in because you’ve put a lot of time and effort into it” she thought to herself.

Coming out of her head and back to reality, she saw the man was still at the counter and was now testing his drinks consistency, seemingly ready to send it back if he wasn’t satisfied.

“Just fucking take it and go already” piped in the woman in front of Em.

“Yeah! Other people have places to be too ya know!” she heard herself saying, surprising even herself.

The man gave the two a long nasty look and took a final long sip of his drink while he did. To be a dick and nothing more, he asked the kid to fill it to top with more coffee and began twirling his keys around one finger like an idiot while he waited. Finally, after what seemed like eon’s, the kid came back with the drink.

“Thanks so much” said the man in the fakest most sarcastic tone Emily had ever heard.

“Later bitches” he said as he walked out, throwing the two women the peace sign.

Turning around, the lady in front gave Emily a look like “ugh, men” and started to make her order but was drowned out by the sound of his truck with American flags all over it ripping through and out of the parking lot.

Encouraged that she was next and finally gotten rid of the ‘dunkachino’ douche bag, Emily was patient with the woman in front of her. At least at first. But after she ordered seemingly every item on the menu that they had, she then told the kid to “hold up” as she had to clarify an order with someone waiting in her car and she made a quick phone call. Having messed up a previous order, she also needed to sort that out with the kid working and after several minutes finally finished the rest of her order.

Looking down at her watch again she saw she had 24 minutes until the meeting and stepped up to counter. “Can I just get a medium coffee with 2 cremes and sugars please” she asked the kid politely hoping it would incentivize good service.

“Hi, yeah, just one second we had to brew another batch she got the last of it” he said, gesturing to the other woman.

“Oh okay, how long will that take?” asked Emily freaking out internally.

“2 minutes tops its almost done” he replied.

She paid and went to the bathroom quickly, figuring that she could kill some time and get it out of the way so that she didn’t have to go when she got to work. Just as she planned, when she walked out the kid had her coffee ready and waiting for her and she was able to slip out ahead of woman that had gone before her. Crossing the drive thru lane, she was pleased to see that one of the cars waiting in line had been a few spots ahead of her while she waited to get into the parking lot and felt like she had saved herself some time. She jumped over the dog shit in the grass and got to her car and was ready for her day to get better and looked forward to her long-awaited coffee fix.

- 21 minutes to meeting ​-

Having been freshly brewed, it was scalding hot, obviously, and her reckless desire for it and disregard led to her burning the shit out of her tongue and throat. Crying a bit – but refusing to let it be in an ugly way, she took a few sips of her water from her bag and quickly collected herself and began the second half of her drive. The rest of the ride luckily was not so bad, especially as her now lidless cup of coffee cooled off and she could enjoy some of it. Burned tongue or not she was getting in her caffeine quota. It can be noted that she was given the middle finger a few times, but that was only because she was riding peoples’ asses due to her rush so she felt like it was understandable and was able to look past it.

She arrived at work a minute before her GPS said she would — a very gratifying feeling that anyone whose experienced as much can vouch for. She had pulled into her parking lot and was about to slip into a spot when her car was nudged sideways out of nowhere. Her coffee went flying and though it was no longer super-hot, it did go all over her top and some of her pants, though it wasn’t as noticeable with them being black.

“MOTHER FUCKER” she yelled, and twirled her head around to see who had hit her. It was Nadine; an older and sweet coworker of hers that was also tragically clumsy. This was right up her alley.

Deciding to just park in the spot she had chosen, she got out and approached Nadine’s car.

“Nade” she said to the woman in a friendly but also ‘what the fuck’ sort of way.

“I’m so sorry honey, I didn’t see you coming and I thought I had pulled too far into my space so I wanted to back out a bit I must’ve gone a bit too far back”

“Uhh yeah you did” said Emily, pissed and now late, “let’s exchange insurance info during lunch I need to get inside.”

‘At least I have an excuse why I’m late if anyone gives me shit’ she thought.

She put on the hoodie from her backseat, which with a sad duck on the front with the words “Sadderday” on it, wasn’t the most appropriate for work, but was definitely accurate and would at least cover up the coffee spill. She went inside and was immediately greeted by a posse of dogs, big and small. It was bring your dog to work day she remembered, and Emily was very much a cat person. Looking around she couldn’t help but to think about the sort of mayhem it would have caused if she had brought in her agent of chaos Morpheus.

“Next time” she said to herself, making a mental note.

Pushing through the group of dogs that seemed quite interested in her coffee-stained pants, she made her way into the meeting room and was able to hear the end of what her boss was saying. Sitting down by her friend Veronica, she settled in and listened as best as she could, but for some reason, she was having trouble getting past the events that just transpired. Day dreaming for who knows how long, she came to as everyone began to get up to leave and followed Veronica as she went to the kitchen.

