Linda

Linda dozed, half-asleep, on a red futon. She dozed until her alarm clock activated. Linda then rolled over and thumbed blindly, yet competently, for the snooze button. Linda dozed for ten more minutes. Her alarm clock reactivated. Linda rolled over and desperately slapped the clock's top until its wailing permanently ceased, allowing Linda once again to doze. Then she feel asleep.

And time passed. Eventually Linda drew her eyes open. Unwillingly. Linda idled, her tired and reluctant eyes wincing as a truck outside coughed loudly in no particular pattern. The truck made more noises. It began to bang. It continued coughing too. Coughing. Banging. Rumbling. And occasionally these slow annoying sounds would culminate, smashing together in a manner that made Linda's sleepy blood boil.

But she lay there. Reluctant to yield. Lay there on the futon. She glanced at her windows. She had two round windows. Their white Venetian blinds were drawn down and sealed tight. Usually when Linda woke up she could determine approximately what time it was based on what portions of those blinds were shaded or lit by the sun. But not this morning.

She had overslept. Her mind was foggy, but in realizing what had happened Linda became wide awake. Her mind slowly uncoiled. The truck, meanwhile, continued coughing and clattering outside.

Linda used to have a ferret. She had gotten rid of her ferret because it nibbled her toes in the morning and woke her up. Every morning. There didn't seem to be any explanation, or a thing she could do.

First she tried to cage the ferret. Linda spent $127.95 on the most elaborate rodent habitat that the Soda and Pet Supply Palace had to offer. Everyone at the Soda and Pet Supply Palace made a big to-do about Linda's purchase. "What a lucky little ferret you've got!" one woman said. "It's the Brooklyn Bridge of rodent habitats!" sang another. The store manager, a trout-faced man named Dale, called the ferret habitat "a serious mother-fucking rat-house."

The habitat really was a genius piece of equipment. It contained a hammock, a complex maze of transparent neon tubing, orange shag carpeting, a deodorizer, a food bin with attached water dispenser, two mirrors, and a small cozy-looking windowed apartment where the ferret could chill-out when it found the many other available activities did not suit its disposition.

It even contained decals that were meant to resemble a washer, a dryer, and a countertop with fruit bowl. The ferret's habitat was better decorated than Linda's apartment.

It took seven hours to assemble. When the habitat was completed, Linda set it down on the floor by her bed where her ferret lay, chewing on a shoestring.

"Look what I have for you!" she sang to the ferret. "I've built you a home!" The ferret glanced at its new home. It glanced at Linda. Then it went back to chewing on the shoestring. Linda was annoyed, as she had undergone great pains to purchase and construct the rodent habitat. She figured it would probably just take some time for the critter to get used to its new home so Linda left the two of them alone.

Linda soon realized that left to itself, her ferret had no interest in its habitat. She tried placing it inside, but upon being confined to his new home, the surly rodent spent much of its evenings and nights squealing and heaving its furry body against the sides of the habitat so violently that Linda thought it might hurt itself. She was unable to get any sort of sleep, and eventually the habitat door was opened. Her ferret was free once again.

And almost immediately the ferret resumed nibbling at Linda's toes and waking her up in the morning. She did not know what to do. One evening Linda decided she would try wearing her sneakers to bed. She thought that there must be something about her feet, or her toes more specifically, that was attracting the ferret's attention every morning.

So one evening before she went to sleep, Linda carefully laced up a pair of canvas sneakers, climbed into bed, and fell asleep. She slept happily, convinced that there was no way the rodent could get at her toes in the morning.

The next morning she awoke to the familiar sound of a rustling on her sheets. Linda kept her eyes shut tight, pretending to be asleep so that she could savor her ferret's failure without its knowing. Soon enough, the sound quieted. And then it stopped altogether. A smile stretched across Linda's face and she poorly stifled a giggle of victory. Then she slowly opened her eyes and inches from her face was her ferret.

It bit off the tip of her nose and scurried quickly away.

Linda screamed. She ran to her bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. A bead of blood grew on the tip of her nose and slowly started trickling down to her lip. She fought the urge to cry.

Nothing could be done, and Linda eventually accepted her fate. She would wake up whenever her ferret decided to wake her. Because she didn't have to be at work until nine, and her ferret usually woke her up sometime between five and six in the morning, Linda began showing up to work early. About two hours early. Linda's co-workers did not appreciate this.

Every last one of them feared that soon they too would be asked to show up two hours early. Even Binky Clamhide, an oblong bag of meat who spent all day cheerfully shoveling fertilizer into garbage buckets, began to give Linda the cold shoulder.

Linda wanted desperately to make peace. She decided that she would bring food to the break room. Time and time again Linda had witnessed workplace drama smoothed over with a diplomatic batch of home-made chili or half a dozen sugary bear claws. But on Monday morning, when Linda brought to work a cardboard box filled with individually packaged miniature pies, everything went horribly wrong.

Apparently individually packaged miniature pies were considered far too elaborate a means of arbitration. Linda had bought them specifically because their price had been reduced to a quarter of what they normally went for because the pies had been near their expiration date. Upon realizing the issue her co-workers had taken with her for purchasing these "fancy-pants" pies, Linda attempted to explain how she had acquired the pies at a reduced rate due to their being so close to expiration. In her attempt to devalue the pies in the eyes of her peers, she again found herself in a hole, as her co-workers then took offense at the notion of her feeding them expired pies she'd basically found for free. "You might as well have just waited 'till tomorrow and plucked them from a dumpster!" declared Scarlet Nailwarmer, a fourteen-year veteran of the shipping department.

Her offering was a terrible, terrible failure, and as of the end of the day Linda's only new ally was, in fact, Binky Clamhide, the oblong bag of meat and cheerful shoveler of fertilizer into garbage buckets. Binky practically lived off of individually packaged miniature pies, and when he saw the break-room spread that Laura had provided, he could not have possibly been any happier.

It hadn't been a big deal at first. Linda's being early, I mean. For a week or so people thought that maybe the girl was experiencing issues at home. That maybe she was having some sort of construction done. That maybe there was some logical and understandable explanation for her constantly fleeing her home and showing up to work early. Two hours early – every day. And maybe had Linda focused some of her excess time and energy on conjuring up some suitable explanation, spent some time inventing a story either ridiculous or otherwise, or maybe even thought to show up ridiculously early to work only occasionally – well, maybe this would have stifled the hostility of her co-workers. But she did not do any of these things. She just showed up to work. Early. Everyday.

Something had to be done. The ferret had to be sold. Or gotten rid of somehow. Something. Anything. It was in this spirit of desperation that the ferret was dyed green and given to Paul, with whom she shared a Sunday night class in business, economics and such.

And if her ferret had been there to rouse her, she would not have hit the snooze button, she would not have deactivated her alarm clock, and she certainly wouldn't have overslept and woken up late for work, would not have been in a such rush, and would not have been struck dead by a truck full of beach chairs.

But she sold her ferret, and now she's dead.

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