Out on a Limb

Freya sighs and glances at her watch for the fifth time in less than a minute. It can’t still be quarter past nine.

Why does every second seem to last weeks in here?

Hunched over her desk, she scowls at her cooling cup of coffee, the steam pirouetting towards the ceiling as her life ticks away.

Her eyes glaze over as she jiggles the mouse across the screen, the text blurring in front of her. She blinks and wonders if anyone has noticed she hasn’t typed a single word since she logged on almost an hour ago.

Doubt it.

She’s perfected the art of sleeping with her eyes open ever since she started working at Nova Marketing last July. That and the fake smile she plasters across her face as she wrenches open the office door each morning.

After seven long months, Freya finally understands what people mean when they say they’re dying of boredom.

It’s the silence that really gets to her though. Who’d have thought it could be so deafening. So suffocating and sullen.

And it really isn’t good for her soul…

Instead of thinking about how she can make the humdrum products sing, she fantasizes about switching the caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee and watching her mute colleagues bounce off the walls. She’s even thought about pretending to faint in the middle of the office just to see if it provokes any kind of a response.

Freya stares out of the windows of her glass prison and watches the trees swaying jauntily in the breeze.

No. It’s no good, she thinks. I’ve had enough. Freya jerks her chair back and strides down the office.

‘Catch you later,’ she winks at the office manager.

She’s left her computer on, just to make them think she’s coming back. But she isn’t coming back. She’s escaped and gone to breathe the same air as the free trees.