<strong>Edward Riley - Work (Peerless Paper, Inc.) - Downtown Gilead</strong><br/><br/>Hours, for some reason, didn’t drone on for him these days. He felt like snatches of his life were being edited for content. He barely remembered the meeting that went over the sales numbers for November, along with the first projected numbers for the Christmas bonuses. Didn’t remember the meeting, but remembered the numbers, as if someone had gone through the trouble of keeping only what he needed<em>’And why not? It’s all bullshit’</em>he thought oddly. It’s what? Ed shifted his eyes around to get a look at the others…just to make sure no one was really talking to him.<br/><br/>Maybe it was the job? Maybe trying to outperform was starting to get to him. That was funny…pressure hadn’t bothered him before. No…this was something else. He felt like he was witnessing something…something he couldn’t see<em>’or maybe you don’t want to see…’</em>he thought again. Knowing now that the sound was in his head, he knew he needed a break. He needed to hit the head…restroom. When he stepped inside, he found it empty and quickly locked the door. Water flowed across his hands before he used some of it to pat his face. He stared at the mirror and doused his face again generously in water before he blindly reached for a paper towel.<br/><br/>After drying his face, he opened his eyes to see himself staring back at him, except it was the way he looked in the dream. Grimy, determined, with a fire in his eyes he would have never thought possible. Ed stutter-stepped back sharply and managed to muffle the ‘holy shit’ he was about to scream out, though just barely. The man stared at him…he stared at himself, almost as if he were disappointed. Then he answered his question before he could ask, and simply stated “I am not a figment of your imagination…you are a figment of mine.”. He then stared to make sure the point was made, before he walked away from the mirror.<br/><br/>With a shake of his head, Edward once again saw himself normally…the words remained with him even after escaping the restroom, and he took off a few hours early to walk the streets of Gilead. Suddenly he was running short on answers, and the questions were too difficult to ask. Simply too difficult to face.<br/>