Treading the Water Cooler

Something I wrote this afternoon.  These characters are in some other work that I started a while back.  I may post some of that as well.  I'm not overly thrilled with this but its the first swing of the axe in a while, so fuck it im gonna put it out there and move on.  Enjoy.

Treading the Water Cooler

I’d become convinced that my cubicle had the ability to eat souls.  Her appetite wasn’t ravenous, she was a nibbler.  No matter how small her bites, it was becoming increasingly more evident that I had lost my purpose in life.  Dashed dreams of my youth had been eroded away by the tranquil and shallow sea of square pegged conformity.  Here I stood in the footsteps of those I swore I wouldn’t follow, with a million strangers standing next to me on the same path, all of us stepping on each other’s toes looking for the same imaginary thing, our lives.

 I sat looking up at the squared ceiling tiles and wondered for a moment what would happen if I walked out of my cubicle through the office doors, down the stairs, and out on the city street never to return again.  It was this kind of daydreaming that kept me sane, to simply know that it was an option was of great comfort to me and eased the tension.

Arnie poked his head into my cubicle, “Hey boss I’ve got a question.”

I rolled my eyes internally and wondered if he was going to relay a joke or if he had some kind of legitimate problem that would eat up the afternoon.  I did my best to appear pleasant, “What’s going on?”

Arnie walked into my cubicle and let a long steady stream of flatulence leave his body as he started laughing uncontrollably.  He proceeded to leave my cubicle with a trail of his sinister laughter and wretched stench trailing behind him.  I heard a few more laughs from some other coworkers as he returned to his cubicle.

I picked up my coffee cup and headed to the water cooler.   I filled up and sat my cup on an empty desk and headed into the bathroom.  Someone had left the toilet half flushed, their remnants floating in the bowl in a hundred despicable pieces.  They were staring up at me like scattered body parts, I felt like god looking down on the battlefield of Somme after the blood had spilled.  I decided against relieving myself and stepped out onto the main office floor. 

I walked by Arnie’s cubicle and as he looked up at me we shared a laugh, I stopped to chat.  “Hey who was in the bathroom last?  They didn’t flush the fucking toilet.”

“Ahh, yeah that was Warner Von Poops Alot.  He’s a notoriously bad flusher.”

I could sense my anger rising. “You mean Beck?  Jesus, he’s hard enough to get along with as is.  You’d think he’d have the courtesy to flush the fucking toilet properly when he’s done.”  I could sense my anger rising.

Arnie chuckled, “Yeah, personally I think he gets off on it.  I think he likes pissing people off.  You shouldn’t let it get to you.”

I thought about how to not let it piss me off for a few seconds and determined that wasn’t an option.  I was thinking up a retort when Jack the intern walked by Arnie’s cubicle, he was looking down hoping we didn’t notice him. 

Jack was a good kid, he was jovial and kind but his youth did not serve him well in the office.  He was the subject of constant ridicule and scorn for no other reason than it was easy to fuck with him and he didn’t gripe much about it.  Early on he had been nicknamed Grape after the Hanna-Barbera character Grape Ape due to his monkey like facial features.

Arnie called out to him as he passed by, “Grape, get in here!”

Grape rolled his eyes and walked into the cubicle.  “What do you assholes want?”

I pulled Grape by the ear and slapped him lightly on the head, “Aww Grape why ya gotta be such a jerk?”

I let him go and he stood laughing in the cubicle alleyway.  “No seriously, what do you guys want?  I’ve got to get that report finished for Beck by 4.”

Arnie swiveled back and forth in his chair and spoke “Hey I’m having a bbq this weekend.  Sunday, both you guys are invited, bring the families.”

Grape nodded in appreciation, “Sounds good, I’ll be there.  I gotta go though, Beck’s all over my ass for that report.”

As he walked away I tried to think of an excuse not to make it to the BBQ but couldn’t.  I backed of Arnie’s cubicle and muttered “OK man, see you later.”

Arnie was still swiveling, “OK man, stay clear of Beck he’s on the warpath today.”

I walked up the alley of cubicles back to mine and sat down at my desk.  There was less than an hour left before I could go home.  The death camp groan of fingers tapping at keyboards brought about a throbbing in my temples.  I got up from my chair and grabbed my keys.  I walked quickly through the doors, down the stairs and out onto the street.  I lit a cigarette as I entered and started my car.  As I drove away from the office parking lot I felt the throbbing in my temple subside.

