Lewie was tired. Working nights as he did, he was used to going home and crashing for several hours. In fact, although his neighbors though that someone lived in his apartment, they rarely had confirmation. The called him the mole, as on the rare occasion that someone saw him during the day, he had wraparound shades on, as well as a visor AND also shielded his eyes with his hands.
He was ready for bed, but apparently 2 days of forced isolation made Gloria a non-stop talker. Or, she always was like that and he was just learning that fact. Either way, his eyes were glazing over as Gloria snarfed down her fourteenth pancake while sorting through their options in great detail. She was one of those folks who believed that they were perfectly capable of eating and talking simultaneously and as oblivious to all evidence to the contrary, sprayed over the tabletop and also over Lewie.
Lewie was taking in every tenth word or so, as he repeatedly brushed all but the stickiest crumbs off his shirt. The stickiest ones he would be saving for later, not that he wanted to. However, he did hear a few things that stuck. He heard something about a safe FULL of cash; a collection of bearer bonds squirreled away: hot (hot of the variety as opposed to the Paris Hilton version) stolen vintage cars. Lots of them. And, something about weapons. Lewie’s eyes were drooping and his head was swimming by the time Gloria got to the weapons.
Eventually, noting that he was coated with crumbs, Gloria realized that he must have dropped off, thus stopping the windshield-wiper-like brushing motion to remove the blueberry pancake spray. Gloria stopped talking. She took a good hard look at Lewie. He was middle-aged, balding, with the world’s worst comb over, coke bottle glasses with the stereotypical band-aid wrapped around the nose piece, and the crumb covered shirt that may have seen the inside of a washer at some point earlier that year. He was most definitely not a looker. In fact, he was more of a definitely-don’t-looker.
Gloria sighed, wondering why her life had taken such a violent turn for the worse. One minute, she was the princess of the family, working for the family and living the sweet life, and, practically the next, she is holed up with this loser who the queer eye folks would love to get their hands on, trying to figure out what to do and how to live. She plotted quietly for a while, and then gently woke Lewie.
They went back to Lewie’s place and Gloria insisted that at least a little maintenance/disinfecting be done before she would sleep there, and before she would let Lewie sleep, either. Once she cleared a spot and threw a load of stuff from the floor into the washer, detergent-less, but at least in hot water, she settled in on the couch. And she began to dream. Though it did not seem like a dream.
She was in her family home, and everyone was there eating dinner, except for her. She was hovering over the table, but was not physically present. Her absence was noted by the empty plate at her chair.
She could hear her mother ask her brothers “Where did you say Gloria was again?”
One answered “Texas” just as the other said “Paris”. They concurred on “Paris, Texas” as their combined answer.
Their mom was puzzled. Why would Gloria go to Paris, Texas, especially without telling her and why hadn’t she taken anything with her. Her cleverest brother, Damien, said that she had called him and told him that she had the perfect opportunity to pull off a huge con and that she could not let the mark out of her site and that she would check in later. He said that was two days ago and he did not dare call her, as he didn’t want to blow her cover, whatever that may be.
Mom still looked puzzled, but accepted the story, at least for now. Dad was oblivious who was present and who was not, as he was snuggled up with his friend Jonnie Walker, and had been for the past three hours, after getting home from a hard day’s work.
Gloria woke up with many ideas ranging through her head. The hardest part would be to pick just one, or formulate one grand plan that covers the bases of revenge, retribution and survival.
The very first step was to get some money. Enough to upgrade Lewie and his surroundings—or at least clean them up. And to get out of that damned mumu and buy some heavily scented bath products in order to finally rinse away the smell of formaldehyde. Gloria decided that would pay a visit to her homestead that very day.
