On the drive to work the dread seeped ever upward in
his gut, oh septic backwash. He steadied himself, or at least attempted to calm
himself, just don’t take it seriously, he affirmed again, and reaffirmed yet
again, and again, it’s not that bad, and it could be worse, and all the other
trivial absurdities that people reassure themselves, when they feel the
paranoia slamming at the iron bars of its cage.
I don’t think it is paranoia. But of course, that’s
what all paranoid people think. They all think it is real. They all think they
are not crazy. Everyone thinks that everyone is after them, even when they’re
not. But then again, sometimes they really are after you.
Logically, he understood that he could be paranoid, as
well as correct. Utterly sane, and bonkers as all bananas. It could all be
real, and 100 percent certified nutzoid.
He parked in his usual parking space and steadied
himself again. Just go in, do your job, ignore the witches, and make everyone
think everything is as usual.
At his desk he stared at his computer screen. Cramped
at this insidious modern cubicle, he could feel their attention upon him, even
as they pretended to do their assigned duties. They were all cheerful with each
other, blatantly loud and gossipy, but as soon as they crossed the opening of
his cubicle they instantly silenced. It was as if they entered a dead space. Or
as if death had just passed by his space, passing too closely.
The Giant Slug woman focused her mind on him,
malevolently. Oh, she had never actually said anything mean to him, had never
even been rude. But in her quiet, passively aggressive way, she was zapping him
with her negative intentions. He could almost feel her casting her spells.
Great gobs of Jabba the Hut mucus aimed his way.
The Mummy Woman on the other side, she was another
story completely. Every morning she would bounce gaily down the line of
cubicles simpering: “Morning!” and “Hey, Good Morning!” and so on until she
came to his cubicle and she would go silent, marching in her Gestapo stride,
until she made it to the next cubicle whence she bubbled over again: “Good Morning!”
Yes, the Mummy Woman took every opportunity to be rude
to him, hissing, to snipe at any of his suggestions, and to hit him with her
soul-draining cold hexes. Just knowing that she was taking up space only twenty
feet away from him was enough to make him feel nauseous.
If nasty people were all he had to deal with, he could
live with it, unpleasant as that could be. That would be no problem. He could
live with rudeness. He had lived with such things before. But, the
coincidences. Yes, the coincidences.
The coincidences were another matter. They popped up
all around him, every day.
If he picked up a book at work and began reading,
anywhere, randomly looking at a page that he flipped to, within one minute of
reading his eyes might fall on the sentence “the corporate intersection of
ideas” and even as his eyes fell on the word intersection, someone close by would say: “Oh look out at the intersection, a cop is stopping someone.”
These and other impossible bizarre coincidences happened on a daily
basis—nothing extravagant—just tiny puzzle pieces snapping together.
His frustrating dilemma was that despite the pieces of
the puzzle coming together, he still could not discern any understandable
picture to the greater whole.
The irritating cell ringtone of the ditz in the
cubicle next door began its flatulent wak-wacca-blat,
wak-wacca-blat. That had to be the
most irritating thing he had ever heard. It blared through a maddening
30-second cycle, if not answered. And she left the cell phone on the top of her
desk when she went to meetings, so for two years now he had listened to that
insidious ditty many, many times a day.
He was only fifteen minutes into his day. Well, look
at the bright side, only about eight hours and forty-five minutes to go; he
could deal with that, couldn’t he? It’s not like he was fading away in a
concentration camp, was it? Yes, you can deal with this, just survive, make it
through.
“Dave?”
He looked up. It was kindly Mr. Torez, the tall, thin
and graying director. Mr. Torez was not his boss, but in the corporation he was
parallel to Dave’s boss.
“Yes, Mr. Torez?” Dave said, feeling no warning vibes
at all.
“Can I have a word with you in my office?”
He assented and followed the kindly older man down
three hallways to sit across from him at the director’s great desk.
“You’re still not quite…assimilating, are you, Dave? I
mean with your team?”
He stared at the director for several moments, unsure
of which can of worms he was about to open, and still thinking it might be
possible to keep all the cans intact. Let those worms be!
He could not talk about the Mummy Woman. Everyone in
the company must know about her. She was nasty to so many people, and she was
so…untalented…at her job, it was
amazing she had racked up nearly twenty-five years in the company. A gooey
twenty-five years of hissing from her darkened cubicle.
