The red light flickering in the corner of Ted's phone indicates a message has arrived on the phone. Bruce knows this even without asking. Ted drops by the apartment once or twice each week to visit and each time lays the blackberry device on the coffee table. It could have been for effect or Ted may honestly not feel comfortable with the phone in his pocket. Bruce doesn't read minds, so he wouldn't know. If were a mind reader, hemight make mroe money. Bruce works a teller job at Franklin Street Bank. He's had the job for three weeks and the routine is beginning to settle into his brain.
--Show up on time to be let in through the back door by the manager.
--Walk to your station and unlock the drawer.
--Pull the rack of the cash from the drawer and walk back to the vault with the manager.
--Silently count out the bills as the manager counts them into each tray for each teller working that day.
--Return the filled trays to the drawer and lock the drawer.
--If he is the primary teller for the day, pull the shades up and place all of the cardboard advertisements for checking and savings accounts. Make sure the standing cut out for CDs is facing the front door.
--Make sure all of the lights are on and all of the deposit and withdrawal slips are in the correct bins and that the pens have ink to write with.
Day in and day out for three weeks, Bruce has been working without break beyond Sundays off to secure enough cash to keep the apartment and amenities to which he has become accustomed. Before this job, Bruce had worked retail at a video game store in the local strip mall until the holiday rush died out. Before that, he worked in a cardboard cutting facility outside of the city for three months before the repetitive assembly line labor drove him to quit.
For the six years Bruce lived in the neighborhood a couple miles north of downtown, he had not kept a job for longer than six months. That single job was a contract position working on a programming project for a marketing company to track projects within for gaining efficiencies. After the contact was up, Bruce found himself struggling to find another opportunity in his field of study. Programming jobs within the city did not have any need for him as a new graduate. Each position required three to five years of experience with programming languages that had only been out for four years and which Bruce had not experience with in his time in school.
His girlfriend, Tara, pushed him to get a job in the short term to avoid living in his car. Obligingly, Bruce started at Radio Shack for a few months before quitting to take a course in a new technical field opening up. After a solid week of training, Bruce found himself further in debt for the training and no more experienced than before. His employment spiral continued downward and Bruce had not found another job to the one that brought him to the city. The closest he came was a two week effort designing a website for a local company that he is now confident has been replaced with someone else's efforts.
Bruce had slowly run out of options in the city until Ted put in a word with the local Franklin Street branch. Ted works in the corporate offices of Franklin Street's parent bank, American Streets Financial, as a finance executive. He routinely walks away from gatherings with friends to take important calls and constantly scans his email on his phone while talking with friends. Bruce hated this. He would complain to shared friends of the pretentious aspect of not giving full attention to the person speaking making the person feel like they are less important than an incoming sales report on a Saturday evening. In truth, Bruce was mostly jealous.
Ted was a family man and a supportive friend if one is to get beyond the second most important thing in the room to Ted. He lived for his job. Every update in every conversation included the bank. "How's it going, Ted?" "Great. We just moved into the top ten of banks in the tri-state area thanks to some number crunching I was involved in, so I'm hoping more good things are on their way." His family came up less often. The kids were always doing cute things the kids under four years old tend to do according to his wife, Trina, but Ted was less likely to notice. He was busy being the job and making the money to support his family. Bruce envied being the job.
After approximately ten flashes, Ted returned from the kitchen with a fresh beer in his hand. Crossing to the couch, Ted grabbed the blinking device and began flipping through emails before he sat down next to Bruce.
"So how are you liking the branch so far? Think it'll take? I know you've been through quite a few jobs, but give the bank a chance. At the teller position, you get solid hours and enjoy bank holidays as well as a solid paycheck and a bottom rung start into the Street's corporate ladder. A little initiative shown in taking more responsibility will get you up that ladder in no time." Bruce glanced up from the tiny screen only for the last few words and brought his eyes back to the screen before Bruce would answer.
"It's fine." His words came with reverberating clicking from Ted's phone as Ted responded to an email in the midst of the conversation. "I like the cardboard cut outs. I may bring the one of the woman ecstatic about 15% APR on the credit cards. Might even get rid of Tara and just introduce the cut out as my new love. We'll have a fantastic life at fine restaurants for half the price. I can order kids for us from the marketing catalog and I won't even need a 19 year old when I turn 50 because she won't age. I think it's a solid plan."
Ted continued clicking letters and staring intently at the screen a minute after Bruce stopped talking. He picked up his empty bottle and shook it in front of him to see if any beer would magically appear in the empty bottle. Not surprisingly, none appeared. The clicking stopped and Ted was watching Bruce shake his bottle.
"Would your new wife be jealous whenever you walked by one of those models in cardboard form hocking beer at the corner store?" Bruce smiled at Ted's ability to do multiple tasks and still not miss the conversation. Even if it was a bit off putting.
"Nah. We have an open relationship. I may have a weekly visit from the beer wench from the St Paulie Girl signs and she can see the deodorant cutouts every so often."
Ted tilted the beer back and watched the red light o his phone begin blinking again before he finished his drink. "Whomever you end up with, do you think they prefer you as a banker?"