She knew the family was out, “working” and the house, while well alarmed in various ways, was vacant for a few hours. She woke Lewie up and outlined her plan to score some heavy cash from her back stabbing brothers. They would go to the house, pretend to be delivering religious tracts and she would go in and liberate some cash. However, she could not be greedy, and she could not leave any trace of her visit, as she did not want to spook her brothers. Not yet. She needed them to think that she was dead and thus not a threat and that there was no reason to change passwords/alarm codes, etc. That would puzzle their mother and screw up her grand plans to eventually liquidate the family’s cash and have her brothers arrested sent to the big house, where they belonged.
Lewie was going to be a very important player in the grand plan still formulating in her mind, as he already was a low-level con, and he was unknown to her brothers. They would take one look at that comb over and see him for a great mark, and with her instruction and manipulation on conning the cons, he would get to enjoy the good life and she was going to make sure that it happened.
Copyright 2008 Antigone Lett. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Monday, April 14, 2008
Jackknife
This is non-fiction and really happened to me on my way to work one day.
I will never know if I saw or heard it first. It is dawn; the rain has stopped—at least for now. Route 520 westbound curves to the right as it descends a hill and sprouts exit ramps to I-405. Traffic backs up here, often stops entirely. Every single day.
He is moving too fast as he flies around the curve into the downhill grade and the red sea of brake lights ahead. So am I, but correction is easier in my two-ton Rav4 than in his eighteen-wheeled rig that weighs forty tons fully loaded. The driver reacts, his hands on the wheel and feet on the brakes, and then his problems begin. Even if he knows how it will end, it is still the better option. Better than plowing into the cars ahead.
Apparently, when hauling a load, or even an empty trailer, the light cab is easier to control—much less to stop—than the much heavier trailer lagging behind. The cab responds to the driver’s attempts, which involve steering toward the curbside barrier and braking, but the trailer is still moving at the previous speed and comes up next to the cab on the left side, spinning the cab to a ninety degree angle. I can see that the tractor-trailer has begun a dance that can only wind up with its spine broken and battered against an immovable object or objects.
He is in the left lane, now careening toward the concrete barrier with no control. I am in the right lane. There is one empty lane between us. My knuckles turn white against the black steering wheel and my right foot leaps to the brake pedal. Drivers behind us gawk at the events unfolding and slow accordingly. They must, as no one appears to fill the vacuum that is now the middle lane. This is a busy roadway at morning rush hour, in a place where people are not known for responsible or even attentive driving. I am glad that people are paying attention.
The eighteen-wheeler slams into the guard rail on the left side of the road. The cab is next to me across the empty lane as the laws of motion exert themselves to try to divorce cab from trailer. The cab faces me, but the trailer ricochets along the barrier, striking it repeatedly. It is coming my way sooner than later. The truck’s driver is now just riding it out. The trailer will not be stopped before it has completed its mission.
The truck skids along the barrier on the left for about thirty feet, then changes course and follows the lead of the cab’s wheels, heading in my direction. I am stopped dead in the road, waiting. The tractor-trailer lurches by just thirty feet in front of me. I choke out a sigh of relief as the truck smashes into the barrier on my side of the road, leaving me and my car unscathed. And then it stops, twisted and broken, but upright, entirely blocking two lanes of traffic. This will make thousands of people late for work today.
Still in my car, mesmerized, I realize that have not been conscious of any sounds during the wreck. Maybe there aren’t any, maybe my car is soundproof, or, maybe my podcast is drowning it out. I probably am hearing sounds, but the sensory overload has shut down my hearing and focused my vision, since I am watching the wreck unfold, or fold as it were, in slow motion. I will never know.
With more trepidation than I have ever felt, and with my whole body shaking from the drama, I unclench my trembling hands from the wheel. It takes a significant, conscious effort to force myself out of my car to check on the driver. The cab, and thus the driver’s seat, is high above the barriers, so I know that he is not likely to be actually squished, but there were several impacts at high speeds and I have no idea what to expect. Is he wearing a seat belt? Does he have airbags? If he isn’t wearing a seatbelt, he could have been thrown around in there.