And he certainly could not broach the subject of the Giant
Slug woman, or even the Ditz, because they did not seem to offend too many
people (doing all their sly, dirty deeds only when backs were turned). There
was the leprechaun just down the hall, the little guy with white hair who leapt
into the air at odd moments, clicking his heels together, cackling and jiggling
loud change in his pockets.
Or Bloody Mary, he certainly could not talk about her.
Or It, really. Bloody Mary was not really a woman, not even really a person,
but a mechanical contraption that galumphed down the hallways, the handle on
the side of her box cranking even though no human hand would dare touch the
crank, let alone actually wind the key. It galumphed around the building,
cackling, rolling its vacant blue eyes, its artificial red hair waving, its
spindly arms emerging from its box to swing a great ax in circles above its
head. No one ever seemed to comment on this thing, this recent addition to the
menagerie.
“You can talk to me, Dave. Tell me anything.”
Dave smiled at the kindly, gentle-eyed old man. He
wanted to spill his guts, but soon enough everyone would think he was crazy.
No, really, they would know that he was insane.
“What’s on your mind, Dave? Trust me.”
It all opened up, Dave told the older man how it
seemed that everything had happened before, even this, the meeting in this
office, this very meeting, it had happened before, and Dave could remember
complete snatches of it. That déjà vu kept happening, eerily, that Dave felt
like a prophet, at least sometimes, as if everything fell into place moments
after he remembered it in just such a fashion.
How he heard the weird women in the office chanting
together, that he believed they were some sort of coven, all sipping chamomile tea,
delicately discussing where they should plant the next body, and what flower
should grace its mound, oh and how they all hated him—Dave—and that he didn’t
really mind, because he found all of them so distasteful. Their smell, it was
not quite natural, was it? The air of sickness about them. The great slimy
trails the Slug Woman left behind her passage. The hisses from the Mummy Woman’s
dark cubicle. It really seemed as if they all felt instinctive hatred toward
him, the same kind of loathing he felt toward them.
Only, it seemed as if they hated him because he was so
normal. Because he was alive.
After five minutes of this, poor Mr. Torez rubbed
between his eyes with a long, bony finger, slowly shaking his head.
“Do you think I’m crazy?” Dave said.
“I don’t think you’re crazy,” Mr. Torez said. “But be
honest with me, is there anything else that seems to be…prying into your mind?”
“I’m starting to think that time itself is a great big
cycle, like a computer program, and that it has been loaded up several times,
with mostly the same results happening over and over again—like a massive
hologram—with certain people changing, or waking up, I guess you would call it
enlightenment, while mostly everyone else has dropped out of the program, that
they have developed, or evolved as far as they can, and now they are just like
computer-generated people, and that there are fewer and fewer real people in
the program. And what is mostly left are the dark, slimy things, the creatures,
the monsters, all these things around here.”
Wow. He really got that all out in a major rush. It
was just like vomiting. He felt somewhat better for cleaning out his system,
just dumping everything. Poor Mr. Torez. He now looked like he was afraid of
Dave, that it was now all confirmed, he was insane. Dave was bonkers, nuts,
completely off-kilter, a living Looney Tune.
“Aren’t you happy here, Dave? You don’t have a lot of
responsibilities, your workload is never that heavy, you received a raise and a
bonus soon after you were hired. And your starting salary was quite good, you
agree with all of this, don’t you, Dave?” Mr. Torez said, almost pleading.
“Can’t you just be happy. Stop worrying. And stay with the program? Can’t you
just ignore the strange things that seem to go on around here? Can’t you just
pretend that everything is normal? That the Slug Woman is just a slightly batty
old crone, that we are being kind in keeping her on, despite her dementia? And
that the Mummy Woman is just a negative, unkind woman, bitter at the world? And
the Ditz, she’s not so bad, is she? Sure there is all that stuff with the Slug
Woman, but things like that happen all the time in the work place. Can’t you
try to just ignore it all?”
“Well, I try, but these coincidences just keep
happening, and it’s like I’m seeing through the people. I mean, I’m wedged
between three of the worst people I’ve ever known, and yet they are playing it
as if they are nice, friendly people, and yet they are just so plainly…evil.” He could have said foul,
grotesque, hideous, but it really boiled down to the fact he had never known
anyone or anything as evil as these…beings.