"I told you the job was fine. It's not stressful and the people make it less repetitive throughout the day." He stood to walk to the kitchen for another beer. "It's really the downtime that gets to me. I was training for working on computer. I paid thousands of dollars over four years to be taught how to build applications on machines that don't require me to be at an office or anyplace beyond my couch in my underwear and there I am for roughly fours hours of each day sitting on a stool staring out into the open space and wondering why my new wife's ass is a flat chunk of cardboard."
Ted moved through the open doorway into his kitchen and pulled the handle on the 20 year old white monster of a refrigerator to grab another beer. Slamming the door shut, Ted grabs the bottle opener from the door and flicks the cap off in one smooth motion. Maybe I should have been a bartender. At least then I could drink when I get bored. By the time he returned to the living room, Ted was typing again on his phone. Chances were good this had happened at least once more before Bruce could return from the kitchen.
"Like I was saying, Bruce. Initiative. If you talk to the manager when things are slow and ask what you could do that might help you move up more quickly and fill the downtime, I'm sure you wouldn't be bored. At least, not from a lack of things to do. Give it time and stay focused and we could be sending our kids to the same schools and carpooling to the corporate tower. You do plan on sending your kids to schools, right?"
"I don't know yet. My cardboard love and I are still arguing over public schooling versus private schooling versus home schooling the fake kids. I'll talk to the manager on Monday if I find myself bored for a period of time again and see how that goes. I just know myself and I don't feel the value of the job yet. I still have that piece of my brain telling me I'll find a job coding something somewhere someday and that keeps my brain from accepting the need to pay attention to the details of the job."
"Even after five years away from it?" Ted had a way of stating things in painful perspective. "I may be working in finance just like I hoped when I went through business school, but I didn't always have this. I had to work through less than proper finance positions and some non-finance ones to get where I am. I'm just saying to give it a real chance. You might find it speaks to you after all. Might even find a career in it."
Ted smiled to hide the gritted teeth. He hated being told what to do in life even by a guy who had it all worked out. Maybe he resented authority too much to accept a new opportunity when it presented itself, but he had serious doubts this job would satisfy his need to do something he felt mattered in life. He did not look down on the job itself, he looked down on himself in that role of filling a spot to live his life from day to day.
Bruce's phone began buzzing on the table the minute he set it down. "It's probably Trina. We have dinner plans tonight. Mind if I head out and we catch up some more later in the week?"
Bruce sighed deeply at the chance to not talking about work anymore. "That's fine. Tell the wife I said hello. Go back to your perfect life and leave me to my squalor. Come to think of it, you're a pretty lousy friend. Why don't I live in your house with you? You wouldn't even know I was there in all of that space."
Ted chuckled as he pressed the send button on his phone. "I'll be sure to ask Trina and get right back to you on that." With a wave and another laugh, Ted walked out the door leaving Bruce to clean up the bottles on the table.
Bruce went back to his desktop keyboard and began typing up lines of code for some home projects. He had been working on teaching himself the new technologies he had no experience with in hopes of using that as experience on his resume. Tara would be home in an hour and hated when she found beer bottles on the table. She likes Ted, but felt the time he spent at their apartment was time away from Bruce finding the job he really wanted. She was ball of stress every time she came home to find out Bruce had quit another job. After so many years together, Bruce knew she wanted to get married but also knew it was unlikely while Bruce was job hopping and finances were so unstable.
His fingers stopped tapping the logic statements for a few minutes and he found himself unwilling to continue as he thought of how Ted's success always made him feel unfocused in his life. Pondering where he had gone wrong, Bruce moved back to the couch and knew he would still be there with a beer in his hand when Tara came home. So be it.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Sunday, November 9, 2008
79: Mistaken Identity
"Sammy boy, I haven't seen you in three weeks. Where have you been hiding yourself? They've been sending us some worthless snot with the morning bagels. I swear he's been bringing us two day old bagels as bad as they've been."
A man in a navy blue double breasted suit steps into the elevator. He sees me with the box of bagelsand assumes I'm the bagel delivery guy. He doesn't notice I'm wearing a finer quality suit than he is or that I've seen this Sammy before and I don't have the piercings nor the unkept hair to make the confusion valid. The only thing I have is the box of bagels I took off of Sammy this morning.
"Hey, boss. Big weekend planned?" I mimick the excited nervousness Sammy exuded when I apprached him. He would definitely use the same tone for Dave Merrit even if he doesn't know he's the CFO of the company.
"You know it, my pastry peddling friend! I've got a 90 foot yacht waiting for me on Lake Superior. It's a bit colder up there in the winter, but just as nice as anyplace else in the summer. I take a few sick days each July and just sit out there with a margarita in one hand and a fishing pole in the other. There's almost nothing like it." He laughs at his own story wide enough that I can see the gold cap in a molar in the back.
"Do they charge that much less up there for docking and storage to make it worth the drive?" I shift the box awkwardly trying to draw any attention to the fact that I'm wearing a suit. Dave doesn't notice.
Dave leans in close to me and glances at the corners of the elevator as if spies lie in every corner. "Between you, me and the fence posts, Sammy, I'm hiding it up there. There's less chance someone from the office will see me all the way up there to question me aboutthe boat. The less they know, the better my life is."
The smile I give him is genuine. "They get jealous because you make the big bucks to afford it."
