Clive Stelfox was born in Manchester in 1968. In the late eighties, kids from small towns all over the north of England invaded his home town and changed its name to Madchester. They filled all the good clubs with their fake accents, 'top one mate', 'sorted bud', and the breeze from their baggy jeans blew chill through the town. He fled to Redcar, Cleveland, a town that will take you to its heart within three generations, and for two years tried to forget the twentieth century. For the last ten years he has lived in Scotland, first in Kirkintilloch, then Cumbernauld and soon who knows. In 2002 he won second prize in a North Lanarkshire Council writing competition, but since then, the postman just hasn't called. In fact litmags have a strange habit of disappearing once he submits submit to them. He has completed a number of short stories and a novel - ‘The Nostalgist’ - although he’s spent the last six months deciding whether to change the name of the lead character. He currently splits his time between writing, cycling and saving Tesco's beer department from the sin of sloth.

HARUKI MURAKAMI

"The unsettling mundanity of modern Japanese life. His characters are complex, contradictory and he doesn't feel the need to make you want to like them."

THE NIGHT SHIFT
by Clive Stelfox

It is two a.m. on the eighth floor of an office block in central Glasgow. The overnight is running, back ups are complete, file uploads from New York are soon to begin, and Gordon O’Donnell’s headache ratchets up like the twist of a pair of scissors in his eye socket. He swears he’s going to die right there the pain’s so bad. He’s tired too. He doesn’t know which is worse, fatigue or pain. He removes his glasses and with the palm of his hand pushes up the flesh of his cheek. He opens his fourth can of diet coke and leans back in his chair. He focuses on a distant wall. He can just make out the photo of a rugby scrum and the caption "Teamwork"… beneath it. Between him and that photo are rows of empty desks, vacant chairs, power downed pc’s, and temporarily orphaned pictures of smiling school kids. Coffee scum slowly hardens in empty Starbucks cups, and a silent army of soft toys tell no-one in particular that they’re adorable.

He used to feel special being here at this time. Having the place to himself like it was created just for him. It made him feel better than the losers who worked the day shift. He remembers that. Being crammed in all day with the compulsive eaters, the soccer bores and the hey I’m funny listen to me for the next eight hours sociopaths. Hundreds of them all sucking on a thick cloud of sweat, germs, skin flakes and saliva droplets that was circulated over and over by the air conditioning. No he was better than that. At night there was just him and Jim the security man and he was sure Jim didn’t give off too many germs. Jim slept most of the night anyway, lulled by the sort of radio station that Gordon thought only cab drivers listened to. No, this time of night the air was clean. But like I said he used to feel special. Now he just feels ill. During the day he can’t sleep. His head seems to hurt constantly and then there’s the…

-Hey Gordy boy, how’s Scotchland baby?

The voice makes Gordon O’Donnell jerk upright in his chair. He pulls a microphone wand towards him, pressing a button on the base with his index finger. He speaks in a monotone voice like he’s following a script.

- Hey Frank, what’s happening stateside?

- What isn’t, baby? You should get yourself to the sexy side of the pond and leave all that rainy shit behind. Anyway your order for tonight sir, fourteen files ready to go. Code is six one three four nine seven. Well that’s me off for a night on the town, stay away from that porn Gordy boy, there’s rumours of compulsory right wrist monitoring coming in soon for night staff. I’d hate to lose you.

-Fuck off Frank. Have a good night, mate.

Gordon checks the files, enters the code and the upload commences. A meter on the screen measures the progress of each file. It begins a slow crawl from one percentage point to the next. Estimated time to completion two hours thirty one minutes.

He logs on to another screen and checks his e-mail. There’s the usual collection of look what I dids, a couple of corporate babbles about increased market share and new branches in places he’d never heard of and a short film about a monkey with its finger up its arse. None of this removes the pain that is located directly behind his right eye. It’s like someone is in there gently rubbing the back of his eyeball with sandpaper. He opens a drawer and pulls out a foil of paracetamol. He presses two tablets out of the foil and washes them down with the last of the diet coke.