“Roni” she said making it clear in her tone that she had some shit to lay on her and then said “I’ve got some shit to lay on you” to emphasize.

She began going into her morning, starting from the beginning with Mindy the DJ, with the coffee spill and subsequent leaving of the coffee, the dead rabbit, the blood, the line for dunkin, the dog shit, the people at dunkin, the tongue burn, the coffee spilling on her, the collision with Nadine, all of it. By the end Veronica’s mouth was hanging wide open.

“Wow” she exclaimed, “just wow”.

“Yup. Fucking madness and its barely past 9 o’clock.”

Having slipped into the kitchen without them noticing, her boss had overheard a bit and when they seemed to be finished talking, he spoke up hoping to raise some spirits.

“Roni, Em, couldn’t help but to overhear, can I offer you guys some coffee? Got a fresh box of joe from Dunkin for the meeting this morning and barely anyone had any, let’s not let it go to waste am I right?”

In a blink of an eye, she died a bit inside with the realization that she could have just skipped her Dunkin trip, she gave her boss a dirty look and remembered that he was from her town as well.

“So, what, did you wait in line at the Dunkin in town or did you park at the dentists?” she asked, feeling like she knew where this was headed.

“The dentists!” he replied, being surprised that she knew that, “that line was obnoxious, there was no way I was waiting, I got in and out in a minute and still had time to let Bruno run around in the grass while I answered emails”, he finished.

“Oh yeah?” said Emily, “did he happen to take a big dump in the grass?”

“Not that I can remember seeing” he replied sounding uneasy.

“Well, he must’ve!” she replied in an icy tone, taking off her right shoe and holding it up for him and Roni to see.

“Oof, okay yeah maybe he did, my bad” he replied contritely.

“Yeah, yeah” said Emily now double pissed at him and got up to walk away.

She hadn’t made it more than a few strides when from behind her she heard a squeak come out of Roni’s mouth followed by a seemingly frantic call of her name.

“EM… bathroom, now”

“What it is!?” she asked the moment the stepped in.

“Your ass is sticking out of your pants, did you not know that they were ripped??”

“What the fuck!” she said as she whirled around and began to inspect her butt.

“They must have fucking ripped when I stepped in that shit and did a split this morning. Gods balls this day is bullshit” she blurted out as she began to weep.

“Its okay, I doubt anyone noticed” replied Roni trying to calm her down. “I’ve got some backups in my trunk I’ll go grab them and you can choose” she finished before unlocking the door and running off to get them.

There she waited for a few minutes until Roni returned with a couple choices of pants that despite being a bit baggy were still up to her satisfaction. She changed and as she began to leave the bathroom, she gave the sign of the cross hoping to improve her fortunes.

With all the trauma of this single day, the rest of the morning went by at the snails’ crawl and Emily couldn’t help but to feel like some of her coworkers had definitely seen her ass and/or powderpuff girl underwear, so that sucked.

It was just as her lunch arrived and she began to eat that some more fun came her way in the form of a fire in the kitchen. Some dingus had put his metal fucking Tupperware into the microwave to heat up his potatoes and had blown the thing up, and in a matter of seconds the fire alarm was ringing and water was pouring out of the sprinkler systems above.

She ran out of her office and tried to save her food and figured it was okay to eat, but as she went to re-indulge when she was outside one of her coworkers stopped her.

“I wouldn’t eat that if I were you” he said, “the water in those systems is absolutely ancient”

“Ugh” she replied knowing he was right and flung it across the yard, which earned her some looks from her other coworkers who had gone out that same exit.

On top of that she had just realized that she had several different case files open on her desk and that they were now most definitely destroyed along with her computer, and again the waterworks started to flow.

They were allowed back in an hour or so later and tasked with getting a scope of the damage for the mega insurance claim they would have to file. She saved what she could of the documents and created a clothes line for them to hang off of to dry and went to the kitchen to make some tea. Her boss was of course in there along with another man in a suit she had never seen. They both greeted her with a nod though she didn’t return any acknowledgement of their presence, and the two continued with their conversation.

She finished making her tea and was headed out when the man in the suit approached her, “is this your idea of work attire, miss?” he said looking her over.

“I don’t know who you are, sir”, she said icily, “but I am having one of the worst days of my life. My dress shirt is under my hoodie and is covered in coffee and the pants I wore today ripped. Is that a good enough answer?” she finished, storming off back to her office.

She had been tidying up and consolidating what she could when she heard a knock on her door. It was her boss.

“Emily, sounds like it’s been a tough day. Why don’t you take the rest of the afternoon off to collect yourself and calm down a bit”.

“Calm down a bit?” she asked not liking the implication that she wasn’t acting calm.

“Yes” he said firmly, sensing her displeasure.

“From what I’ve been hearing, you’ve been having outbursts all day long. And at first, I was going to give you the benefit of the doubt, but the way you spoke to Howard, THE CEO, really rubbed him the wrong way”.