"Well, I don't make quite that much, but nobody buys what they can actually afford these days, right? Granted, I'm not taking out a mortgage for my BMW or the Rolex. I have my ways of making the money I deserve here. I'm the CFO. I know what we're going to do before the market does and I have friends very appreciative of that knowledge. Over the past 10 years, I've made an extra two million dollars through investments thanks to my position here. Like Mel Brooks said, it's good to be the king."
I smile and end the game. "Is the CFO king? I thought the CEO was the big boss."
Dave laughs just condescending enough to confirm that I'm still not recognizable to him. "Well, that's an appointed position by the board. I'm CFO. I earned this role. I control the finances here and that makes me the big boss. Besides, they just appointed a new CEO this past week. Some snivelling pain in the ass from one of the oil companies. I haven't met him yet, but I don't expect him to affect how I work here."
The doors opened to the 38th floor. Debbie, the finance department's administrative assistant, looked through the doors at the two men exiting. "Oh good. Mr Philips found you, Mr Merrit. He was hoping to get on your calendar to discuss his new role as CEO."
Dave Merrit, in all of his well kept persona and fine clothing, fell apart. He stammered out a few syllables before I cut him off. "Yes, Debbie. I now know my new role. Can you post an opening at the CFO position? I believe we are about to have an opening. Bagel?"
A man in a navy blue double breasted suit steps into the elevator. He sees me with the box of bagelsand assumes I'm the bagel delivery guy. He doesn't notice I'm wearing a finer quality suit than he is or that I've seen this Sammy before and I don't have the piercings nor the unkept hair to make the confusion valid. The only thing I have is the box of bagels I took off of Sammy this morning.
"Hey, boss. Big weekend planned?" I mimick the excited nervousness Sammy exuded when I apprached him. He would definitely use the same tone for Dave Merrit even if he doesn't know he's the CFO of the company.
"You know it, my pastry peddling friend! I've got a 90 foot yacht waiting for me on Lake Superior. It's a bit colder up there in the winter, but just as nice as anyplace else in the summer. I take a few sick days each July and just sit out there with a margarita in one hand and a fishing pole in the other. There's almost nothing like it." He laughs at his own story wide enough that I can see the gold cap in a molar in the back.
"Do they charge that much less up there for docking and storage to make it worth the drive?" I shift the box awkwardly trying to draw any attention to the fact that I'm wearing a suit. Dave doesn't notice.
Dave leans in close to me and glances at the corners of the elevator as if spies lie in every corner. "Between you, me and the fence posts, Sammy, I'm hiding it up there. There's less chance someone from the office will see me all the way up there to question me aboutthe boat. The less they know, the better my life is."
The smile I give him is genuine. "They get jealous because you make the big bucks to afford it."
"Well, I don't make quite that much, but nobody buys what they can actually afford these days, right? Granted, I'm not taking out a mortgage for my BMW or the Rolex. I have my ways of making the money I deserve here. I'm the CFO. I know what we're going to do before the market does and I have friends very appreciative of that knowledge. Over the past 10 years, I've made an extra two million dollars through investments thanks to my position here. Like Mel Brooks said, it's good to be the king."
I smile and end the game. "Is the CFO king? I thought the CEO was the big boss."
Dave laughs just condescending enough to confirm that I'm still not recognizable to him. "Well, that's an appointed position by the board. I'm CFO. I earned this role. I control the finances here and that makes me the big boss. Besides, they just appointed a new CEO this past week. Some snivelling pain in the ass from one of the oil companies. I haven't met him yet, but I don't expect him to affect how I work here."
The doors opened to the 38th floor. Debbie, the finance department's administrative assistant, looked through the doors at the two men exiting. "Oh good. Mr Philips found you, Mr Merrit. He was hoping to get on your calendar to discuss his new role as CEO."
Dave Merrit, in all of his well kept persona and fine clothing, fell apart. He stammered out a few syllables before I cut him off. "Yes, Debbie. I now know my new role. Can you post an opening at the CFO position? I believe we are about to have an opening. Bagel?"
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
The Line
"Whenever I see someone pull a cigarette from a pack at a party, I'm always reminded of my college days where I once ate a cigarette on a bet. Many people ask me what I got for that and I tell them that the cigarette entered my blood stream through my stomach and I becamse immune to cigarette smoke. Unfortunately, the only place I could make use of my super power was at dance clubs and, unfortunately, I wasn't immune to the ear splitting volume or willing to put up with the bullshit pretentiousness of most of the people I met there. Of course, that was back in college when everyone went places in groups and just got hammered for the sake of it. Now I find myself single and dating people that keep pushing me back to the clubs like there is anything appealing about them. The only reason people go there is to be able to feel free to dance in whatever way they please that would make them look weird at a party. It all just ends up looking like a sea of people with no personal space swinging their arms wildly and rocking their hips."
The red head in the short skirt sucking on a Marlboro exhaled loudly in plume of nicotine enriched air. Standing next to her was a man in his late thirties with a buzzcut and a faded blue t-shirt that used to hold a Cubs logo long ago lost in the pain of seasons failed. He stared wide eyed at her waiting for a response to his unsolicited soliloquy. She smiled a patronizing smile with more than a little lipstick on her front teeth before hissing, "Go away."
