Chapter 1
“His routine is he gets up at 7, takes a shit, does his workout, has breakfast and goes to work, that’s his routine”
Mark was efficient in his use of words, to not would be to welcome inefficiency into his daily life, and Mark was never an inefficient person.
“Right and how would you know that?” said Pete.
“Because it’s all the office staff ever talk about” replied Mark
Pete was Mark’s opposite their conversation worked like two weights spinning held on to one another at some central mass, each side throwing out the other. Arguments between them were common, a way to keep the presence of mind whilst performing menial labour.
“He’s hardly ever in at 9, he’s usually fucking late and when he is in on time he makes sure to parade himself around the factory to give the illusion that he’s punctual, it’s a lie”
They were talking about their boss, Thomas Chorley, son of the owner of one of North Wales’s largest rope-producing factories, Chorley Strands.
“I’m telling you mate, he’s got a whole regime, the office staff talk about it non stop, they worship the prick. He’s anal about it, like he’s got OCD or something” replied Mark calmly yet firmly. He adjusted the sleeves on his shoulders, rolling them up to show the full scope of the horseshoe tattoo that dominated his right arm, scratching it as he did so. He was hot, that, or the conversation with Pete was beginning to physically bother him.
“So why is it whenever I see him he’s always late?”
“It’s because you’re bullshiting Pete”
“Fuck you” Pete got into that usual mid-morning rage that comes from conversations that just about scratch the surface of consciousness, by all accounts he was still asleep, so Marks’s words whacked into him like a brick and grated slowly down his skull.
“So where is he now?” Pete asked feeling confident “He’s late today and he hasn’t been in for the past 4 days, and I know he’s not on holiday otherwise it’d be all over his Instagram, him with his fancy fuck martinis, relaxing on some yacht with a couple of French supermodels or whatever”
Thomas was a well-known womaniser, 6ft 3, sculpted like Adonis with slick black hair and well-tailored suits, he was a shining example of the acceptable masculine trends of the 2020s, and the direct opposite of Pete, a 5ft 7 slightly chubby man possessing a face with red tinted cheeks and a nose pockmarked with black heads, a side effect of all the grime and dirt he picks up from his labour.
Pete held a grudge against Thomas. A grudge that stemmed from an inability to cope with the reality that at 15 years his younger, Thomas owned the factory, had a nice car and fucked many beautiful women. Thomas was living the dream. Whilst Pete, Pete was in his mid-40s working a dead-end job he hated and going home to a fat wife that barely sucked his cock more than 4 times a year. Pete had a working man’s jealousy. Pete wanted to tear Thomas down.
Mark however didn’t reply to Pete, Marks philosophy was different, and he didn’t resent a man for having more than him, he simply got on with his work and collected his pay on the first Thursday of every month, no questions asked. Mark does however have a bone to pick with people who interrupt him when he’s working, so, feeling particularly annoyed, he forced upon Pete a look of pained expression, picked up his shopping orders and went back to work somewhere out of earshot of him, bringing the conversation to a close.
