I wrote this story while listening to Mambo No. 5 on repeat as an experiment so id love to hear peoples feedback on this story.
The alarm sounds, jerking him from his deep sleep. He shakes himself groggily, reaching for his phone and swiping away the few notifications: one for the news (uninteresting happenings in politics) and another for a streaming service. The only one that matters is a text to the roommate group chat, requesting that everyone please try and clean up because this Sunday someone's long-distance partner will be in town.
This message wasn't for him. He always kept the spaces he used clean, probably a side effect of his career or maybe what had drawn him to becoming a janitor. He worked nights from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m., Monday through Friday. He enjoyed the systematic nature of his job, walking between cubicles and rooms, emptying trash, and wiping down surfaces. He enjoyed trying to leave every object in the exact same space he had moved it from to clean, making it seem as if everything hadn't been moved. He was a ghost cleaning but not changing anything. He enjoyed not being perceived by others. In his mind, he found so much joy in thinking that nobody knew he had been there.
Every night, he almost always worked alone. There were a couple of other janitors, but they all had their assigned floors, and they all took the job because they didn't want to talk to others. Coworkers could be nice; they gave a sense of human interaction and friendship. But on the other hand, they were confusing, with office politics, strange half-truths, weird jealousy, and feelings of being slighted that had made his first time working in an office a hellish experience. He had quit and taken this job. The quiet and lack of drama helped him, and the loneliness wasn't so bad. He enjoyed being alone. He could always try the office again, but his experience had left him with an overwhelming fear of being stuck working in a place like that again.
There had been other issues at the office. One of the higher-ranking people in the office had made him feel extremely uncomfortable by sending unsolicited weird texts to him and giving all of the male worker's pet names. He had felt lost, not knowing how to deal with it since everyone else seemed to shrug it off and wondered if he was the only one who didn't enjoy it. He often felt like he was the only one feeling a certain way about things, and this made him feel more alone. His life was like the odd child out at a birthday party, stuck watching everyone crowd around the birthday child as they blew out the candle, while he watched from the sidelines, unsure of how to integrate into the group and have fun.
The second alarm shook him out of his wandering thoughts and brought him back to reality. He quickly got up and wandered out into the kitchen to get something to eat for breakfast. A bowl of cereal and milk would be good enough for him, along with a quick cup of instant coffee. He planned to stop by a coffee shop on his way to work. He always stopped there before work and got a pastry, whichever one the barista suggested, and a plain black coffee. His routine was very important to him; it kept him grounded. One day, the coffee shop was closed when he went to work, and he had to get his coffee and pastry from a different coffee shop, and his whole day felt off. He couldn't wait to get home, crawl into bed, and sleep as if by doing this, he could reset everything wrong and try again for the routine and set everything right the following day.
He wolfed down his cereal, and drank his instant coffee not for flavor but for the caffeine, and nothing more. Then, he made sure to drink two glasses of water. He always did this; it made sure that he was hydrated and also gave him that same sense of routine. He went back into his room after unloading the dishwasher and putting his dishes in. There hadn't been any big dishes in the sink, or he would have also done those. He tried to help out as much as possible since he was never around during normal hours. He put on a t-shirt, a sweatshirt, and some jeans, and picked up his keys and backpack. He never left without his backpack; inside was everything that he might need if he had an anxiety attack. He had these a lot when he was around too many people or in a new place, and knowing he had it made him feel safe leaving the house. He exited the front door of the house and walked down the sidewalk. His commute was pretty short; he would make his way for a couple of blocks to the coffee shop and then continue on for a few more blocks until he reached the office building where he worked. It was a brisk fall afternoon (morning for me), and there weren't too many people out walking, which made his commute enjoyable. The more people there were, the less he would enjoy his walk to the cafe.
He entered the cafe, and a bell on the door rang as if welcoming him and also warning the staff that another potential disaster of an interaction had walked through the door. It was a small cafe, not a chain. He hated chains; they had no soul. This place had character and seemed welcoming and inviting to him. It felt homey and reminded him of his small hometown and outings with his parents after local fairs in the fall, going to get a warm tea or hot apple cider before going home.
