Monday morning preparations

There was a visibly clear moon in the dark blue sky when Hayley set off to do her evil days work.

Her mind was full of yesterdays domestic arguments. She had swapped aggravation in her parents house as a child with aggravation in her boyfriends house as an adult, just like she had swapped doing little work at school with doing little work at work.

Hayleys tired face currently said that she hated to be up on Monday morning. People could often see her thinking pictured immediately on her face. This was usually angry thinking. When she was menstruating and needing a seat, she would hurl herself at a chair, as if willing its destruction. Her mere presence was abrasive. She hoped that some coffees inside her at work would bring her back to her usual aggressive self.

The other feeling that people could see on her face was confusion. Fed up with being insulted by pupils and teachers for being thick, in secondary school she became loudly and brashly thick to subvert that image. Each “Yeaah” or ”Naah” stated pride in duncehood. Getting caught fighting and misbehaving meant even a teacher could notice her obvious bullying of others. She came out with no qualifications. The persona remained and most people who met her became convinced that she was permanently, hopelessly stupid.

Hayley walked from her terrace into a very exclusive looking area, with each building large, individual and stately with its own grounds. One hundred years back, this would have been an area for the rich and these houses would have had servants. They were used for other purposes now. The blackbird sweetly led the dawn chorus from one of many trees in this green and leafy suburb and through the branches glimpses of a horizon showed the changing colours of sunrise. Hayley turgidly neared a junction with planted rhododendron bushes. From a different direction angrily walked Karen.

Karen was in her mid thirties and wore her straight dark hair in the same dismal fringe that she had at school. She was halfway through a lifelong battle to keep her forehead obscured. The fringe nearly met a pair of glasses. To ever change it would mean showing that she was interested in improving how she looked and that would make her feel incredibly self conscious, having been bullied for being fat and plain in her youth. If it had been practical and socially acceptable, she would have extended the browcurtain all the way down to her chubby feet.

After Karen had woken up that morning, she tried to relax with Classic FM on the alarm clock radio but jingles and advertisements always ruined any slightly relaxing moment for her. Finding Radio 3 had no tunes, Karen swore and switched the radio off. It was beside the double bed that she had inherited from her mother along with a house. She lay on this bed as ghoulish triumphalism over her dead mother.

‘The night after you die, I will stretch out on your double bed and laugh.’ Karen had said to her. It had taken years of her mothers incapacitation for Karen to finally have confidence to start regularly attacking her. Karens mother had Karen out of loneliness. Karen left school unconfident and unqualified because bullying had left her depressed, meaning Karens only social ‘circle’ into middle age had been her successfully possessive mother. By the time Karen had the testicle to confront her mother, the person who had controlled Karen all her life was at her mercy and her anger had been pent up for decades. Karens testicle dropped like a venom propelled boulder.

Nursing her mother for years meant she now hated old people more than she hated others. The feeling that her selfless behaviour was unrewarded by her mother had now expanded. Her job left her feeling that her selfless behaviour was unrewarded by the wider community. She got dressed and obscured her forehead in preparation for a new week of meeting the world she hated.

Her mirror showed that the blank, bullied expression of her bullied fat schoolgirl years had morphed into a lairy, bullying expression over the years, due to her gaining control over her mother and being in a mean, bullying job. Angrily leaving the house, Karens mind was full of new grudges that her job gave her and renewed. The flab in her body had tightened and her back was up, giving her the butch, thuggish air of a toppled shotput ace avenging the loss of her favourite projectile. She neared the rhododendron junction and saw Hayley.

“Hayley.” said Karens quiet mean voice. “WA?” said Hayley aggressively before seeing Karen. Her family all said “WA?” and never “pardon”.

“Oh, iss you. Ere, dint I see you dahn the tahn cenUGH on Sa uh day?” Hayley carried on.

“No, you didn’t.”, replied Karen briefly.

Karen was lying. She had seen Hayley but been too embarrassed by Hayleys clothes to acknowledge her. Hayley had been on a girls night out that Saturday and wore a miniskirt at the top of her tree trunk legs. These had ended in big black boots which bashed the ground without mercy, disturbing the peace of ants.

“I fough i was you for a while bUGH then fough i wern.” lied Hayley. She found Karen drab and bitchy, so hadnt acknowledged her that weekend. Karen looked hatefully at Hayley, who reeked of whiskey and appeared to have a hangover. Karens irritated tone and lack of conversation were menacing. Minor irritations would cause her to glare at the world with evil eyes of someone whose day to day malice was unchallenged. Hayley was too knackered to look hatefully back at Karen and the conversation stopped.

The sky had a pink sunrise with lined up clouds that looked like the furrows of a ploughed field. Karen barely noticed its prettiness or the subtle moon fading between the furrows. Hayleys grating speech was just another trigger to Karens inevitable grumpiness. Hayley began to walk more angrily now she was catching Karens bad vibrations.

Hayley and Karen were on their way to silence people. There would be no questions asked about their methods by their boss. Karen still had a wafer thin, unconvincing veneer of Puritanism to her malicious presence as if saying ‘Im going to have to be mean and frustrated but its all for a good cause.’ They looked like a pair of jumped up heavies getting psyched up for taking their Monday morning frustrations out on somebody.

They walked past the gargoyles that protected the entrance to a long drive, which ended in the residential home where they both worked as care assistants, looking after the elderly. People inside the home recognized their voices and became frightened. All the residents distress could be written off as howling at the moon, even though the moon had nonchalantly disappeared from the sunny morning sky.