I panic. My heart is pounding and my breathing is ragged. In my mind I see the worst case scenario and it is one that I hope to never see. Much less to be the first responder to. Yet I race to the truck on my treasonous legs, not sure they are up for the task, only to realize that I left my cell phone in the car. I sprint back for my phone. By then others are stopped and I ask the guy behind me to call 9-1-1. Virtually all westbound traffic is stopped, as forward movement is now blocked in two lanes.
I run back to the wreck on ever-weakening legs. Even at the base of the cab, I have no answers on the driver’s status. I can only see that the headlights are still on and that the wipers continue their squeaky passage back and forth. I swallow my fear and clamber up the side of the cab. When I get to the top step, I can finally look into the cab and see the driver. He waves me off with a thumbs-up, never missing a beat on his cell phone, nor interrupting his conversation to speak. With great relief, I vault back down to the highway.
My legs still feel like Jell-O. I tell the other folks who are stopped that he is okay. I return to my car, hoping like hell that the call he is on is one that he made after the rig came to rest, and not one that he has carried on throughout the journey to the jackknife. I guess I’ll never know that either. But I’m going with the former.
Copyright 2008 Antigone Lett. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
I will never know if I saw or heard it first. It is dawn; the rain has stopped—at least for now. Route 520 westbound curves to the right as it descends a hill and sprouts exit ramps to I-405. Traffic backs up here, often stops entirely. Every single day.
He is moving too fast as he flies around the curve into the downhill grade and the red sea of brake lights ahead. So am I, but correction is easier in my two-ton Rav4 than in his eighteen-wheeled rig that weighs forty tons fully loaded. The driver reacts, his hands on the wheel and feet on the brakes, and then his problems begin. Even if he knows how it will end, it is still the better option. Better than plowing into the cars ahead.
Apparently, when hauling a load, or even an empty trailer, the light cab is easier to control—much less to stop—than the much heavier trailer lagging behind. The cab responds to the driver’s attempts, which involve steering toward the curbside barrier and braking, but the trailer is still moving at the previous speed and comes up next to the cab on the left side, spinning the cab to a ninety degree angle. I can see that the tractor-trailer has begun a dance that can only wind up with its spine broken and battered against an immovable object or objects.
He is in the left lane, now careening toward the concrete barrier with no control. I am in the right lane. There is one empty lane between us. My knuckles turn white against the black steering wheel and my right foot leaps to the brake pedal. Drivers behind us gawk at the events unfolding and slow accordingly. They must, as no one appears to fill the vacuum that is now the middle lane. This is a busy roadway at morning rush hour, in a place where people are not known for responsible or even attentive driving. I am glad that people are paying attention.
The eighteen-wheeler slams into the guard rail on the left side of the road. The cab is next to me across the empty lane as the laws of motion exert themselves to try to divorce cab from trailer. The cab faces me, but the trailer ricochets along the barrier, striking it repeatedly. It is coming my way sooner than later. The truck’s driver is now just riding it out. The trailer will not be stopped before it has completed its mission.
The truck skids along the barrier on the left for about thirty feet, then changes course and follows the lead of the cab’s wheels, heading in my direction. I am stopped dead in the road, waiting. The tractor-trailer lurches by just thirty feet in front of me. I choke out a sigh of relief as the truck smashes into the barrier on my side of the road, leaving me and my car unscathed. And then it stops, twisted and broken, but upright, entirely blocking two lanes of traffic. This will make thousands of people late for work today.
Still in my car, mesmerized, I realize that have not been conscious of any sounds during the wreck. Maybe there aren’t any, maybe my car is soundproof, or, maybe my podcast is drowning it out. I probably am hearing sounds, but the sensory overload has shut down my hearing and focused my vision, since I am watching the wreck unfold, or fold as it were, in slow motion. I will never know.
With more trepidation than I have ever felt, and with my whole body shaking from the drama, I unclench my trembling hands from the wheel. It takes a significant, conscious effort to force myself out of my car to check on the driver. The cab, and thus the driver’s seat, is high above the barriers, so I know that he is not likely to be actually squished, but there were several impacts at high speeds and I have no idea what to expect. Is he wearing a seat belt? Does he have airbags? If he isn’t wearing a seatbelt, he could have been thrown around in there.