As I drove home I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket no less than four times. I ignored t and drove on, steadily making my way through the asshole parade towards home with nothing but the sounds of a washed up singer emanating from my radio.  I could relate to him ten years ago when his songs were poignant and strong, now he was singing just to sing probably because it was all he knew how to do.  Somehow, I didn’t mind listening.

When I got home I let my dog Butler out in the backyard and watched her sprint to the fence and back to me repeatedly.  I walked back inside and grabbed a beer from the fridge.  Returning to the back deck I cracked my beer and sat down with the hopes of lightning the load.

I felt my my phone vibrate against my thigh again.

“Fuck,” I sighed and pulled it out.  There were 5 emails from work.

I sighed again and Butler looked at me with sad eyes. 

I started reading the first email.

Sit Booboo Sit...Good Blog

So i've decided through a few days of relative sobriety and relative domestic peace that I might try my hand at doing some more writing again. Of course, i'm just musing about it and I haven't actually done anything.  However,  I did think that creating a blog might be an interesting way to distribute said hypothetical writing to the three or so people I know who might by chance enjoy reading it.  So here it is, The Fabulous Confessor.  The name doesn't have any real deep meanings, it is however true that when I write fiction I am very much able to purge the things that parade around in my subconscious.  Some of them interesting, most of them not.  Some of them pretty, most of them ugly.  In any case here it is, enjoy. 

I'm adding a short story that I wrote some time ago as a jumping off point.  I hope to produce a new short each week for your reading, we'll see how it goes.

Those grey elementary days

There was always a bold smell to contend with upon traversing those first few steps, entering the threshold of elementary school was more like walking into a dark abyss of anarchy than it was preparing for some future that has yet to come.  The smell was like brushing up against a stucco wall with your bare sweaty shoulder; it wasn't the end of the world but it was unpleasant enough to make you instinctively avoid further encounters.  The smell was most likely derivative of some cleaning agent used to exterminate the spores of sick that all kids seem to carry with them like too much candy in a pocket; but it was most certainly not the kind that a mother would use, no this was the kind of stuff sprayed mindlessly by the likes of a fat middle aged man riddled with moles and pimples. 

Despite all of this we would still make our ways to class, not knowing what the days offering might be.  This particular day would end with me kicking the snot out of a student four years my senior.  He was at the peak of his elementary evolutionary climb, wandering through the school with the hubris and moxie that only a sixth grader could muster.  This sense of pride made him believe that he could, without any discretion, fuck with any other kid he wanted too.  Singling out my older brother would prove to be a bad choice.

My brother and I were new to the school if my memory serves me, and we hadn't exactly ingratiated ourselves.  Perhaps we didn't care for the smell.  I've digressed however, this yarn was supposed to be spun in an all together different direction. 

At recess my fellow classmates were engrossed in a game involving paper airplanes.  It wasn't so much a game, rather idiot kids throwing around paper airplanes in a reckless nonsensical manner.  This idiotic reckless action looked like nothing short of a god-damned ball from afar, and appearing as such I decided to try my luck.  No dice.  I couldn't make an airplane anymore than I could poop a golden turd. 

Feeling left out I decided that my teacher, a woman of formidable charm would be a good source of inspiration in the matter; after all she knew the multiplication table and how to spell.  A paper airplane would surely be within her grasp.  I brought her the biggest piece of construction paper I could find.  I interrupted a conversation she was having with another teacher and persuaded her to construct for me the single greatest paper airplane in the history of mankind. 

She folded and folded and I watched with great anticipation.  I was spellbound, assured that she was going to be my savior and transform me from outcast to playground deity.  What she produced was nothing short of a disgrace.  It was the bulkiest ugliest thing I had ever seen, completely lacking any aerodynamic purpose or aesthetic intuition.

I've never been more disappointed in my life.  Santa Clause isn't real?  My older brother can't save me from dying?  Dreams are only something to get you through the cryptic maze of high school and college?  Fine, not a problem, not after I'd experienced the let down of that shitty paper airplane.  If the Wright brothers had seen this piece of shit they would have puked all over themselves and become god-damned cabinet makers. 

I thanked her kindly, feeling sorrier for her than I did myself and threw the piece of crap in the trash.  I walked up onto a small hill that overlooked the playground and watched the other children throw their fucking planes through air.  What a lot of shit.