He checks the files. Twenty three per cent. Fuck this is boring.

He wanders over to the notice board. Two grey silhouettes dance beneath a giant champagne bottle, Tracy is leaving, Friday at 6 in Bar Cliché, all welcome. Sponsor Brian, he’s cycling from Grangemouth to Middlesbrough for charity. Why? Still that’s Brian, always doing something for charity. At least he seems to have beaten his drink problem.

Gordon feels a strange warmth for these people. He watches their lives from afar. He pieces together what’s happening to them through the fragments of their lives that they leave behind each evening. For example, Brenda’s mum isn’t well. How does he know. Well, there’s a yellow sticky on her terminal that says "Flowers for mum, ward 4." The fact that it also says"Drs 3 pm Friday, wine for tonight" tells him that maybe it’s serious and Brenda isn’t coping too well. When he happened to be passing Brenda’s desk earlier he pulled open the drawer and the sachets of Resolve and the screen dumps from www.alzheimers.com confirmed his thinking.

Then there’s Tracy who’s having problems with her boyfriend. The ripped up Valentine’s card in her bin tells him that. After all it’s now June. He picks the pieces out of the bin and reassembles them like a jigsaw on her desk."To my darling Tracy I’ll love you always from ?" He sweeps the pieces off the desk into his cupped hand like they were breadcrumbs. The Club 18-30 brochure on her desk and the receipt in her bin, eighty pounds for a pair of shoes, are corroborating facts, it’s definitely over.

What Gordon really likes though is the fact that the day shift staff are totally unaware of his existence. It doesn’t occur to them that someone is in overnight preparing their work for them. They just come in each morning, clutching their lattes and their free papers, and the data is there waiting for them. Don’t they ever wonder where it comes from?

As he walks back to his desk the office hums around him, like technology is reminding him who is in control. He reaches across to the printer and takes a sheet of white paper. He picks up a pen and then pauses for a moment, smiling to himself, before starting to write. "Hi Tracy Don’t worry. He wasn’t worth it. Besides at your age you should be out there playing the field. I’ll be thinking about you." He pulls open Tracy’s top drawer and places the letter on top of a copy of Hot magazine with exclusive pictures of Adam Rickett’s new dentistry.

He walks over to the accounts section. He is heading for the desk of a woman called Joan whose drawers are like a branch of Birthdays. Crammed in there are cards for every occasion. Over the years it has been a useful source of cards for Gordon, he hasn’t had to buy one for years.

He pulls out a handful of cards and starts going through them one by one, dropping any potential ones onto the desk. Taste is not one of Joan’s strong points. The cards are mostly puke and saccharine flattened and pressed into rectangles. He puts the remainder back in the drawer and lays out the six cards he has selected. Get well soon, that doesn’t really work with Alzheimer’s. Sorry to hear about your loss, a bit premature. Thinking of you at this difficult time, that’s the one. He puts the others back in the drawer and threads his way back to Brenda’s desk. In the card he writes "Brenda, there’s not a lot I can say that will make you feel better, but always remember that I am thinking about you."

Sitting back at his desk Gordon realises that his head is clear. The pain has gone. His fatigue has been replaced by an enhanced alertness. He wants more.

Purchasing is a dark corner of the office. It’s all interior walls, no natural light. From his nightly tours Gordon can tell that purchasing staff lead lesser lives. There are no photos of pop stars or footballers taped to screens and the postcards on the wall are from Great Yarmouth and Bournemouth rather than Ibiza and Vegas. He opens a drawer at random. There’s a copy of Take a Break and a packet of Immodium. He moves to the next desk. Just blank paper shoved in a drawer. Move on to the next desk. Blank paper in a drawer? Who keeps blank paper in their drawer? He goes back. Sure enough there is a slight upward curve to the surface of the paper. There’s something underneath. He lifts the paper out exposing a bottle of Bells whisky. He holds the bottle up and the transparency lends some temporary magic to the fluorescent lighting. There’s about an inch left in the bottom. He returns it to the drawer. As he does he notices a lilac envelope, addressed to Tony Jones. He pauses before opening it. Is this going too far? He snatches out the letter and starts to read. It’s from Mrs Jones. It’s telling Mr Jones that unless he can stop drinking he can forget coming back. No amount of his pleading is going to change that. It’s her or the booze.