I panic. My heart is pounding and my breathing is ragged. In my mind I see the worst case scenario and it is one that I hope to never see. Much less to be the first responder to. Yet I race to the truck on my treasonous legs, not sure they are up for the task, only to realize that I left my cell phone in the car. I sprint back for my phone. By then others are stopped and I ask the guy behind me to call 9-1-1. Virtually all westbound traffic is stopped, as forward movement is now blocked in two lanes.
I run back to the wreck on ever-weakening legs. Even at the base of the cab, I have no answers on the driver’s status. I can only see that the headlights are still on and that the wipers continue their squeaky passage back and forth. I swallow my fear and clamber up the side of the cab. When I get to the top step, I can finally look into the cab and see the driver. He waves me off with a thumbs-up, never missing a beat on his cell phone, nor interrupting his conversation to speak. With great relief, I vault back down to the highway.
My legs still feel like Jell-O. I tell the other folks who are stopped that he is okay. I return to my car, hoping like hell that the call he is on is one that he made after the rig came to rest, and not one that he has carried on throughout the journey to the jackknife. I guess I’ll never know that either. But I’m going with the former.
Copyright 2008 Antigone Lett. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Lewie Part II
Lewie’s jaw hit the ground. He couldn’t believe that anyone would intentionally place someone else in a coffin, claim they were Jewish so they wouldn’t be embalmed (risking notice of the warmth of her blood) and would be in the ground within twenty-four hours, to be dead soon after. He was floored by the cowardice of the act- they didn’t have the nerve to actually kill her, to get blood on their hands, but would let her die a slow and miserable death, gasping for the last molecule of oxygen in the wooden box beneath six feet of dirt. He could not believe that anyone could possibly be worthy of such a miserable death and fell immediately in love with poor little Gloria. It was a very brief love affair.
He realized that he was staring at Gloria. And that Gloria was buried in just a shroud. She stood directly in front of him, buck naked, hyperventilating into the shroud.
His love affair with Gloria came to a crashing halt when Gloria saw him staring and looked down at herself. Then she hid behind a coffin in self-defense. However, it was the virtual slap to the face that she needed to help both lungs and brain return to normal function.
“Stop looking at me! I was unconscious! I did not get to choose my funeral attire. At least I have this lovely shroud. I’m surprised that the miserable bastards paid for such extravagance. Maybe the Rabbi threw it in as part of the $99 funeral package deal that they probably got at Costco.”
Gloria announced to Lewie that they had two problems: one—she needed clothes immediately; and two—she needed food Sooner than immediately. She had not eaten in the past two days, what with the chaos of ‘dying’ and all. Being a man, Lewie had a solution to both problems. They would order a pizza to be delivered to the funeral home and while waiting for it, would unseal old lady MacComber, again, to get her clothes for Gloria.
“Don’t you think it might seem funny to have pizza delivered to a closed funeral parlor at midnight?” Said Gloria.
Lewie had not thought about that. Pizza was definitely out, as he had no cash and paying for a pizza, if they could find one at that hour, with a credit card while in the process of stealing from the dead struck him as a bad idea.
Gloria said “Hurry up, get the clothes and stop looking at me.”
Lewie dutifully pried open the coffin nearest him for the last time. He was not taking the care that he usually took in his work. He was rattled. This evening began as countless others and then it took a turn south into territory he had never even considered.
After several minutes of wrestling with the unrelenting occupant, he threw her dress over to Gloria. He looked for shoes, but as the coffins are only open from the waist up, apparently, folks don’t need shoes to complete their ensemble and Gloria would have to go without.