"Statistics state that cigarette smokers are more likely to be under-educated or high school drop outs. 20% of white women smoke and I'd say roughly 95% of the men here are not speaking to you right now. You have no ring on your finger and have been sitting alone here for the past 20 minutes. Even if someone is just around the corner coming to meet you, you should heed sage advice no matter what moment in time you find yourself in. If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with."
The stare the odd man received was meant to melt him to the puddle of nothingness she had already imagined him being before she dropped her gaze to her ash tray and glanced around the room at the single men not coming to see her. She turned her head to the table next to her in time to see a very attractive man in his late twenties glancing her way. She smiled and exhaled another stream of smoke as he frowned back, waved the smoke away from his head and walked away to the bar leaving his table empty. Turning back to her unwanted conversationalist, she found nothing but a hazy view of an empty space in front of the bar. When she turned back to her ash tray, she found him sitting next to her on the now abandoned stool left from the next table.
"I'm Allen. You'll want to remember my name when you call me later." Laying a business card on the table with a phone number scrawled across the front, Allen turned to the door and walked away. He managed to get to the curb before his cell phone rang. He let it go to voicemail and waved for a cab.
The red head in the short skirt sucking on a Marlboro exhaled loudly in plume of nicotine enriched air. Standing next to her was a man in his late thirties with a buzzcut and a faded blue t-shirt that used to hold a Cubs logo long ago lost in the pain of seasons failed. He stared wide eyed at her waiting for a response to his unsolicited soliloquy. She smiled a patronizing smile with more than a little lipstick on her front teeth before hissing, "Go away."
"Statistics state that cigarette smokers are more likely to be under-educated or high school drop outs. 20% of white women smoke and I'd say roughly 95% of the men here are not speaking to you right now. You have no ring on your finger and have been sitting alone here for the past 20 minutes. Even if someone is just around the corner coming to meet you, you should heed sage advice no matter what moment in time you find yourself in. If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with."
The stare the odd man received was meant to melt him to the puddle of nothingness she had already imagined him being before she dropped her gaze to her ash tray and glanced around the room at the single men not coming to see her. She turned her head to the table next to her in time to see a very attractive man in his late twenties glancing her way. She smiled and exhaled another stream of smoke as he frowned back, waved the smoke away from his head and walked away to the bar leaving his table empty. Turning back to her unwanted conversationalist, she found nothing but a hazy view of an empty space in front of the bar. When she turned back to her ash tray, she found him sitting next to her on the now abandoned stool left from the next table.
"I'm Allen. You'll want to remember my name when you call me later." Laying a business card on the table with a phone number scrawled across the front, Allen turned to the door and walked away. He managed to get to the curb before his cell phone rang. He let it go to voicemail and waved for a cab.
Not So Hidden Treasure
Thanis McGuffin presses the round plastic power button on his PC and blows the steam off of his coffee cup as the monitor lights up. He sips the cup apprehensively and swears out loud at his impatience. His lips sting with the burning sensation from the ghost of boiling coffee past that is not upsetting his stomach. As the sensation returns to his lips, he begins to taste where the scalding has now past his tongue and reaches for another packet of cream.
Dumping the small cup of cream into his mug, he spills a few drops on the keyboard as he attempts to login while attending to his coffee. He feigns a sense of confidence as if he does this sort of multi-tasking all of the time even though no one is watching him. The status bar slowly ticks towards 100% loading as he thinks to himself how much he needed a newer computer if this job pans out. He glances at the post-it note on his desk with the name Gregory Larker. A study of the last name gives him more comfort as it is not a common sounding last name and it looks American enough not to be a common name with which he is not familiar.
The speakers shriek a triumphant, high pitched tada noise causing Than to nearly knock over his coffee onto the stack of papers on his desk. The papers don't have any meaning, but the mere sight of them legitimizes him as a private detective with experience and plenty of cases to show for it. He couldn't let the man in the $1,000 suit not cut quite wide enough to conceal the bulge of what he assumed was a gun that had shown up that morning think he was a rookie. He had been fired from his job as a computer lab monitor for abusing his computer rights and ignoring his responsibilities. Coincidentally, he was caught while printing out the certificate for completing the at home private investigation online course. He had aced the forensics question and was able to correctly guess what Occam's razor indicated. The certificate was now hung in his office with a phone notary seal he made with sunflower seed impressions and a pin.
Than clicked on the small blue icon to launch a web browser. He thought about how much easier the PI business would have been 50 years back if they could have googled their suspects to find them. After the search results for Gregory Larker asked him if he meant Gregory Parker or the Gregorian Lark, a web page from an old geocities space came up. The page listed itself as the home space for Gregory Larker of Bulmot, Massachusetts. This was turning out to be easier than he had imagined. The site had no pictures, but listed a link to his facebook profile.
Than clicked the link and watched as the picture loaded showing a man in his mid-twenties with curly black hair and a day's worth of facial hair. He listed his hometown as Bulmot, but he had himself listed under the San Francisco network of contacts. Even his bio matched perfectly and then some to the story told to him be the gun toting suit he met that morning.
