C'est la vie - A Collection

Brew thee a smile

An entry for the contest 'Coffee Shop Conundrum' by coffeecommunity

Prompt: After hearing the best reviews about a certain coffee shop, you decide to visit the café and order a drink. When you get your beverage, you find your name scribbled on the side of the cup, although you didn't tell them your name in the first place.

•••

Okyar blinked.

Once.Twice.

Trying to draw away the thick curtain of sleepiness from her eyes, she peeped over the semi-mountains of files aligned in front of her. She needed to convince herself that the figure standing at her cubicle door was real and not a trick played by her sleep-deprived mind.

Even without seeing properly, she could tell it was Mari, the Angel of Death in disguise as her boss's secretary, carrying yet another pile of 'torment letters' for her.

She had started fearing those sheets of papers which were neatly clipped and arranged inside those black leather briefs, more than anything else she had in her twenty-five years of life.

"He asked you to get them done by noon tomorrow. Said it's urgent." Okyar could hear the Angel of Death breathe, as she neared her desk.

She squinted her eyes as her mouth fell open. It was the third stack coming its way to her desk for the day and she wasn't even done with the two stacks from the day before.

'Retire already,' she could hear a tiny voice in the back of her head whine.

Okyar squashed her face square against her palms, accepting defeat after a long fight of thirty-six hours with no proper meal or sleep. 'Rest' was a mirage that she chased for, file after file and 'vacation' was the unicorn in her sleepless dreams. A prolonged sigh weaved its way out of her body, dragging her soul too with it.

Her eyes were throbbing and she could safely say the white in them was slowly adapting a familiar crimson to them now-even though she hadn't seen herself in a mirror lately. Not in the morning had she had time for that as she jumped out of her bed and right into her office wear, starting off the beautiful morning with an alarm that had failed her whole existence.

Her anxiety, playing the role of her big fat boss as he was giving the same shit again about what a failure she was, played repeatedly inside her head.

Her migraine which had accompanied her ever since she had signed up for this project, had renewed the moment she saw Mari with a pile of files.

No matter how hard Okyar was trying, she was still good twelve hours behind her boss's schedule. It was confirmed to her that she was not gonna get her beauty sleep for another twelve hours or so. She wondered how long she could be doing this in her current state.