The Wakening

Kayleigh sat in her van and stared out at the junction in front of her. It was half eight on a gorgeous sunny morning in city centre Dublin and the streets were clogged with traffic. Kayleigh's van belonged to the business she delivered children for, a small company named Cloud Logistics; named after the boss's cat Cloud. Kayleigh had been working for this company just over ten years now, delivering children all over the city. The job was highly repetitive, following an identical route day after day. Nothing out of the ordinary ever happened, children were delivered, dockets signed and lunch took place in the same Superquinn car park every day at half one. Kayleigh never thought about how repetitive and monotonal her days were, she just drifted through them in a type of autopilot mode just below consciousness.
But this morning was different. This morning Kayleigh felt her head rise above the tide of disconscious drone. As she sat at the junction waiting for the light to turn green Kayleigh became aware that she was actively thinking. The experience was strange, normality was the ab for her. She tried to keep up with the thoughts as they passed through her mind, wondering at the level of their alien presence. Each one of her senses seemed to click on one by one. Her nose was suddenly inspecting the warm plastic of the van, the mild mould of the seats, the stale crunch of her clothes. Her eyes greedily peered at the sun lying across the road in between the tall buildings of O'Connell street. Her ears piqued at the the sounds of traffic drifting in through the half open window. Voices; human voices; all spun together in an indecipherable spool chattered in to her brain, charging it with a primitive excitement. She made a choice to move her head and actively look at something. Her eyes moved in on the car next to her, below the van's wing mirror. Through its window she could see friendly male hands gripping the steering wheel. She imagined the driver to look like Rob Lowe in Wayne's World. She could see the cuffs of a suit and pictured him smiling to himself in NLP-powered happiness. She tried to burrow into his thoughts as she gazed at the manly fingers clutching the firm leather wheel. He's probably anticipating how warm and rewarding work is going to be, perhaps considering the roll he's going to get in Centra on his lunch. I bet he gets olives and sun-dried tomatoes on a seed roll she thought. She imagined him imagining how happy his wife will be to see him later. Sitting on a poof in the sitting room all day, watching Sky Home and Leisure, leaving only to pee and look up men on dating sites. Kayleigh thought about how sad and lonely this wife was during the day; polishing the wooden DVD player cabinet religiously, at least twenty times each day, never able to make it fully smear-free. Oh how happy she'll be when Rob Lowe comes to her from his Docklands 'scraper, arms open and penis erect. Erect because he loves her, not because she's Loreal sexy hair tits and butt-ass-gee. Kayleigh looked at the hands on the steering wheel and curdled. Utterly curdled. A tear emerged from her lower eyelid as she realised that she was actually empathising with another being. That solitary tear was the first fruit of a spring which had been postponed for over thirty eight years. Kayleigh's consciousness trembled as she experienced a full and completely real emotion. Its immediacy was exhilarating. Her thoughts began to race.

What am I doing here?
What am I doing in this van?!
I want to live my life, not sonambulate it like some sort of sonambulator!
I want to experience this thing called 'a morning'!
I want what I've been denied my whole "life"!

Kayleigh opened the van door and stepped out into the crisp fresh air. It felt incredible. Freedom tasted like a sunny morning in Dublin city. Almost as soon as she had stepped out of the van and orchestra of beeps and barps erupted from behind it.
Oh I'm not going anywhere, she thought, smiling.
After striding four or five steps towards Eason's, Kayleigh jogged back to the van with embarrassment and drove on through the junction to continue her rounds.