Short story

[robinbloke]

The train rumbled past, making my house shake. It was barely light outside and the dawn chorus was already busy greeting the new day. I groaned and stuffed my head further under my blanket, it was far too early to be awake.
It used to be that I'd slowly wake up to the morning and the day would unfold at a nice, steady pace. Now it was always up early from the noise of the trains, lay in bed trying to sleep, crawl out and get the day started.
I should have stayed in the country, but there's little work out there these days, everything and everyone is too busy these days and all the jobs are being swept up, everything is being done en masse - there’s no room for the little people anymore.
At least it wasn't raining, my roof had been struck by a falling branch in one of the storms earlier in the year and it still leaked, my whole house could do with being repaired. But there was never enough time these days, no time for yourself. No time for any fun anymore. Realising I wasn't going to get back to sleep I crawled from my bed and set about getting ready for the day.
Breakfast was just a little cereal that I'd been saving - nothing fresh, nothing to really get you ready for the new day. One of my friends swears by these energy bars in the morning, says that they get you up bright and bouncy. I've read the ingredients on those things and I can't say it makes me anything but ill thinking about them. Bring back good old honest porridge I say.
Dress, wash, eat, clean and flop out of my door. At least I can walk to work, the whole cities a maze of tunnels these days, dirt and muck everywhere. You wouldn't catch me on any of this public transport lark, crawling into some horrid smelling tin can and bouncing through an endless maze of unlit catacombs. I trust my own feet and shuffling through a dingy tunnel in a ratrace to get a few more steps closer to another dingy tunnel isn't my idea of a way to travel.
Work is a high rise crèche perched out high above my own little house, a noisy crowded place where the kids always seem to be hungry. Not that I can do much about that myself, the parents insist on feeding them themselves, the whole place is a total mess despite what I try to do keep it clean, but when you work for peanuts you have to expect that work isn't going to be great.
Yeah, modern life is pretty damn horrible, I yearn for the old days when all this really was fields and that work was a lot more fun, not just babysitting a couple of twittering pests. But then in this new age you have to move with the times, there's just not much for a modern Pixie to do.

Comments

[silja.livejournal.com]

But it is warm and sunny outside!

(Sorry, for some reason that came to mind when I read this. I like it, good writing style, very depressing though.)

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Try 'the other side' then here, this was sort of meant as a kind of follow on in a way, well at least a similar idea anyway