"Greg was a pharmaceutical lab assistant working on a breakthrough cure for various forms of Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma when his lab caught fire taking all of the data and research in the lab. Luckily, Greg held onto the backups of the research, but went into hiding when he discovered the fire was set intentionally. I am currently in hiding and can not be found anymore. I will continue my research outside of the reaches of those wishing me harm. My cell is 510-833-6868 if you need to reach me."
If only every case could be this easy, Than thought to himself. Jumping onto the Southwest.com site to book a cheap flight to San Francisco, Than began mentally packing his bags and shopping for a new laptop.
Dumping the small cup of cream into his mug, he spills a few drops on the keyboard as he attempts to login while attending to his coffee. He feigns a sense of confidence as if he does this sort of multi-tasking all of the time even though no one is watching him. The status bar slowly ticks towards 100% loading as he thinks to himself how much he needed a newer computer if this job pans out. He glances at the post-it note on his desk with the name Gregory Larker. A study of the last name gives him more comfort as it is not a common sounding last name and it looks American enough not to be a common name with which he is not familiar.
The speakers shriek a triumphant, high pitched tada noise causing Than to nearly knock over his coffee onto the stack of papers on his desk. The papers don't have any meaning, but the mere sight of them legitimizes him as a private detective with experience and plenty of cases to show for it. He couldn't let the man in the $1,000 suit not cut quite wide enough to conceal the bulge of what he assumed was a gun that had shown up that morning think he was a rookie. He had been fired from his job as a computer lab monitor for abusing his computer rights and ignoring his responsibilities. Coincidentally, he was caught while printing out the certificate for completing the at home private investigation online course. He had aced the forensics question and was able to correctly guess what Occam's razor indicated. The certificate was now hung in his office with a phone notary seal he made with sunflower seed impressions and a pin.
Than clicked on the small blue icon to launch a web browser. He thought about how much easier the PI business would have been 50 years back if they could have googled their suspects to find them. After the search results for Gregory Larker asked him if he meant Gregory Parker or the Gregorian Lark, a web page from an old geocities space came up. The page listed itself as the home space for Gregory Larker of Bulmot, Massachusetts. This was turning out to be easier than he had imagined. The site had no pictures, but listed a link to his facebook profile.
Than clicked the link and watched as the picture loaded showing a man in his mid-twenties with curly black hair and a day's worth of facial hair. He listed his hometown as Bulmot, but he had himself listed under the San Francisco network of contacts. Even his bio matched perfectly and then some to the story told to him be the gun toting suit he met that morning.
"Greg was a pharmaceutical lab assistant working on a breakthrough cure for various forms of Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma when his lab caught fire taking all of the data and research in the lab. Luckily, Greg held onto the backups of the research, but went into hiding when he discovered the fire was set intentionally. I am currently in hiding and can not be found anymore. I will continue my research outside of the reaches of those wishing me harm. My cell is 510-833-6868 if you need to reach me."
If only every case could be this easy, Than thought to himself. Jumping onto the Southwest.com site to book a cheap flight to San Francisco, Than began mentally packing his bags and shopping for a new laptop.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Levitation
Levitation comes from the Latin word levitas meaning "lightness". It is described in Webster's dictionary as the act or process of levitating especially the rising or lifting of a person or thing by means held to be supernatural. Some heroes may use high tech devices to mimic a sort of anti-gravity or a propulsion system giving the body release from the bonds of gravity, but true levitation comes from the constant stable suspension beyond the earth's gravitational forces. Some super small objects maybe be able to be levitated by the use of the Casimir effect by equalizing the force between two plates causing no field of magnetic force. Human beings are incapable of levitation without mechanical means.
Tony awoke from a dream of kittens leaping from a cliff into the icy blue water of the Pacific ocean. He had fallen asleep 45 minutes earlier on the bus watching the billboards in the city go by leading him to this strange imagery. He now sees puppies chasing giant red tennis balls in an empty swimming pool. Before long he's back to the cliff watching the kittens leap only now they don't reach the water. They've begun to soar into the clouds followed by the tennis balls and followed by the chasing puppies. A psychiatrist would see a simple mind looking for the simple pleasures of childhood. A 28 year old man should not be thinking of such odd things.
This thought is still floating in his mind when he opens his eyes to a bus load of people watching him. They stare up at him confused by the 5 foot 8 inch man. Even the tall biker looking man with the severe handlebar mustache is staring up at him. His butt is not numb from the hard seat like his typical 2 hour bus ride's usual results. He looks to his shoes and sees his shoelace is untied and dangling over the back of the seat in front of him. The tips barely touch the seat back as Tony is floating four feet above his seat.
His head is pressing against the bars on the ceiling for a few seconds before he comes crashing to his seat. His left ankle lands on the seat back in front of him and his head bangs into the plexiglass window. He is still swearing under his breath when the bus slams to a halt and the bus driver demands he get off the bus.
"How do you expect me to get home? I'm in the middle of nowhere at least an hour from my stop!"
"Why should I care you freak? Fly home for all I care, just get off my damn bus." The bus driver now has the large biker guy behind him supporting the intimidation factor. Tony takes the hint and grabs his bag before walking to the rear doors and pressing his way onto the shoulder of highway 98. After an hour of walking, he arrived at a small roadside motel. After arguing with the young man behind the counter reading a comic, Tony was forced to get a room until the morning bus could arrive. His sleep would not be as sound as the bus trip.
