Happy spooky season!

When I was around 4 years old, I saw a skeleton standing in the corner of my room. Naturally, I was terrified, but little did I know that in the grand scheme of things, this would be the least terrifying thing I’d experience in life. I was too little to understand that adulthood would come with a never-ending shit show of horrors.

Much to the confusion of many, I am one of millions of people who routinely dive into the wonderful world of horror films to distract ourselves from the real-life horrors we’re faced with every day. You think ‘The Conjuring’ films were scary? Please! Those films are nothing compared to the horrors below.

Frying

Your eyes are burning as the continuous stream of salty sweat rolls down your face. Every part of your body is wet and it’s getting difficult to breathe. You gasp for air only to realise that there is none. Your skin feels like it’s on fire. You are full of despair. You whisper: “I can’t take this anymore, this has to end!” because anything louder than a whisper requires energy that you no-longer have, and may create even more heat that you are convinced you will not survive.

The summer months tried to kill us yet again. Technically It’s our own fault. We’ve been warned for years (I literally had a primary school teacher who used to talk to us about the environment and what we all needed to do to protect it). And it’s only going to get worse. In fairness to us though, not consistently using the right bins pales in comparison to the environmental harm caused by massive corporations. That said, the world doesn’t care whose fault this is or who’s causing the most damage, all it knows is that it’s suffering, and if it must experience a slow, painful death then so must we.

Room

You’re yanked unceremoniously out of your wonderfully deep sleep by the screeching of your phone’s alarm. It’s 6am on a Wednesday. Two more days to go until your 48 hours of freedom.

As you fight the urge to roll over and go back to sleep, you remember that today is payday. Your mind is flooded with memories of what this day used to represent, in what seems like a lifetime ago. The excitement, the planning of nights out with friends or little personal treats after all the bills had been paid, the shopping had been done, and the savings had been safely tucked away.

Today, payday is none of your business. Long gone are the little treats and wild nights out with friends. Instead, your bank account is simply a storage space for the money you work hard for to be placed temporarily before other people come to claim it. If you’re lucky, you may have some money left behind for a loaf of bread which now retails at £7.99 for a small pack from one of the budget supermarkets.

You climb out from under the 4 layers of quilts and blankets, exposing your hands, feet and face to the freezing conditions in the tiny single room you rent in a house shared with 7 other people. Your rent is almost £3,000 per month.

It is too expensive to turn on the heating so you turn on the television instead. You watch a news segment about how Tesco has made ‘record profits’ for the eleventh year in a row.

Many people are calling the period we are currently experiencing ‘Late-stage capitalism’. A very simplistic description is that the term refers to a period of severe wealth inequality, the commodification of pretty much everything, large corporate monopolies, and globalisation.

Whatever you want to call it, when people are calling in to radio shows explaining that they’re on a salary of 60k a year, their mortgage payments have increased by £700 a month, and this along with the so-called “cost of living crisis” has meant that they’re struggling to get by (true story by the way) I think it’s fair to say that most of us are screwed.

Alone

You enter the building armed with nothing but a smile and a positive attitude. You think to you yourself: “This might be okay you know!”

But you’re wrong.

You are met with blank stares and indifference when you say ’hello’ and introduce yourself. More often than not, the reception is frosty to say the least.

It’s chilly in this place.

For months you must guess who everyone outside of your immediate team is because there are no formal introductions despite you having to work with these nameless bodies.

Few people call you by your name and there is no one to gently usher you into this new, cold world.

Soon, the horns and reptilian skins of those who presented as ‘nice’ when you first met them make a slight appearance when their masks slip and you are terrified as you slowly realise that there are entities in this place that wish you harm.

Not knowing who to trust and being (intentionally?) isolated means you must navigate this place alone….

You pray your intuition doesn’t fail you.

If you have a work bestie or colleagues who are awesome, hug them tight and don’t let them go!

I often regret not burning my former team member’s passport when she had the audacity to abandon us for a much better life in a much better country doing much better things.

The cheek!

On particularly challenging days I think of the Teams chats and calls both received and initiated when something or someone created the need for myself or others to vent. Til this day, whenever I see the “it’s been 84 years” Titanic GIF I giggle at the memory of one of my colleagues posting it in the group Teams chat during a boring meeting.

What on earth IT must have thought of us if they ever scrolled through our chats was something we laughed about regularly.

Today, on my working from home days, when things get a little too much, I give my emotional support chicken, (!) Chester, a little squeeze, remembering the look of shock, amusement and concern on the Amazon delivery driver’s face when he delivered Chester to me one weekday lunchtime, a birthday present courtesy of the absolutely mental people I used to work with.

Colleagues like that make work bearable. They create a few reasons to smile and laugh throughout the day, they check in to make sure you’re okay, and offer support and guidance when needed.

So, if you’re lucky enough to have them, treasure your work besties because navigating the workplace without them is terrifying!

Punished

Your pocket starts to vibrate. You pull out your phone and see there are a series of messages. One is a message on Teams from your boss, one is a What’s App message from your sister, and one is a text message from your fiancé.

The first message reads: “prepare the documents for this afternoon’s meeting; several mistakes in the marketing report I asked you to write. They are attached, please correct. Send me the updates I asked for.

You sigh. It’s 8:37am. No ‘good morning’.

The message from your sister reads: “Hi sweetie! Just wanted to send love and hugs to you at the beginning of another God-awful work week. Shoulders back! Tits up! You’ve got this!”

Fiancé texted: “bring bread on way home. Run out”.

Later in the day you bump into Marcus from IT. You say ‘hello’ because you’re polite. He ignores you because he’s a cunt.

You have a short conversation with your manager in the afternoon. He takes very subtle but pointed shots at you about what he thinks is wrong with the way you work. You ignore them choosing instead to do as the old Jamaican proverb suggests: “…play fool fi catch wise”. (Pretend to be stupid to eventually triumph over your enemies).

On your way home you pop into the shops to buy bread as directed to by fiancé. While there you see Pete. He pretends not to see you. This is new but not surprising. The breadcrumbing, then ignoring, then engaging, then avoiding and now…

Well, now he’s bored of you. It was fun playing games with you at first, but at the point you refused to chase and demean yourself for his amusement and to satisfy his massive ago, you ceased to exist in his world.

When you get home fiancé says he’s ordered takeaway, then goes back to watching TV.

Your mum calls and asks about your day. You chat for a while.

Later you call Maria, your best friend to see how she and the baby are getting on. Little Jaya is almost a year old now. During the call Mark, her husband, interrupts a total of 5 times. He mumbles something about not understanding why the house is such a mess when Maria has been home all day.

It’s not in our heads; they are actually getting worse. Figures like the Tate brothers are spotlighted to make us believe that they are the worst of them, but it’s an elaborate scam because while we’re shaking our heads in condemnation about the particularly awful ones, the regular awful ones, the ones who chip away at us every day, get away with their more subtle forms of abuse and chaos.

All because punishing us for nothing is easier than working on their traumas, fears and low self-esteem.

Scared yet?

I could list more but that’s enough fear for one sitting, I think.

So, you see, horror films can be frightening, but while you’re watching them, you’re safe. It’s what awaits us after the end credits that should really frighten us.

Sweet dreams.