Gordon puts the letter back. He walks over to the coffee point and pours the whisky down the sink. He carefully puts the empty bottle back in the drawer then places the paper back on top, saving one sheet for his next letter. Then he has an idea. He puts the sheet back in the drawer with the rest of the paper and switches Tony’s pc on. It takes a few seconds to warm up. Gordon goes into the control panel menu and selects the wallpaper section. He creates a custom wallpaper and types in "Come on Tony you can do it. Change your life and you can have whatever you want. More people are rooting for you than you think. Go for it Tony, change your life."

He passes the next few desks by. He is drawn to one where a screen struggles beneath the weight of soft toys. There’s a need if ever there was one. He doesn’t act straight away. Instead he sits in the chair for five minutes as if adjusting to the climate of that particular desk, picking up as many clues as he can. He slides the drawer back. At first he is disappointed, just a handful of weight loss bars and a copy of True Romance magazine. He roots a bit lower, pushing his hand in further, past the ménage schedule and the photocopy of the lottery syndicate numbers. His fingers reach a notebook. He pulls it out. The words "Private Keep Out" are written on the front in big chunky blue biro capitals surrounded by a tornado swirl of doodles, love hearts and curly haired stick figures with smiling faces. Gordon opens the book and starts to read. The book is a diary of sorts but it is not in chronological order. It appears to be random thoughts and ideas. "Just came back from the toilet thinking it’s amazing how you can fall in love with someone the first time you see them. That’s how I feel now. I’ve just seen the new boy from accounts. He’s so young and unblemished, yet knowing, like some kind of Greek god." There’s a page about what a bitch Sharon is, then a planner calculating what holiday will be taken when, a page of doodles, a scribbled version of a maze and then, "He’s called Miles. Debra from IT told me at the coffee point. Competition. Bitch." A few pages further on is the skeleton of a letter. Words are scribbled out with a ballpoint as if the writer is trying to completely obliterate them. Notes are appended, sentences redrafted. Gordon struggles to read it. The letter has obviously been written at speed, full of intensity. Over the page is the draft of another letter. By comparing the two Gordon can see that the second letter is an updated version of the first. It is a letter to Miles. It tells Miles that she loves him. That she is the girl with brown hair in Purchasing, "You’ve probably never noticed me but I’m here." A diagonal line runs from the bottom left of the page to the top right.

This is a difficult one. Gordon’s first inclination is to track down Miles and leave a note in his desk. But that is too obvious and could embarrass whoever sits here. No, whatever action is taken, it will have to be initiated by the owner of the book. By the side of the screen is a wire tray with a piece of card marked Filing sellotaped to the front. The tray is empty except for a copy of Super Puzzle Weekly. Gordon picks up the magazine. It is open at a page where a crossword has been partially completed. Most of the clues that have been answered are down answers. Using the empty across boxes Gordon fills in his message. "If Miles is who you really want then have the confidence to go for it. After all what is the worst that could happen." Some of the words don’t quite fit but by carefully spacing them the overall effect works. He places the magazine back in the tray and puts the book back in the drawer.

As he walks back to his desk the empty light of dawn has enveloped the building. At his desk he checks that the download is complete then walks over to the window. In the street below a bin lorry edges slowly forward. Through the triple glazing Gordon watches as the crew work in silence tossing bin bags one handed into the crusher. Overhead a seagull curves on the breeze watching the bin lorry for spillage. A stray sheet of newspaper is blown from the back of the wagon, wrapping itself around the traffic lights for a second before carrying on up the street.

It is the start of a new day and for the first time in weeks Gordon knows that he will sleep. It has been a good night’s work.

© Clive Stelfox
Reproduced with permission

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