RRaffael

The alarm was blaring way too early for my tastes, waking me up from a deep sleep. Disoriented and slightly blind still I slapped the mattress in various places until I hit something hard. I grabbed my phone and turned off the noise. Monday. I felt like shit, still missing several hours of sleep. The usual treatment I get for indulging in caffeine and sugar on a lazy afternoon. It didn’t matter as work was calling and I knew it’d be for the best if I comply. Walking down the hall I could still hear various sounds coming from Jill’s now closed door alongside the occasional loud snore. She must’ve fallen asleep while playing games. I wonder how she gets through her lectures at uni with these sleeping habits. Oh right, she doesn’t. One of her classmates told me that Jill was sleeping more often than not, yet still acing the exams. No one could explain it, so her professors left her alone most of the time. An comparably big breakfast consisting of several slices of toast with various

Waking up to the sunlight is definitely better than a blaring alarm clock, just the sun doesn’t know when I want to wake up. And doesn’t have a snooze button. And… Well, I think I’ll have to make sure to close the blinds tonight. I stood up, rubbing my eyes, soon to find my legs feeling sticky. Right, time for a shower then. My soapy hands found joy in gliding over my bloated middle. It had shrunken down considerably from yesterday, but was still noticeably different from its usual flat state. I wondered what it would feel like if my belly was as big as yesterday, or even bigger. My mind started to wander under the steady stream of hot water, projecting a big round stomach where there was only a slight protrusion. My imaginary belly grew on and on, first as big as a volleyball, next a basketball, I looked highly pregnant and then surpassed even that. A beach ball inflated into a yoga ball before my knees started trembling. Looking down on myself I only found my perky breasts, no

A white line blinked rhythmically on the otherwise black screen in front of me. My head was just as empty as the console window I was supposed to work in. I hated this, why couldn’t I go back to optimizing the user experience like when I just started working here six months ago? Instead, I had to fix some obscure error someone in another department had stumbled about when doing stuff on our servers. Probably not even something he was supposed to do, but who am I to judge that? Some weeks ago my boss had told me that I’d be working on something else from then on, something about how improving the user experience any further wouldn’t yield much more, so I’d be tending to more important matters from then on. At first I was excited to get a change from my previous somewhat monotonous tinkering, but that only lasted about five minutes. Since then, I’ve been stuck with this. And the worst part is, I don’t even know what I’m doing! The little clock at the bottom of my screen told me that