Siren.
A siren echoes in the distance, an ambulance, rushing off to some unknown emergency, while closer-by birds are chirping happily from their perches in the trees outside the window. Closer still was the low, low whirring of the cooling fan inside the computer, just out of sight, under the desk. Rebecca tapped noisily on the keyboard, aimlessly – she wanted to write something, but she couldn’t think of anything in particular to write about, so it was just a stream of consciousness, more or less random words on the page.
10:31am; Rebecca hadn’t been out of bed long. It would be a long time before it would be dark again and she could go back to bed without worrying about waking up at 10pm and not being able to go back to sleep. The air was warm, and the sun shone meekly out from behind its cloudy shawl. Rebecca looked out the window and felt decidedly ambivalent. She had nothing she really wanted to do, or rather, there was nothing that she had the energy to do. This time the year previous, she had peas and corn and tomatoes, all getting ready for the summer growing season. But this year she had not had the motivation to do any of that. There were shallots and garlic growing in one of the planters, though those had been easy to prepare – just a little extra dirt and compost on top, pop the bulbs directly into the earth, water them a bit, and wait. There was no germination process to worry about, no potting mix to buy. Planting them was simple, easy, very little effort at all. The strawberries and boysenberry bush had come back to life all on their own, which had been a nice bonus. They would just need a little feeding, the boysenberry just a bit of pruning to keep it under control.
But Rebecca was tired. Deeply tired. Not the kind of tired you are when you stay up too late or didn’t get enough sleep. She was emotionally, mentally tired. The kind of tired you get from anxiety, from stress. The kind of tired that makes you wish you could sleep for a hundred years. The election was coming up, and it was soon. She had been worrying about it almost all year, but the closer it got, the more intense the fear and the anxiety and the stress became, piling up around her like an endless stream of garbage from a dumpster, suffocating her. She had stopped watching the news to see the polls, the political reporters were a joke and seemed to revel and relish in talking about how the right-wing parties have a shot at winning, and gleefully spouting off policies from said parties that would ruin lives and kill people. So, so, so tired.