Three Oclock (standard:drama, 1181 words)
Author: BENTLINK	Added: May 08 2008	Views/Reads: 3331/2158	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Your soul knows what what you need even when you don't.

Three O'clock 

Three o'clock in the morning is a gritty awful time to be awake unless
you are half drunk or about to be having sex.  It's a god-awful time 
that won't lie to you with promises of getting a night of sleep like 
one or two o'clock often did.  Three o'clock just stands up on its back 
legs and tells the truth, “You're a big person now so stop you're 
incessant whining suck it up and grind it out till quitting time.” 

If you had to say something complimentary about three o'clock you could
speak about its arrow straight honesty and the fact that the pain it 
inflected on your body made the seven AM quitting time seem a lot 
better than it was really going to be. 

How a person could grow from infant to child and then on to young
manhood without experiencing even an occasional faint brush with the 
joy of living worth remembering would seem impossible and yet there he 
stood by the time clock punching out. 

Seven o'clock in the morning would for him just turn out to be the start
of another crappy day in a week filled with similar days that when 
stacked one atop the other became the shit pile that was his life.  
This had been his life story so far and he had seen no reason to expect 
anything to change.  Since early childhood, his mission in life had 
been to numb down his mind by rutting out any hopeful thoughts that 
might spring up.  He had managed this pretty well and thought himself 
immunized against hurt and disappointment.  He had far less success 
training his disgustingly buoyant soul.  Every time he felt he had it 
beat down to match all the other parts of his useless life his high 
minded soul came running out of hiding.  It might show itself long 
enough to grab up the image of a pretty flower that had sneaked into 
his mind through the corner of his eye.  His maddeningly disobedient 
soul had mastered the trick of tirelessly repeating the words of only 
half heard love songs again and again.  Never songs of death or 
destruction never once picking a song about lost love nor the pain of 
betrayal or separation only those songs that promised magical meetings, 
sudden enchantment around the next corner or though the next open door. 
 He knew better than to buy into that crap but his idiot soul would not 
be quieted and constantly tried to set him up for major disappointment. 


He liked cloudy overcast days because his itchy sleep starved eyes did
not have to deal with even brief exposure to bright sunlight also they 
matched his perpetual dark mood.  He had stopped removing the ear 
protection required by his job in the net weaving factory when he 
finished his shift.  Not being able to hear the rest of mankind further 
insulated him from a world he hated.  Now if he could only get his soul 
to shut up he would have the total isolation he craved. 

After punching out he made his customary after work pass into the side
door and out the front of the Black Rose Bar and Grill picking up a 
bacon and egg sandwich and two beers as usual.  Black Rose number three 
smiled at him this morning like ever other morning.  He ignored her 
like always paid cash, took all his change, and exited without 
speaking.  Risking arrest for doing so, he as usual drank the first of 
his breakfast beers in plain view as he finished his half minute walk 
home.  Home what a joke; home was a nasty pay a week in advance hotel 
half a block east of the net factory.  Some more or less clean towels 
and sheets he had to pick up at the front desk once a week and on 
average a twice weekly visit by police investigating  the crimes that 
seem to always take place in rent by the week hotels.  He kept his few 
clothes on some rusting metal hangers in the door less closet and the 
rest of his possessions in a cardboard suit case under the swaybacked 
bed of his single large windowless room that fittingly was at the dark 
end of a long dingy hallway. 

He trudged up the three flights of sagging stairs and down the hall to
his room only to find his doorway blocked by the carcass of a young 
girl folded into a fetal position.  He poked her with the toe of his 
steel toed boot and was surprised to find she was not a carcass after 
all but just sleeping or passed out or some shit.  She was curled up 
like a big cat with her back towards the last working light bulb in the 
hallway.  So when she moaned he poked her a little harder with the same 
boot. 



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