{This ending is part of the Finish the Story Contest, the 18th contest so far. Click here to see the contest… @Calluna wrote the Prompt this time around... Usually I don't talk about music pairs with posts, but "Inhuman Frequency" from the HL2 OST suits the ending well.}
The Prompt
She picked up a resignation form today. She had been thinking about it for a while, handing in her notice, taking her last year. Every day is just the same, different faces, different flavours, but underneath, it was all the same. Was there any point in the endless forward march, the slow decline into ill health, unemployment and poverty? She didn’t have children, no friends who came to visit, and it was at least three years since her last match.
She sat on the corner of her single bed, in her single room, the thin long window illuminating the bare floor. She pushed a loose strand of mousy blonde hair behind her ear, and picking at her thumb, she wandered in thought.
She could travel, she could see the ocean, she could stand beneath trees, she could sit in silence. For one year. It was as good as it got, some people only got 6 months. But was she ready?
She couldn’t keep going, not like this. She had seen the lifers, the people who worked for 65 years and collapsed, decrepit, into the hands of hapless, half-hearted “help”. She had even been that half-hearted, hapless help, she had worked for minimum wage, clearing up bodily fluids, spoon feeding, doing what she could, but it destroyed you, seeing all your future had to offer.
A lot of people who worked there handed in their notice; you had to do it between 40 and 55 to get the year. Some people applied for special circumstances after 55, but generally they got less time.
She was 47. A lot could change in her life still. She could meet someone, she could have children, grandchildren, she could grow old. Couldn’t she…? Did she want to? She turned it over in her mind. She had accepted a lot in her life, but she just couldn’t face the rest of her life, playing out, day by slow dragging, hardworking, lonely, day. Night after empty, starless night. If she took her year, she could get away from the cities and their thick rank pollution. She could escape the crush of the masses, the regimented flow of preoccupied people. Her parents took her to a forest once, before the regulations changed, and closing her eyes, she could almost hear the hushed whisper of branches, almost feel the dappled sunlight on her upturned face. Almost. She opened her eyes, was there ever really any question? She had dreamed of it for as long as she could remember, and in that moment, she realised, she was always going to quit, it was never a question of did she want to, just when. Was she ready?
She flopped back onto her bed, bouncing back against the overly springy mattress. Relief coursed through her. She was going to quit, maybe not today, but she would do it. The digital display in the wall flashed, green numbers ticking over, 23:00. Instinctively, she felt around her bedside tablet, and pressing the button, retrieved her small blue pill. Blue before bed, white before work. It dissolved on her tongue, and she felt the thoughtless relaxation wash over her.
The next morning, she woke before her alarm had chance to rouse her. She stood at the window, watching the constant ebb and flow of people and traffic, the living city beneath her never slept. Her resolve had only hardened overnight, it felt right. She retrieved the form. She would quit. She would take the year. One good year, then call it quits.
The Ending by @theironfelix
As she marched to work, the stream of people and cars quietly dissolved to an undifferentiated blur as she quickened her pace. Finally her workplace came to view, all shove aches became repressed as she bolted to the opaque door and sighed in relief when she made it. But she felt cold behind her, but she fancied that she's tired.
So, looking towards the opaque door, she gripped the handle and walked in. But a deafening quiet was all she received. She slammed the door shut, but covered and twirled herself around back to the crowd... to only then unravel herself to see it become less dense and she knew it to be rush hour now.
Startled out by the occurrence, she instinctively gripped the handle and opened the opaque door to only fall on her back as she entered through. Now noticing the workplace to had dematerialized a lot rather quick. Recomposing herself, she saw through a still opened door that traffic was no more. Then she perceived blue light with a crackling flame disturbing the quiet darkness, and without a moment's notice she leapt through the doorway to only see the world around had already decomposed.
Breathing erratically, she turned around and now it was a bland white building that had blue lighting. She ran back and closed the opaque door to then experience free-falling in a darkened room. Before she jolted awake, a white myst appeared and revealed a blue flame eye socket. Springing awake, she panted but couldn't sweat, she shivered under a repressive heat, she trembled yet couldn't weep until the alarm clock rang.
She tried to snooze her alarm, yet it wouldn't snooze and made her yank it from the wall and chuck it at the window. Only the long window collapsed to tiny pieces as did her alarm, she twisted to see her bed transform to the flame-blue eyed white myst. The flame betraying the myst as it revealed an opaque door that she ran to and opened up, to then step out into an empty city road. She ran but she was face to face with a dead end - to be prey or a leap of faith, now or never.
She woke up in her house moments after torquing backwards head first. 2300 hours read the alarm - she picked up the resignation form, she was going to make that leap of faith. Morning came, she calmly strolled to work so as to press to her boss the year off she earned - the comfortably dressed white-suit and blue-tie bureau eavesdropped on the commotion and were afraid of another worker lawsuit. So they called her to meet her in the bureau's office and they granted her vacation on the spot. As she left, she heard her boss being called and a moment later he clambered the floor with a boiling red-face. Now with a healthy assurance of her vacation, she had time for relaxing and planning her life ahead.
The End
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