A visitor during lunch

James thought that he could steal 40 winks while no one was watching. It was after all, lunch time. And always on the dot, gaggles of hungry office workers would mechanically drop what they were doing and systematically waddle out of the office door.

His eyelids slowly grew heavy and the screensaver on his monitor became blurry; his head was tilting to one side, and the sleep that had eluded him last night had finally caught up. A good hour of rest was just another droop of the eyelids away when suddenly, the bell rang.

The peal of the bell jolted him awake; and the adhesive of sleep binding his bleary eyes loosened; revealing a woman of about thirty standing in front of his desk. She had long, raggy hair. The thing he noticed most about her was her physiognomy. Her eyes were bloodshot red, like eyes afflicted by a bad case of conjunctivitis. A slash of blood red lipstick anointed her upper lip. Angry red pimples dotted her facial landscape. She looked terrible, and for a moment, he was repulsed sufficiently to subconsciously recoil in his seat.

"Er, how can I help you?" James said with a lump in his throat. Mentally, he regretted not following his colleagues out for lunch. If it came to choosing a sleep that was going to be interrupted by a most physically-repellent customer and gorging himself on food and sharing rowdy jokes or catty office gossip with colleagues, he would have chosen the latter. But it was too late - he had made the choice to stay in and sleep, and now he had to entertain this ugly lady.

The woman did not reply to him. Instead her eyes goggled wide and her stare at James was unnerving him. After a few seconds had passed, the first words coming out of her mouth were the cryptical: "Don't you remember me?"

"I don't remember serving you before, Miss. Er, I think you must be looking for another colleague of mine. All of us office workers do look alike, you know," James joked. If he had expected a laugh or a smile from the ugly woman, what he got was instead stony silence and the unnerving eyeballing she was giving him.

Another few more seconds elapsed with no other words passing between them. All this while, James' bewilderment was heightening. He wriggled his toes in his Clarks. The gentle humming of the airconditioning and the snatches of music from someone else's radio in the office were the only sounds.

The woman continued to stare at him, and the twitching of her mouth added to James' uneasiness. The last vestiges of sleep had been brushed away from his eyes like cobwebs swept away by a wayward hand.

"Hey miss, could you say something? How can I help you? Are you alright?" The sentences popped out from his mouth like strings of firecrackers let loose. Stultifying silence doused his firecrackers.

He could not stand it anymore. Pushing himself up from his seat, he stood up and glared at the woman. The woman eyeballed him back evenly. Then her right hand flashed up and made contact with his left cheek. James was shocked and before his indignation could be expressed, the woman spoke.

"Remember that night. Remember what you did," she said, then pointed to her stomach, continued, "I am pregnant now, you bastard!"

With that, her stony face crumbled into a maelstrom of tears. Sobbing, she turned around and ran out of the room, leaving a shell-shocked James with the light of comprehension blinding him.

Four months ago. A nightspot in town. A wild night of revelry. Bottles of heavy liquor going around like they were out of fashion. Eye contact. The darkness obscuring her face. Too inebriated to bother or notice what would normally revolt him. They dance. They depart. His gang of friends laughingly telling him to enjoy. Some hotel room. A wild night of sex. Awakening and finding himself alone on a bed, naked. No recollection of what has happened. Brushes it off as a one-night stand. Typically him. Pays the hotel bill, leaves. Relegates that night to the back of his mind. Life goes on.

The light had suffused his memory, shining upon the crevices where his jumbled recollections of that night had hidden. Epiphany, realisation, light - and an excruciating pain on his left cheek.

The bell rang again....