She screeched upon the dress's impact. He was not sure if it was because it scared her, it smelled like formaldehyde, or because it was covered in giant hideous flowers and eight sizes too large. Maybe it was all three. Great, now they had another problem. They had solved the clothing issue just to make her look like a clown. There wasn’t time to shop through the rest of the caskets and it was taking all that Lewie had to concentrate on closing the casket of the newly disrobed Mrs. MacComber. He had to seal that one back up and do it well, and then remove all traces of their convergence in the funeral parlor that night. The last thing he needed was to have someone notice something and start opening coffins.
When he had gathered everything up, including Gloria and her yards of foul-smelling, magenta fabric, they went to the door. Then he went back through the place, wiping off fingerprints, picking up slivers of wood from their combined efforts and making sure that everything looked exactly as it did when he climbed through the basement window. He took one last look around (it’s much easier to use the door from the inside) and was startled to see the Gloria’s shroud draped over her coffin. He grabbed it, took another, longer look and then decided that were good to go.
They stepped out into the dawn light. Gloria was happy to breathe fresh air, as the formaldehyde was starting to take its toll on her brain cells. Lewie was excited that the long night was finally over and he could be free of her. However, she followed him to his car.
"
Where do you think you’re going?” Lewie asked.
“With you- to get some food, but first something better to wear. Let’s go to your place, you must have sweats that I can wear that would look and smell better than this mumu.” She replied.
Lewie was conflicted, he hadn’t left the house thinking that his entire life would change in the time he was away, but that seemed to be what had happened. Gloria pointed out that she had nothing and no one and he was her savior. She even threw out that saying ‘if you save someone’s life, you’re responsible for them for the rest of their lives’. Lewie was starting to get scared. Luckily, Gloria’s take-no-prisoners personality guided them.
“First to your place to get some decent clothes and burn this thing, and to get something to wear on my feet. Then food. Lots of it. We can get to know each other over dinner. Or breakfast, whatever meal you’d call it at this hour.” Said Gloria.
Lewie obediently did as he was told. He even opened the car door for the magenta mumu, though his mind was spinning out of control.
He took her to his house, or rather his hole, and she was not impressed. Or, she was impressed, but not in a good way. It was obvious by the way she held her nose and tiptoed through the place, trying desperately not to touch anything. After perusing his closet—most of which was arrayed on the floor in various states of clean—she decided that the magenta mumu wasn’t so bad after all, but she did grab a pair of cleanish-looking tube socks and some not remotely clean-looking sneakers to complete her ensemble.
Her wardrobe complete and fast losing her two-days without-food appetite, they headed out for breakfast. Lewie told her that he only had $20 and that would have to cover them for breakfast, as the fence that he used for his good didn’t open until 10AM. Even then, he didn’t have more than $150 worth of merchandise. Most folks aren’t buried with their high-ticket electronics, you know. He had very little cash, with not much more in sight. He could usually scrape by, but it would be tough for two of them to scrape by especially if one of them was used to eating regularly.
Luckily, Gloria was a resourceful woman and an expert con; she was not worried about money, only about breakfast and replacing the mumu. She was confident that they would easily survive, and would eat three times a day. Maybe even four. She decided that she was the best thing that had ever happened to Lewie. She just had to make him see that.
Copyright 2008 Antigone Lett. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
He realized that he was staring at Gloria. And that Gloria was buried in just a shroud. She stood directly in front of him, buck naked, hyperventilating into the shroud.
His love affair with Gloria came to a crashing halt when Gloria saw him staring and looked down at herself. Then she hid behind a coffin in self-defense. However, it was the virtual slap to the face that she needed to help both lungs and brain return to normal function.
“Stop looking at me! I was unconscious! I did not get to choose my funeral attire. At least I have this lovely shroud. I’m surprised that the miserable bastards paid for such extravagance. Maybe the Rabbi threw it in as part of the $99 funeral package deal that they probably got at Costco.”
Gloria announced to Lewie that they had two problems: one—she needed clothes immediately; and two—she needed food Sooner than immediately. She had not eaten in the past two days, what with the chaos of ‘dying’ and all. Being a man, Lewie had a solution to both problems. They would order a pizza to be delivered to the funeral home and while waiting for it, would unseal old lady MacComber, again, to get her clothes for Gloria.
