The Science of Sleep

Chapter 1

It's somewhat fitting that the day Frank Iero's life is completely and utterly turned upside down begins as your average day from Hell.

To start with, he oversleeps. He's normally pretty punctual at getting himself up and off to work but the night before he happened to fall asleep on the sofa after getting completely absorbed in this new trashy Sci-Fi novel until about 3am. He's woken up with a massive crick in his neck and his boss yelling at him down the phone, demanding to know where the hell he is.

Of course, today also happens to be the day that some idiot's caused a massive pile-up that blocks up the entire road and forces Frank to have to take an alternate route via a nice detour of the backstreets of the city. By the time his car rolls up to the office car park, he's now not only incredibly fucking late but also completely nicotine and caffeine deprived, having accidentally left his pack of cigarettes at home. He flashes his ID pass to the security guard in the booth at the barrier - thank Christ he remembered his pass - but for some reason, the guard doesn't raise the barrier for him.

"Car park's full," he says bluntly.

Frank stares at him, momentarily not understanding.

"Car park's full," the guard repeats. "You'll have to park on the road."

"You have got to be fucking kidding me. Are you sure there's not even one space available?!"

"Car park's full," the guard says again, and Frank swears to God, if the guy says that one more time he won't be held accountable for ramming the asshole and his stupid little booth.

"I can't park on the road!!" Frank says desperately. "They've got clampers!!"

"Try the Mall car park then." The guard shrugs but he's clearly enjoying screwing with someone who's already not having the best day. "It's about five minutes down the road."

Frank stares ahead past the barrier at the office car park, full of shining cars. His mind can't seem to form any decent plan to get him in there, other than simply flooring it and charging the barrier.

"Car park's full," the guard repeats and Frank is definitely sure he saw the fucker smirking that time.

Without another word, Frank shifts into reverse and backs away from the barrier, burning down the road in the direction of the Mall.

'Five minutes down the road' turns out to be a complete and utter lie and despite Frank's best efforts to sneak past his boss's office unnoticed, he's still hauled in for a ten minute chat about the importance of punctuality which ends on "don't let it happen again, and by the way, your shirt's on inside out." This then turns into the "we count ourselves as an open-minded company and we're really fine with you having visible tattoos, provided you don't turn up with a swastika on your forehead, but could you please make some attempts at presentation" speech, which Frank is pretty sure his boss likes to practice in the mirror at home specially for Frank.

The work day doesn't get any better from there. Frank works in tech support for a corporation that could afford to update their systems to something other than Windows Vista, but frustratingly instead chooses to spend their budget on revamping the company as something 'hip and modern' every three months. The computer system crashes about five times, he has to deal with a phone call from a moron who deleted the work he sent them six months ago and to top it off, the coffee machine is broken.

The only upside to this day is that his fellow tech-support office monkey Bob has a spare pack of cigarettes, which he kindly donates and which Frank burns through in about the space of half an hour.

"You're not having the best day, are you?" Bob remarks on their break. Frank doesn't dignify that with an answer; instead, he scowls and takes another deep drag.