Tony awoke from a dream of kittens leaping from a cliff into the icy blue water of the Pacific ocean. He had fallen asleep 45 minutes earlier on the bus watching the billboards in the city go by leading him to this strange imagery. He now sees puppies chasing giant red tennis balls in an empty swimming pool. Before long he's back to the cliff watching the kittens leap only now they don't reach the water. They've begun to soar into the clouds followed by the tennis balls and followed by the chasing puppies. A psychiatrist would see a simple mind looking for the simple pleasures of childhood. A 28 year old man should not be thinking of such odd things.
This thought is still floating in his mind when he opens his eyes to a bus load of people watching him. They stare up at him confused by the 5 foot 8 inch man. Even the tall biker looking man with the severe handlebar mustache is staring up at him. His butt is not numb from the hard seat like his typical 2 hour bus ride's usual results. He looks to his shoes and sees his shoelace is untied and dangling over the back of the seat in front of him. The tips barely touch the seat back as Tony is floating four feet above his seat.
His head is pressing against the bars on the ceiling for a few seconds before he comes crashing to his seat. His left ankle lands on the seat back in front of him and his head bangs into the plexiglass window. He is still swearing under his breath when the bus slams to a halt and the bus driver demands he get off the bus.
"How do you expect me to get home? I'm in the middle of nowhere at least an hour from my stop!"
"Why should I care you freak? Fly home for all I care, just get off my damn bus." The bus driver now has the large biker guy behind him supporting the intimidation factor. Tony takes the hint and grabs his bag before walking to the rear doors and pressing his way onto the shoulder of highway 98. After an hour of walking, he arrived at a small roadside motel. After arguing with the young man behind the counter reading a comic, Tony was forced to get a room until the morning bus could arrive. His sleep would not be as sound as the bus trip.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Who doesn't love the land shark?
Annie hasn't breathed fresh air in the past 3 weeks. Not since the sirens started and not since they died out 6 days ago. She assumed the reserve batteries in the city building had gone out, but it could have been the things that used to work there and live all around her. The light had dimmed like a storm had come, but no rain fell and no wind blew. The only thing to arrive at her door were former neighbors as former human beings. She watched them bang on the Kent's door and tear inside with only screams from Martha and then silence.
She hasn't opened her door since that day. Her favorite end tables had gone to the only two windows in the place and only light from the tiny window in the bathroom managed to penetrate her cave. Her food supply was beginning to dwindle and had only lasted this long thanks to organizing the neighborhood canned food drive for the homeless. The first week was filled with meaty stews and beans followed by a week of more watery fare. The past few days had been spent rationing out four cans of creamed corn and 3 cans of french cut green beans. She was getting a bit desperate, but not desperate enough to open the door.
As if on cue, the doorbell rings. She creeps to the peep hole but can't see anything in the night. While her eye is focusing in on the house across the street still on fire, the doorbell rings again. She backed away from the door and stood in silence for a few minutes until the doorbell rang again. Out of far expired instincts, she called out. "Who is it?"
A slight pounding against the door could be heard and then a low guttural groan came as a reply. "Huh-HUH-huh-huh!" She almost thought she understood the voice even in grunt form. After a few moments, he repeated himself. "Huh-huh-huh-huuuuh!" Annie felt a sense of cabin fever build as she began to sense a translation forming in her head. A lack of human contact became more apparent as Annie answered back to her former delivery man.
"Delivery? For little old me? But I didn't order anything." She smiled flirtatiously although no one could see it but Annie. She could her scraping on the other side of the door and a frantic grunting of the same message as if that would get him in faster.
"What kind of delivery do you have for me today?" The repeated grunting stopped as if the thing outside was thinking hard about what she might want. She waited long enough to where she almost asked again when the voice came back.
"HuhhuhHUH?" She finds herself astonished to think she understands what is being groaned to her from behind the door. She could swear he said 'chocolate'.
"Chocolate? No, thank you. I don't have time for empty calories."
"HuhHUH?" He's prepared for her refusal of chocolates. He's a strategist, this one is.
"Flowers? That's sweet, but I don't get much sunlight in here and they'd fall to pieces quickly in here." She ends this statement with a slight giggle at the absurdity of the situation. The laughter seems to irritate the voice as a loud line of angry groans followed that she thought could be taken as vulgarity. After a stream of profanity, the groan impatiently tried again.
"Huh HUUH!"
"Milkman? That's just being silly, isn't it? This isn't the 50s or 60s. People go to the store for these things nowadays though the convenience of delivered milk would be nice to have."
"HuhHUHhuh?"
"Insurance! That's crazy! Who sells insurance these days door to door and who would be stupid enough to buy insurance at a time like this? There are things out in this world now that want to get in and hurt me and money from a policy won't keep them away."
"HuhHUH!"
"Oh, a zombie. That very honest of you. Come on in." Annie reaches her hand to the door and unlocks the deadbolt.
