thistle

ok, here's installment one of my big masterpiece. as yet untitled.

Each morning Franklin awoke feeling as though he was in a new body, had been transported here during sleep. He felt that his task was to figure out what life, what body this was, and what to do with it. He was mistaken. It was the same body he had always had.
Franklin, or Frank as his mother calls him, would wake up and look at his hands and wonder how in the world he got here. Then he would get up and take a shower, make himself some coffee and a bagel, and get ready for work. The feeling would usually pass as he realized that this was the same life that he had fallen asleep with the night before.
Frank took the bus to work, often carrying his bagel and his coffee with him. The bus at eight am was filled with other workers and the street people of the city, some just dirty and destitute but some apparently insane. Like most of the house-dwelling bus riders, Franklin tried not to make eye contact. He got off the bus downtown and walked to Planned Parenthood, where he worked as a health services specialist. Sometimes the street girls came into Planned Parenthood needing the morning-after pill, or penicillin. Franklin made eye contact with them then, but on the bus it was different.
Frank cared about his job, but often felt as though he was watching himself perform it. As though he were sitting in on someone else.
Frank would walk home sometimes, or take the bus back. Sometimes Gina, the receptionist, would give him a ride in her Audi. Franks house was on a quiet street near the university, and he shared it with Michael, a friend from college. Michael and Frank had both gone to the university in town.
Hello, Mike, Frank yelled as he came in.
Hey, Mike yelled back. Mike was a writer and didnt have to leave the house for work.
Frank went into the kitchen to fix himself some dinner.
Mike, is this my Indian take-out on the table?
Mike came into the kitchen. He was only wearing basketball shorts.
Yeah, maybe. Why?
Well its mine. I was saving it so that I could eat it, not so you could eat it.
Relax, dude. Ill get you back.
Mike went back to his room. After a while Frank could hear him getting in the shower and caterwauling Rock You Like a Hurricane. Frank cleaned up after Mike, throwing out the remains of his chicken vindaloo. He put a pot on the stove to boil for pasta and went to his room. He sat on his bed. The feeling of having been transported into his body while sleeping had not faded today. He still wasnt sure if this was where he had been yesterday, if he had always lived this life, if his memories were his. If this was his life, he realized, he was overcome with disgust at the bland ease of it all. Was this what really happened after college? Were people his age supposed to simply get jobs and keep them for years and years? What if he fell in love soon, and wanted to get married? It would all last forever, a wretched security he could not break out of. What if he woke up every morning for the rest of his life unsure of how he had gotten where he was, yet trapped in this strange familiarly new body. His body was like a strange prison cell, a prison in a foreign country.