These are the days, the quiet ones, the unassuming ones, the ones with a bit of dew on the window and an overcast sky; these are the days bad things happen.
The feeling of waking with warm toes and a vague, intangible feeling of dread accompany these horrid days.
She doesn't see it coming, of course. She isn't prescient, not by a long, long shot. But these days, these melancholy dread days, her skin prickles and her hairs stand on end, away from her skin.
Mostly she ignores these telltale signs, or doesn't notice them at all. Mostly she swings her warm feet into the morning air, trudges to the washroom and showers away any feelings of ill-ease.
These days only feel different inasmuch as she lets them, and mostly, she doesn't.
With her job, she can't go trusting every gut reaction, every goose bump and glint in the periphery. Days like these are like most other days, except in the invisible ways they're not.
Her coffee tastes a little different, a little sour, but she's too busy rushing out the door, her mind occupied and frenzied, to worry about her taste buds. She simply must have added an extra scoop of grounds, but her mind barely registers the thought before it's on to other more pressing matters.
Days like these, she never has to search for her car keys. They seem to always be in the first place she looks. Traffic lights switch green for her, though she wouldn't notice. Not on any other day; not today.
Time moves differently on days like this one, but she's never able to pin down exactly how. It feels so slow until it's gone too fast. She feels she could blink and miss everything; she could pause for a moment and the world could pass her by. She feels as if the elevator is in suspended animation and she's aged three years in the course of waiting for it to arrive.
Days like these, she forgets if she left the light on in the kitchen. Days like these, she doesn't realize she forgets most things.
Entering the office there's a different feeling in the air, but she's walking too quickly, head down and destination in sight, to notice any shift.
Until she looks up and around her to see the stricken faces of her coworkers; to see the exposed horror in the expressions of her teammates; to see the ever-present crinkled smile erased from a pair of blue eyes, staring; to see a grinning red stain on a wall that, most days, she would never look at twice; then she notices.
And time catches up, and her hair stands on end, and she doesn't quite know, for a moment, a mere second, where her world is.
Her eyes flick from the grisly scene to the window and the grey, unassuming sky.
Her first thought is that today seemed so ordinary, like any other day.
She doesn't put the puzzle together; doesn't realize that these are the days that bad things happen.