“Of fucking course that was the CEO” she thought to herself, but not having the energy for more confrontation she digressed and agreed and got her things ready to go home figuring that if she was being given extra free time that she might as well take advantage of it.

She left work after dropping by Nadine’s office to get her insurance info and made her way home with absolutely no issues, which she found to be suspicious but was okay with.

“There’s still time to turn around this day” she thought to herself as she pulled into her driveway, but that quickly changed.

“NO WAY” she yelled as she drove up to the house. She had left the garage door open and couldn’t help but to notice that something wasn’t right. She parked and took a few steps out to see that the door to the house was cracked open.

“I never closed the door” she realized. Reaching for her phone she was about to call her dad but was suddenly startled when the neighbor (the one with the pachysandra) called out to her.

“Where are you moving to miss Emily?” she yelled out, clearly curious.

“Moving?” she asked walking closer to the neighbor’s yard.

“Yeah, moving guys were here today packing everything up. Guy said you had bought a second house a couple towns over”.

Running from the neighbor towards the house without responding, she burst in to see the place had been stripped of nearly everything of value that could easily fit out the door, with her coffee-stained sofa and the love seat being the only thing that they found to be not worth it thanks to Morpheus’s claw marks.

She called the police and told them what happened and what she thought had been potential free time turned into a whole load of bullshit. They came and consumed a few hours of her time before they finally left and by now, she was in shambles. She curled up on the love seat and called her cousin who had always been her best friend and rock to lean on.

“Becky, I need you right now, can we do something tonight please, please, today has been a day”

“I’ll be over after work, yeah” replied her cousin with a concerned tone to her voice.

A couple hours passed and finally Becky arrived at her house, with bread, cheese and some wine — the necessities. They talked about her day and drank and cried a bit and after she had gotten it all out of her system they decided to go out to the bar.

“Where something hot, get some validation from some strangers and a number or two and you’ll feel better” said Becky as they got ready.

“Amen” Emily replied giving her a wry smile.

They went out to an Irish bar a couple towns over that they had always liked and had been having a pretty good time and hadn’t paid for any of the three drinks they had consumed thanks to a few pathetic simps that had fallen under their superficial spell. Her night was seeming to start to overshadow her day and her guard was beginning to go down when while returning from the bathroom she saw her cousin talking to another girl, who upon further inspection was actually her other cousin, Becky’s younger sister - Amy. And attached to her side was Emily’s ex-boyfriend Kyle, who had dumped her a few weeks back for what he said was a younger, hotter version of her without the rich girl entitlement/privilege complex – his exact words.

She stopped dead and felt herself vomit in her mouth. But unfortunately, she couldn’t just leave. Her phone and wallet were sitting on the table the three were standing at. She waddled over to the table tentatively and began to attempt to low key slip away with them as her younger cousin spun around.

“Em!” she called out, forcing a hug upon her.

“Hey Aim” she said back, emotionless.

“I saw Beck’s snap story and decided to join you guys”

“Great” said Emily, giving Becky a quick glance.

“Oh and I wanted you guys to meet my new boyfriend Kyle”, who was now posted up at the bar waiting for drinks.

“We’ve met” said Emily coldly, “he’s my ex”.

The look on Amy’s face went from delight to anguish all at once.

“Oh. Fuck” she said giving Emily an ‘I’m sorry’ look.

They sat there in silence for a few more seconds until he rejoined them and met Emily’s eyes.

“Fuck” he said out loud, looking like he had seen a ghost.

“What…. what are you doing here?” he said looking puzzled.

“Amy is my younger, hotter cousin” she said knowing only he would understand the reference.

“I didn’t know, how could I” he said incredulously while looking at Amy and Becky for reassurance.

“We have different last names” said Amy trying to make it not seem so bad but as far as Emily was concerned now the night was ruined as well.

She picked up her stuff, downed the rest of her drink and said “I think I’m going to go” and left without another word, she was so very over this day.

She drove home and after parking her car she opened up her phone to see she had received several texts. The first from Becky asking if she was okay, the second was from Amy saying in all caps “SORRY”, and the last was from Kyle saying that he didn’t know and that he and Amy really were sorry. She turned her phone off, went right upstairs, threw herself into her bed and popped on an audiobook to fall asleep to.

In her dreams that night, she relived the events of the day in an even more dramatic and over the top version of what had actually happened and even though she woke up several times in the night, she seemed to slip back into the same dream over and over again like some sort of mystic. Finally sheer exhaustion took over and just 15 minutes before her alarm was to go off, she passed out.

She awoke that fifteen minutes later and felt encouraged that at least it was a new day when she heard Mindy come on over her radio. It’s “Emo Monday” she called out and the sound of “I’m not okay” by My Chemical Romance once again began to blare throughout her house.