She hasn't opened her door since that day. Her favorite end tables had gone to the only two windows in the place and only light from the tiny window in the bathroom managed to penetrate her cave. Her food supply was beginning to dwindle and had only lasted this long thanks to organizing the neighborhood canned food drive for the homeless. The first week was filled with meaty stews and beans followed by a week of more watery fare. The past few days had been spent rationing out four cans of creamed corn and 3 cans of french cut green beans. She was getting a bit desperate, but not desperate enough to open the door.
As if on cue, the doorbell rings. She creeps to the peep hole but can't see anything in the night. While her eye is focusing in on the house across the street still on fire, the doorbell rings again. She backed away from the door and stood in silence for a few minutes until the doorbell rang again. Out of far expired instincts, she called out. "Who is it?"
A slight pounding against the door could be heard and then a low guttural groan came as a reply. "Huh-HUH-huh-huh!" She almost thought she understood the voice even in grunt form. After a few moments, he repeated himself. "Huh-huh-huh-huuuuh!" Annie felt a sense of cabin fever build as she began to sense a translation forming in her head. A lack of human contact became more apparent as Annie answered back to her former delivery man.
"Delivery? For little old me? But I didn't order anything." She smiled flirtatiously although no one could see it but Annie. She could her scraping on the other side of the door and a frantic grunting of the same message as if that would get him in faster.
"What kind of delivery do you have for me today?" The repeated grunting stopped as if the thing outside was thinking hard about what she might want. She waited long enough to where she almost asked again when the voice came back.
"HuhhuhHUH?" She finds herself astonished to think she understands what is being groaned to her from behind the door. She could swear he said 'chocolate'.
"Chocolate? No, thank you. I don't have time for empty calories."
"HuhHUH?" He's prepared for her refusal of chocolates. He's a strategist, this one is.
"Flowers? That's sweet, but I don't get much sunlight in here and they'd fall to pieces quickly in here." She ends this statement with a slight giggle at the absurdity of the situation. The laughter seems to irritate the voice as a loud line of angry groans followed that she thought could be taken as vulgarity. After a stream of profanity, the groan impatiently tried again.
"Huh HUUH!"
"Milkman? That's just being silly, isn't it? This isn't the 50s or 60s. People go to the store for these things nowadays though the convenience of delivered milk would be nice to have."
"HuhHUHhuh?"
"Insurance! That's crazy! Who sells insurance these days door to door and who would be stupid enough to buy insurance at a time like this? There are things out in this world now that want to get in and hurt me and money from a policy won't keep them away."
"HuhHUH!"
"Oh, a zombie. That very honest of you. Come on in." Annie reaches her hand to the door and unlocks the deadbolt.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Experimental Occupations
20 seconds... Sean stares blankly at the clock through the hole in his hand. The searing sensation from 20 seconds before was fading from the nerve endings and would stop invading his brain in about 10 more. The bucket he held his hand over had filled with the gore that his childhood friend from across the street would have loved in a movie, but now lay empty of blood. Instead the piece of flesh had reabsorbed the lost blood and begun to reform into a clay like texture he would have run through a strainer to make fake silly hair for his Mr. Potato Head when he was younger.
30 seconds... He watched the lump of material in the bucket begin to bubble and shift as it doubled in size. The process of regrowth was startling to watch every time he saw it. Now at his 56th viewing as evidenced by his running diary of accidents, Sean knew what would happen if he did not intervene in the growing mass of cells formerly belonging to him. The mass would continue to grow until it reached nearly 100 pounds in weight and began reforming into another person.
45 seconds... The hole in his hand had been bubbling like the mass in the bucket and had resealed. When the sensation fully returned to his hand and the tingling like he'd been on a riding lawnmower for three hours with a bad case of the shakes, Sean would write in his hand that a 2 inch hole sealed in 45 seconds as part of his homemade instruction manual. Since he realized there was something strange going on with his body in the way of regeneration of damaged cells, Sean did not want to go into the unknown day after day, so he started tracking the details and delays in healing he experienced. He refused to go about life as if he were indestructible because he knew he was not. He could be broken and destroyed. He could be shot and would bleed like anyone else. He would not go about his life like he could not be killed because he could be. Even if he had technically been dead several times and would be rebuilt, he could not risk what he was watching at that moment.
60 seconds... He began to see the first signs of hair and facial features in the bucket as he tipped the bucket over to avoid it being destroyed when another version of himself was formed from his discarded matter. The timing had gone similar to test 48 where a wayward rock kicked up from a truck on the freeway had ripped through the fleshy section of his hand and left it bubbling on the side of the interstate. Sean had slammed on the break and skid to the side of the road before making his run backwards the quarter mile to avoid leaving a naked version of himself on the road side.
75 seconds... Sean recognized his own eye looking up at him from the blue carpet of the shooting range. Limbs had begun to take shape and Sean threw a towel over the new version of himself to give himself some privacy in case security wandered in and found them there. In a pinch, he would have to claim he and his twin brother had made a bet and would likely just get kicked out after hiding out in the building after closing. Tonight, however, would be like the last few times.
90 seconds... The limbs begin to bubble on the ends and the shape of feet and hands can be seen. If his estimates are correct, he would be standing beside himself in 30 seconds from now. In the past year since his treatments, Sean had found himself face to face with a mirror image only 7 times. His previous injuries sent Sean panicky at first. Cutting off the tip of his finger, he quickly grabbed it to put it on ice expecting to rush the the hospital and hope for a reattachment. The moment he placed the tip in the palm of his hand, it disappeared into a pool of water and muddy looking dust. When he looked at the finger he had cut, it was healed.
