Unholy Faces

Chapter 1

I felt some suffocating pressure around my wrists and ankles like I was experiencing paralysis from some kind of mysterious, cosmic force as if I was being pulled by a black hole which expanded more and more after swallowing every tiny speck of me.

This, of course, is a rather poetic description of a scenario where you're tied up to a tarnished hospital bed and some manically looking dudes in white gowns are screaming at you at the top of their lungs while you're screaming back which comes out as a soundless shriek just like in the slow motion scene in a film with ambient music playing in the background.

You know, Sirius Black's death scene in Harry Potter where Harry is being held by Remus. I mean, it must have been hard for Remus too, Sirius was his soulmate but that's another story here.

Anyway. My situation is nothing like that scene because my doctors were acting like Aurors while being Death Eaters. But only I saw that, of course. They tended to restrain me by force but all I needed was a hug.

Maybe strangling me was how they perceived the concept and philosophy behind a simple human hug. Well, I've always been a glass half full kind of guy but in this case my glass was full of ghastly smelling medication which made me smell like a granny who has diabetes.

"What's been happening in your world?"

My doctor must have lost it.

"What have you been up to?"

Excuse me?!

"I heard that you fell in love."

Not really.

"Or near enough."

Okay, enough, stop this.

"I gotta tell you the truth, yeah."

Wait, I was adopted?

"I wanna grab both your shoulders and shake, baby snap out of it."

When has Alex Turner started working as my doctor? I mean, I wouldn't oppose, he's good looking and all, maybe we could have some doctor-patient romance but I don't think I could escape Miles' wrath. But no worries, it was just my alarm which is not less of a nightmare since it signals my daily submission to this capitalistic system, to a 9 to 5 job which feeds me and pays my bills.

You know the feeling when you are too exhausted to leave the bed? That's how I'm feeling now even though I can't sleep because of the nightmare and my very much appreciated alarm clock. It was not a good idea to set that song as an alarm, because now I can't listen to it without thinking of my alarm clock. The song is ruined for me.

After getting out of bed I took a quick shower and brushed my teeth. It was 5:40 AM and there was time before work. In my opinion the best time of the day is the morning, the city is asleep but not you and your loud thoughts. It's like you're the only person on the planet.

I made some coffee and watched Friends, it was the episode where they're up all night. The irony.

I'm supposed to meet my childhood friend Sam after work. We have decided to take a trip to Birmingham this weekend, because I have wanted to visit it since I finished Peaky Blinders. Maybe I'll meet Tommy Shelby on the street, our eyes will lock and we'll fall in love. God, these fictional crushes have really set the bar too high.

Anyway, back to my torturous routine. Oh, and in case you're interested I'm a graphic designer. Now you probably understand why I was having nightmares. It's the reflection of my job. Who has made up that monstrous phrase, "customers are always right?" because no, they think they know your job better than you, which color goes with which one, which template to use for design. And do you know what the worst bit is? When they want to add a text the length of a novel onto the design. What kind of perversion is this? So, yeah, you can imagine that I need therapy, if I can ever recover from the job.