“Don’t you think it might seem funny to have pizza delivered to a closed funeral parlor at midnight?” Said Gloria.
Lewie had not thought about that. Pizza was definitely out, as he had no cash and paying for a pizza, if they could find one at that hour, with a credit card while in the process of stealing from the dead struck him as a bad idea.
Gloria said “Hurry up, get the clothes and stop looking at me.”
Lewie dutifully pried open the coffin nearest him for the last time. He was not taking the care that he usually took in his work. He was rattled. This evening began as countless others and then it took a turn south into territory he had never even considered.
After several minutes of wrestling with the unrelenting occupant, he threw her dress over to Gloria. He looked for shoes, but as the coffins are only open from the waist up, apparently, folks don’t need shoes to complete their ensemble and Gloria would have to go without.
She screeched upon the dress's impact. He was not sure if it was because it scared her, it smelled like formaldehyde, or because it was covered in giant hideous flowers and eight sizes too large. Maybe it was all three. Great, now they had another problem. They had solved the clothing issue just to make her look like a clown. There wasn’t time to shop through the rest of the caskets and it was taking all that Lewie had to concentrate on closing the casket of the newly disrobed Mrs. MacComber. He had to seal that one back up and do it well, and then remove all traces of their convergence in the funeral parlor that night. The last thing he needed was to have someone notice something and start opening coffins.
When he had gathered everything up, including Gloria and her yards of foul-smelling, magenta fabric, they went to the door. Then he went back through the place, wiping off fingerprints, picking up slivers of wood from their combined efforts and making sure that everything looked exactly as it did when he climbed through the basement window. He took one last look around (it’s much easier to use the door from the inside) and was startled to see the Gloria’s shroud draped over her coffin. He grabbed it, took another, longer look and then decided that were good to go.
They stepped out into the dawn light. Gloria was happy to breathe fresh air, as the formaldehyde was starting to take its toll on her brain cells. Lewie was excited that the long night was finally over and he could be free of her. However, she followed him to his car.
"
Where do you think you’re going?” Lewie asked.
“With you- to get some food, but first something better to wear. Let’s go to your place, you must have sweats that I can wear that would look and smell better than this mumu.” She replied.
Lewie was conflicted, he hadn’t left the house thinking that his entire life would change in the time he was away, but that seemed to be what had happened. Gloria pointed out that she had nothing and no one and he was her savior. She even threw out that saying ‘if you save someone’s life, you’re responsible for them for the rest of their lives’. Lewie was starting to get scared. Luckily, Gloria’s take-no-prisoners personality guided them.
“First to your place to get some decent clothes and burn this thing, and to get something to wear on my feet. Then food. Lots of it. We can get to know each other over dinner. Or breakfast, whatever meal you’d call it at this hour.” Said Gloria.
Lewie obediently did as he was told. He even opened the car door for the magenta mumu, though his mind was spinning out of control.
He took her to his house, or rather his hole, and she was not impressed. Or, she was impressed, but not in a good way. It was obvious by the way she held her nose and tiptoed through the place, trying desperately not to touch anything. After perusing his closet—most of which was arrayed on the floor in various states of clean—she decided that the magenta mumu wasn’t so bad after all, but she did grab a pair of cleanish-looking tube socks and some not remotely clean-looking sneakers to complete her ensemble.
Her wardrobe complete and fast losing her two-days without-food appetite, they headed out for breakfast. Lewie told her that he only had $20 and that would have to cover them for breakfast, as the fence that he used for his good didn’t open until 10AM. Even then, he didn’t have more than $150 worth of merchandise. Most folks aren’t buried with their high-ticket electronics, you know. He had very little cash, with not much more in sight. He could usually scrape by, but it would be tough for two of them to scrape by especially if one of them was used to eating regularly.
