It was that time again, 6am! Madison was awakened from her sleep in the middle of an immersive lucid dream by her glaringly loud alarm. She hit the snooze button and rolled on her side in her dark room. The sun was peaking through her window. The hint of sunlight hit her face like heat-intensive lasers. She said to herself, “Guess, it’s time to get up! I can’t extend this any longer, I see!” She crept out of her bed to the bathroom. Her roommate and she had a bathroom schedule that they followed religiously. Due to Madison waking up late, she rushed her bathroom routine in an attempt to be polite to her roommate. After grooming herself and throwing on her clothes, she grabbed her backpack and darted out the door.
The weather was pretty brisk this morning as Madison rushed to her train. While running, Madison realized that she still had her headphones in her hand, she adjusted them on her head just barely before she headed downstairs to the crowded subway. As she approached the platform, she was brushed in the face by the gust of wind that carried her train away. She missed the train by a millisecond. Trying to not be discouraged, she checked her phone for the next one, only to find that it wouldn’t be arriving until twenty-five minutes later. She closed out of the train app and opened her music app. “How about some M83 “Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming” while I wait?” She thought. As she stood patiently waiting for the train while pacing to and fro, she noticed that the train platform was getting very crowded. “I wish this train would hurry up!” she thought to herself. In the midst of her self-reflection, a stranger walked up to her and began talking. She couldn’t hear a word that he was saying because her music was on full blast. She nodded her head and kept her headphones on hoping that the stranger would get the hint and move along. He didn’t. Madison removed her headphones a bit agitated, while asking, “How can I help you?” The stranger responded, “Do you happen to have the time?” Madison looked down at her watch and said, “A quarter till nine.” The stranger thanked her. Madison put her headphones back on and thought to herself, “I can’t believe he interrupted me for that?” The train finally rushed into the station, Madison fought her way to the front only to find that the train was super crowded. Standing room only. The train ride seemed longer than usual, but eventually, she arrived at her stop.
Madison walked into the lobby of her building, showed her badge, and entered the elevator bank. She looked down at her watch and noticed that she was thirty minutes late. She hoped that the elevator ride would be a seamless one. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. The elevator was crowded and stopped at nearly every floor. She finally made it to her office and put her stuff on her desk as she ran to her boss’s office only to find that her boss decided to hold an impromptu meeting for her team. “How embarrassing is it that I will have to walk in late. What are the odds that my Type A hot-headed boss will call me out?” She anxiously thought to herself as she rushed to the conference room. Lucky for her, she was able to slip into the back of the room without her boss noticing. “What a great start to a day?” she thought to herself with a sigh. The remainder of the meeting was her boss complaining about the team not meeting the monthly benchmarks. Her boss, Corinne, VP of Business Analytics, looked over at Madison as she began to hand out weekly assignments. “Madison, you’re doing the monthly analytics dashboards and PowerPoint deliverables. I need them on my desk no later than Friday morning! Is that clear? No exceptions!” Madison nodded her head as Corinne moved on to the next person. “There goes my nights this week. No writing or art class this week, I guess.” Madison thought to herself.
After divvying out tasks, Corrine dismissed everyone to their desks. Madison rushed over to her desk as she began to type her tasks into her status doc. Madison was a very organized and methodical worker. Her desk was neatly arranged and so clean that you could eat off of it. Madison was a woman of few words. She mostly kept her headphones on all day. Her coworkers knew very little about Madison due to her being very socially awkward. Moreover, all her coworkers knew about her was that she was a creative type who happened to stumble upon an analytical job. Today was no different than the rest, Madison submerged herself into her work skipping her lunch and barely leaving her desk for bathroom breaks. By this time, Empire Of The Sun was blasting in her headphones as she barely noticed that the day was coming to a close. Madison was the second to last to be in the office. She grabbed her backpack and headed to the elevator. On the way to the elevator, something grabbed her attention. She looked through the large glass windows across from the elevator bank and noticed a dark figure dragging a body-sized garbage bag out the door. She thought to herself, “That seems weird. I wonder what it is.” The elevator arrived and broke her train of thought. As Madison boarded the elevator, she completely dismissed what she had just seen.
Another day, another late night, another sighting of a dark figure struggling to drag a body-sized black bag. Madison couldn’t help but notice that this was occurring again. “Am I having Déjà Vu? Is this a dream?” She thought to herself. “Should I investigate what could be in the bag?” She quietly hit the elevator button to exit to the lobby. Upon making it to the lobby, Madison took a brief detour to the dark alley to see if the body bag was there. She arrived at a garbage bank with tall cans with “toxic” labels on them. Madison was hesitant to open one of the lids. Who knows what it could contain. She slowly approached the garbage can at the beginning of the bank and opened the lid very slowly. As the lid opened, a glowing green substance leaped from the inside of the garbage can into Madison’s nostrils. She slowly fell to the ground unconscious where she lay until morning. She was awakened by a stranger standing over her, saying, “I knew you would come, Madison.” She frantically raised herself up while asking, “Where am I? Who are you? What happened to me? I can’t remember what happened to me!” The stranger quietly reassured her by saying, “I’ve been following you. You’re one of the special ones. Be calm!” “Be Calm!!!!” Madison yelled! “Are you crazy?” Wait…” You’re the stranger from the train who asked me the time. What do you want with me? Why am I special? Without giving the stranger a chance to answer, Madison rushed to her feet and ran toward her office lobby. The security guard at the office’s front desk noticed Madison was disoriented. He came from behind his desk and asked if he could help her. Madison began to explain that she works in the building but was unsure of what happened to her last night. The security guard continued to try to comfort Madison and even offered to call for help. Madison refused. As she refused the security guard’s help, the stranger entered the entrance of the building saying, “Madison, wait, I need to explain!…” As Madison reluctantly approached the stranger, she began to sway and feel dizzy. She slowly descended to the floor unconscious….
Mercedes Tucker 