11:11

Make A Wish

Soft music plays in the background mixing with the humdrum of regular office chatter. The studio-turned-office is awash with natural light from the huge industrial windows which lined one side.

Their CEO liked the working environment like that - open, relaxed, light and airy.

Rosie sets her Cintiq pen down on the desk, beside the tablet she was just drawing on. She stretches her arms up over her head and wags her hand around then rotates the joint at the wrist. Then she bends down and crosses her arms over her desk as a pillow and lays her head down. She expels a sigh, heavy with exhaustion.

She hasn't been drawing for long that day, but she already feels knots in the muscles in her neck and back and a discomfort in her wrist.

She works at a small creative company - one that provides services of animators, illustrators, graphic designers, photographers and all digital creative needs anyone might have under the sun. It was a small company - only a few years old - but they’ve been known among marketing and creative circles for providing quality art on time and treating their artists well in terms of pay and benefits.

Rosie looks at the time on her tablet. It’s still less than an hour until lunch break and it’s already been a long day.

There was a short client meeting at 8 am that lasted til 8:30 but all they did was suffer through their client’s ranting and hollering about how the deadline for the short animated clip were a week away and they were only 25% done. Then she had to suffer through having to calm their CEO down from a panic attack because of all the deadlines that they had to meet before the end of the month.

That lasted til 9:30.

Then she went down and bought a bagel and a cup of coffee from the food truck across the street but a rollerblader zoomed past her and she dropped her food. The coffee stained her favorite black Pulp Fiction shirt and her white stan smiths.

Now it’s 11:10 and Rosie has had nothing to eat but her pride and frustration. She's barely made progress on her work and she's looking at another late night at the office just to make up for this morning and to make significant progress so they would be able to meet the deadline.

She closes her eyes for a moment. She pushes aside her worries, kicking pressure and stress to the curb momentarily and thinks of what to order for lunch.

Pho, maybe?

She hears the roll of an office chair's wheels against wooden floors. She counts down the seconds - 3, 2, 1 - until she feels the bump of a back rest shake her desk. The vibrations crawl up the skin of her arms and against her cheek. She hears a hum.

She counts down again... 3, 2, 1, until-

"Bad day?"

Rosie sighs heavily again, exhale laced with annoyance. She knows if she looks up, she'll be met with an easy, confident smirk and flirtatious eyes. She wonders when her officemate would take the hint that she's not interested.

Lisa leans over, upper body invading Rosie's personal space.

"11:11, make a wish," her co-worker whispers.

Rosie doesn't even open her eyes when she replies.

"I wish for you to go away."

Lisa just chuckles and leans back and leans away.

"Okay, but 11:11 again tomorrow, though."

The smirk was audible from the statement. Rosie thinks of plucking Lisa's eyelashes out in annoyance. And then Rosie feels the presence beside her disappear and she feels the peace and order of her world slowly weave themselves together.