The Sunday Scaries
Volume 1, Number 13
Microfiction by Pat Harrigan
Content Warning: Language and Horror

The AM Commute

By nature he wasn’t a morning person, but what’re you gonna do? The commute took thirty-five minutes if he left at seven, but twice that long if he left at eight. There was something fresh about the city that early in the morning, he said, on the days he felt awake enough to try to convince himself. The light, the morning haze maybe, the relative emptiness of the highway. As a teenager he had loved staying awake through the night and spreading his arms to the dawn. His pagan phase.
          The AT+T building, the Ford tower, those concave apartment buildings that looked like stalks of celery. There hadn’t been downtown construction of any note for fifteen years. The skyline was as static as the Rocky Mountains. The big pole with the car and the mannequin on it. The two weird domes that looked like tits. In the evening he put it all behind him. Casey would already be home when he got there, in his bedroom with his games. Laura worked late on Wednesdays, so Sam made dinner. He ate with Casey and set a plate aside for Laura. At eleven pm she arrived, kissed him goodnight, and ate in the kitchen.
          Next week: the AT+T building, the Ford tower, the black girders of the LRT, and a new, tall building that had never been there before. A proud, almost arrogant thing, tiered like a Sumerian ziggurat but taller, oh, very tall, he explained to his coworkers that morning, why didn’t I ever notice it before? Overfamiliarity, they said. You can get into a sort of trance on the freeway. But I swear it was never there before, he insisted, to his own incredulity. Well, what was there yesterday? asked Anna, stirring her tea. He couldn’t remember.
          On the ride home he kept looking dangerously in the rear view mirror, but nothing, just a confusion of winter twilight. Dark at 4:45 in the afternoon. At least, he said, he forced that extra hour on himself in the mornings.
          The next day the building was still there, as solid and stubborn as every other element of the skyline. You can’t just construct a skyscraper overnight, he reminded himself. This isn’t The Jetsons.
          He worked. He came home. He couldn’t sleep. Laura slept, he sat up in bed. He wouldn’t disturb her by turning on a light. If he still smoked, he would’ve gone through a pack, he imagined.
          He left before dawn. Halfway down the highway, the sun rose and backlit the skyline. In the flat light it all looked two-dimensional. The sun rose up the length of the ziggurat. The top was still embedded in the dark of the sky.
          He could imagine pulling over and running up the side of the building, reaching the roof just as the sun topped the tallest of the city’s obelisks. He took the offramp, three exits early.
          At nine-thirty that night Casey realized he was hungry and went downstairs. Mom wouldn’t be home for a while yet and dad hadn’t made dinner. Annoyed, he cooked himself a box of mac and cheese and brought it back to his room.
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