Mr. Torez sighed. He buried his face in his hands.
“I’m so sorry, Dave. I just, am, oh, so sorry.”
Great, first Mr. Torez tells him to trust him, and now
that it is all out on the table, yep, now comes firing time!
Dave felt almost relieved, he really didn’t care, he
needed to escape from this nightmare pit. He felt a sudden welling sense of
freedom bursting like firecrackers in his chest. Thank God! I’m free, I’m free
at last! He could get another job. He could move his family away from this
hellish place, I mean come on, whoever heard of a wind-up jack-in-the-box
waving an ax, at work? He just needed to get away, and thankfully, it looked
like that could happen now, he might escape!
“Do you want me to clear my desk?” Dave said,
attempting to be helpful. Might as well get started. He would need to find
another job, and fast.
Mr. Torez removed his hands from his face. He pushed
back in his chair, sighing loudly.
“I wish it were that easy, Dave. But don’t take this
personally. You made it so much further, this time around, and I am betting
that when the next cycle starts, you are going to really go far, I really do
believe that, Dave,” Mr. Torez said, kindly, looking over Dave’s head at
someone entering the room. “If you can retain anything, just remember that
dreams are not important. Imagination is trouble, and will only bring you
grief. Try not to think so much, Dave, just be more accepting, and try and fit
in. You’ll be fine, you’ll see.”
Dave glanced back with a feeling of dread. Here they
came, filing into the room, the Giant Slug Woman, the Mummy Woman, and the
Ditz. And oh, such malevolence, such palpable hatred. Their eyes were fastened
upon him, blood-thirsty leeches. Dave swallowed, and tried to scoot his chair
away from them but they were already surrounding him.
“The next cycle begins in about one hundred years, and
I’m sure we will meet again, Dave,” Mr. Torez said, easily, turning away and
lifting the handset of his telephone.
“Disposal?” the Mummy Woman said, in her bright, false
voice.
“Yes, please,” Mr. Torez said, tossing the two words
over his shoulder as he focused upon his telephone conversation.
As they seized him with their pincer hands, he
struggled, but only briefly. He thought of his children, and only slowly began
to realize that he would see them again. And perhaps he could be a better
father, the next go-round, a much better husband. Maybe all this was his fault,
because really, who cared about hissing Mummy Women and Jabba the Hut slugs
leaving trails in the office corridors? Who cared about the feasting noises
from locked offices? The distant cackles and all the screams, really who cared?
“Do you want to go out for lunch today, it’s payday,”
the Giant Slug woman said to the Ditz, almost as if the three of them were
alone, and that Dave was a nonentity, dragged and crumpled in their midst.
But I’ll remember, next time, he suddenly knew, and he
realized that this is why the three of them hated him so much, because he was
real, and would run again, while they had petered out long, long ago, and were
now just simulacra of the realities they used to be, with only the worst of
them in evidence, with only the remnant evil remaining.
Dave saw a bland version of himself passing the other
way. They bland empty version of himself nodded at the three creatures and continued
on his way, apparently not seeing Dave, Dave the real Dave, the real Dave being
dragged by the foul things, the slimy things, the hideous things. Dave realized
that the simulacra Dave was heading to a meeting. He wondered how many real
people remained and would attend the meeting, and if any of them might sense
that Dave was not Dave, but only a bland version of himself, a blind, dreamless
husk of the real Dave, the Dave heading to Waste Disposal, the Dave who would
not activate again for a hundred years.
I will remember, he tells himself, ignoring the white
pain in his body, and I will dream, and I will imagine, and I will not fit in
with these things. I will never accept them, or be one of them.
Down the hall in the darkened recesses of an empty
conference room, Bloody Mary waited, sprung from her box, her key crank winding
furiously, the ax doing circles above her painted red head, the bugging vacant
eyes blue orbs spinning like clockwork.
“We should plant poppies on its mound,” the Ditz said,
even as it snuggled up to the Slug Woman.
“Poppies are appropriate, for this thing,” the Mummy
Woman hissed. “Wild and dreamy, wild and dreamy, disgustingly bright and full
of light.”
“Sitting here,” the Slug Woman burped. “Sitting here.
Sitting here. Sitting. Here.”
Dave sighed, dragged amidst the things, and he told
himself, over and over again, it’ll be okay, it’s not so bad, everything will
work out in the end, and other common platitudes of the damned.
