Green

Counting down the days was always the worst for him. He didn't like it. He didn't want to do it, but he was always too curious to ignore it. Keeping tabs on the day he got out of this place was the only thing he could hold onto nowadays. He didn't want to concentrate on much else. He didn't have the energy.

The phone rang, and he stared at it at first, trying to decide whether he really wanted to take this call. The jangling instrument continued to chime, and when he finally made up his mind, it grew quiet again. Oh well. It's not like he decided to reach for it anyway.

Feeling burned out and slightly tired, he sighed and looked around the room. There wasn't but maybe ten to fifteen people that accompanied him, but he still thought it was too much. Some were clustered in groups of three or four, gathered around the screen of a laptop computer, talking loudly and arguing over points that, in actuality, no one really cared about. Others worked alone on their own workstations, their headphones jammed in their ears and bobbing their heads to music by some band that he could guess no one ever heard of. These computers will be the death of me, he thought to himself. Rumor had it that technology was the best thing since sliced bread but, in his mind, it was the main power source of frustration and probably considerations of suicide.

Fuck this. I can't stay in here, I'll go nuts. He raised steadily from his chair in the corner of the room and made his way over to the door in the back, pushing past people that were too engaged in their own activity to pay much heed, opened it and disappeared outside. Once he shut the door he breathed the cold air deep into his nostrils and felt a little relieved. I can finally breathe, he thought, exhaling loudly. The air was filled with fog and the ground was covered with dew because of the early morning. The sun was fighting its way through the clouds, although it looked as if it might lose. The thought of that saddened him for some reason.

Given the drop in temperature that had occurred a few days ago, he shoved his hands in his pockets to keep warm and began to pace back and forth on the wooden pallets that stacked next to each other on the rocks. The wood was slippery from the wetness and as his pace quickened he nearly toppled over into a concrete barrier, but caught himself just in time. He cursed to himself and rubbed his eyes. It was way too early for this shit. He sat on the edge of the concrete barrier, kicked his feet up on a folding chair in front of him and closed his eyes. He didn't intend to fall asleep. But, if he did, gently drifting off and dreaming of the next time he would see green, really see it, right in front of him to touch in a better place...well then he really wouldn't be too worried about it.