As he entered, the barista looked up and then smiled, recognizing him. Liz was nice, and by coming every day, he had struck up a casual friendship with her. They would chat about life and the city and how much they loved the fall. She would always lend an ear to his struggles, and he was happy to discuss the rude customers and the innovative ways that they could sabotage their coffee. These conversations always ended with a lot of laughing, and then he would have to leave for work. He would finger gun out the door, jokingly promising to come back the next day, as she laughed, both knowing he would always come back. It was his routine.
He walked to the counter and ordered the usual. She suggested an eclair for the pastry, and he took her up on her suggestion. He sat at a table close to a window that was also right next to the pastry counter and talked to her about movies and what new releases they were excited to see. Then it was time for him to leave, he bought a sandwich for his lunch. The irony of eating lunch at eleven at night wasn't lost on him. He finger-gunned his way out the door and then continued on his way.
As he walked to work, he thought back on Liz. She was sweet and kind, and some of his roommates had suggested him asking her out, but he had said no. They were friends, and he liked that about them. He didn't want to muddy that friendship with a relationship. He had been in a relationship a while back and had realized that he preferred being alone. He often wondered if he had only been in the relationship as an experiment to see if he would enjoy being with someone, if it had been and experiment then he had definitely concluded that he enjoyed being alone. He was happier being alone. People were so confusing, and romantic love eluded him. Some people seemed to be filled with such joy from it, but he found it to be a very lacking feeling. The fireworks people described were more of a disappointing fizzle for him.
The office building he worked in was large, taking up an entire block and was sixteen stories tall. His job was to clean from the tenth floor to the sixteenth floor. He went to the janitor's locker room in the basement and exchanged the usual pleasantries with his coworkers. They also had no interest in interaction or small talk, so these pleasantries consisted of hellos, and then checking that no big issues had happened that would need multiple people to work on, like cleaning toilet overflows and such. Luckily, nothing like that happened today, so he continued with putting away his backpack in his locker and getting out his janitor's uniform, a light blue jumpsuit with the company logo on it. He put on his headset and then checked what song he would be listening to on repeat for the first hour of work. The first song for this night was "Mambo No. 5" by Lou Bega. He would usually either listen to playlists or just one song on repeat. He had gotten into the habit of doing this while in college when writing essays, and it had stuck. It just itched the right part of his brain—the repeating song over and over again centered him and helped him to focus.
He went up the stairs to the tenth floor and entered the janitor's closet where he kept all of his things. He always started with the tenth floor because the sixteenth floor was where the highest-ranking members of the company worked, they would often stay late. Cleaning and then having to re-cleaning after they left was extremely annoying to him. He liked how every floor had the same steps: first, he would wipe down the desks, then clean the floors, followed by cleaning the break room, and then onto the bathrooms. Toilets and everything had to be cleaned, and all the trash would be loaded onto his cart, moving on to the next floor. It may sound easy in theory, but each floor took a while, and he made sure not to rush. He wanted everything to be spotless and shining; he took pride in his work and didn't like leaving half-done jobs.
He would work straight through the night, stopping only to eat lunch and go on a break for a coffee from one of the break rooms. His boss would occasionally wander through the area he was cleaning to make sure everything looked good and nothing was broken and needed to be replaced, but mainly he was left alone. His boss also didn't like talking much either.
At the end of the night, they would all begin to congregate in the janitor's locker room as they finished their work and had nothing else to do, sitting around for the last half-hour before walking out into the night. On his return trips, he always carried mace in his hand. He had never been mugged on his walk back home, but he was still worried, and the dark night streets, only lit up by street lamps, scared him. The air was cold and fresh, and even though he was scared, he still enjoyed the walk home. He would try to enter the house as quietly as possible, attempting not to wake up his roommates. He'd heat up something to eat for dinner; one of his roommates had made a lasagna and left a piece for him too. He was grateful that tonight, or this morning (his brain was slowly getting mixed up due to the night shift), he didn't have to eat a microwavable burrito, like he had been doing for the last week. There had been a sale, and he may have over-purchased. He wolfed down the lasagna; it was delicious he put his dish in the dishwasher and went to take a shower and get into his pajamas. The shower felt nice after his cold walk home, and getting into bed felt even better. He was trying to read the Gosu, but his brain was too tired. So, he turned out the light and slowly drifted off to sleep. As sleep enveloped him and carried his consciousness away, he could hear his roommates stirring and getting up, their days just beginning.