105 seconds... It wasn't until he cut himself over a drainage grate that Sean was forced to watch the blob grow. It quickly became too big for the drain and expanded until a mass of flesh was pressing up on the bottom of the grate. The metal cut the newly formed flesh as Sean reached down to touch the mass, a smear of blood contacted his undamaged fingertip and the mass splashed down as a puddle of water and drained away like some sick hallucination.
120 seconds... Sean puts a hand out to steady his naked doppelganger and helps him to his feet. 120 seconds? his double asks. Yes Sean thinks and is pleased to see his twin self hears it. So this is why we let a new copy form this time. I remember now. the twin thinks. That and the healing time for a bullet wound. I believe we are done here for tonight. Sean thinks. The twin nods his head and walks to the near drain in the floor before ripping a chunk of flesh up from his palm. Reaching out the damaged palm, the twin grabs Sean's healed hand and splashes to the ground. When security walks in five minutes later, Sean is sweeping the mess of mud into a broom pan and dropping it into his custodial cart's trash can.
"Good evening, sir." Sean tips his hat to the security officer and wheels his equipment out the door. The gun hidden beneath the trash can, Sean packs up his stuff and heads home. Done with his chapter on gunshot wounds, Sean will quit the job the next day.
30 seconds... He watched the lump of material in the bucket begin to bubble and shift as it doubled in size. The process of regrowth was startling to watch every time he saw it. Now at his 56th viewing as evidenced by his running diary of accidents, Sean knew what would happen if he did not intervene in the growing mass of cells formerly belonging to him. The mass would continue to grow until it reached nearly 100 pounds in weight and began reforming into another person.
45 seconds... The hole in his hand had been bubbling like the mass in the bucket and had resealed. When the sensation fully returned to his hand and the tingling like he'd been on a riding lawnmower for three hours with a bad case of the shakes, Sean would write in his hand that a 2 inch hole sealed in 45 seconds as part of his homemade instruction manual. Since he realized there was something strange going on with his body in the way of regeneration of damaged cells, Sean did not want to go into the unknown day after day, so he started tracking the details and delays in healing he experienced. He refused to go about life as if he were indestructible because he knew he was not. He could be broken and destroyed. He could be shot and would bleed like anyone else. He would not go about his life like he could not be killed because he could be. Even if he had technically been dead several times and would be rebuilt, he could not risk what he was watching at that moment.
60 seconds... He began to see the first signs of hair and facial features in the bucket as he tipped the bucket over to avoid it being destroyed when another version of himself was formed from his discarded matter. The timing had gone similar to test 48 where a wayward rock kicked up from a truck on the freeway had ripped through the fleshy section of his hand and left it bubbling on the side of the interstate. Sean had slammed on the break and skid to the side of the road before making his run backwards the quarter mile to avoid leaving a naked version of himself on the road side.
75 seconds... Sean recognized his own eye looking up at him from the blue carpet of the shooting range. Limbs had begun to take shape and Sean threw a towel over the new version of himself to give himself some privacy in case security wandered in and found them there. In a pinch, he would have to claim he and his twin brother had made a bet and would likely just get kicked out after hiding out in the building after closing. Tonight, however, would be like the last few times.
90 seconds... The limbs begin to bubble on the ends and the shape of feet and hands can be seen. If his estimates are correct, he would be standing beside himself in 30 seconds from now. In the past year since his treatments, Sean had found himself face to face with a mirror image only 7 times. His previous injuries sent Sean panicky at first. Cutting off the tip of his finger, he quickly grabbed it to put it on ice expecting to rush the the hospital and hope for a reattachment. The moment he placed the tip in the palm of his hand, it disappeared into a pool of water and muddy looking dust. When he looked at the finger he had cut, it was healed.
105 seconds... It wasn't until he cut himself over a drainage grate that Sean was forced to watch the blob grow. It quickly became too big for the drain and expanded until a mass of flesh was pressing up on the bottom of the grate. The metal cut the newly formed flesh as Sean reached down to touch the mass, a smear of blood contacted his undamaged fingertip and the mass splashed down as a puddle of water and drained away like some sick hallucination.
120 seconds... Sean puts a hand out to steady his naked doppelganger and helps him to his feet. 120 seconds? his double asks. Yes Sean thinks and is pleased to see his twin self hears it. So this is why we let a new copy form this time. I remember now. the twin thinks. That and the healing time for a bullet wound. I believe we are done here for tonight. Sean thinks. The twin nods his head and walks to the near drain in the floor before ripping a chunk of flesh up from his palm. Reaching out the damaged palm, the twin grabs Sean's healed hand and splashes to the ground. When security walks in five minutes later, Sean is sweeping the mess of mud into a broom pan and dropping it into his custodial cart's trash can.
"Good evening, sir." Sean tips his hat to the security officer and wheels his equipment out the door. The gun hidden beneath the trash can, Sean packs up his stuff and heads home. Done with his chapter on gunshot wounds, Sean will quit the job the next day.
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