Luckily, Gloria was a resourceful woman and an expert con; she was not worried about money, only about breakfast and replacing the mumu. She was confident that they would easily survive, and would eat three times a day. Maybe even four. She decided that she was the best thing that had ever happened to Lewie. She just had to make him see that.
Copyright 2008 Antigone Lett. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
The Stalker, Part 5
Deader immediately manifested in the only place she knew where to find answers. Well, second to her friendly neighborhood watering hole, where she has an extra large chair engraved, in blood, of course, in her name and a cold beer always in front of it, despite the fact that she’s there once a week at best.
Trailing behind her as she appeared in the Library of Death (located underneath what mortals know as the Library of Congress in Washington, DC), were Death and a host of Deader’s minions. All were confused initially, as none had ever been in this place before. Indeed, they had only heard whispers of the existence of such a place and even then dismissed it as being improbable. And way too expensive, as the netherworld had seen escalating costs in recent years and were cutting back everywhere. So even if they believed that such a place once existed, they assumed that its contents, both physical and metaphysical, had long ago been sold off to the lowest bidder and or taken up residence in the homes/chalets/palaces of those who make the netherworld go down. Not that they wanted to know too much about those folks. But that was what they figured would happen IF the library of Death had ever actually existed.
But it does and here they are. The only sound in the chamber was the sound of running water. On closer inspection, it wasn’t water. The floors were rivers of liquid gold flowing beneath their feet. As they were dead and didn’t have physical bodies, this wasn’t a problem for them. But it was difficult to tear their eyes away from the molten gold passing beneath them to look around. They were in the narrow galley with two opposing walls, as you might expect from a portrait gallery, and the walls went on for as far as they could see in both directions. The walls were lined with incredible tapestries, with yet more liquid gold running from floor to ceiling. And vice versa. And across the ceiling. The subterranean room was lit entirely by the flowing gold, though Death couldn’t begin to explain the physics of this phenomenon.
Death was awed. Never had he seen such splendor. Even when retrieving from the Palace of Versailles—those out of shape tourists who are sure they can climb all the stairs—he had not seen such breathtaking beauty. He would probably be considered a cynic by you and I, considering what he does for a (non) living, and his jaw hit the floor as he absorbed what was around him. Eventually, Death was able to focus on the portraits snuggled in amongst the gilt.
The enormous portraits of Deadom’s greats wedged about the walls made it evident that this chamber was the Portrait Gallery of the Dead. Who knew there was such a thing? Deader was swearing loudly about finding a map so she could get to the Library itself, oblivious to the marvels of the chamber.
While Deader was trying to find a way out, Death was looking closely at the portrait nearest him. It appeared to be an oil painting of Benjamin Franklin. But he was, well, clearly dead in the painting. And a very old man. A very dead, and, a very old man.
The artistry made it clear that the subjects were dead when the portrait was done—that would take a lot of pressure off the artist—no hurry as long as they didn’t actually paint the wriggling maggots. In many cases, they also made it clear how they died, he concluded after studying a few.
Death had no idea who the victims in many of the portraits were, however, each bore a plaque listing their name, and the date they entered the state of Death, though the dates didn’t all make sense to him, they weren’t even always numbers. On the wall nearest him, next to Ben, was “Lucy”. The rest of the tag was gibberish, but he recognized her from schoolbooks as the Australopithecus afarensis bones found in the 70s in Ethiopia. She looked like a bit more apelike than he’d ever realized. Yikes. He couldn’t tell how she died. She had a lot of fur that could cover a lot of wounds. He looked closer….an arrowhead was lying beside her. Hmmmm.
There was Anne Boleyn, and while her head was (mostly) attached in her portrait, the artist included a gash across her neck along with a few drops of blood. Lest anyone question how she died. Ohh, a portrait of Julius Caesar. The artist made sure you could see the hilt of the knife sticking out over his shoulder. Nice touch.
Joan of Arc’s portrait was stunning. She was beautiful and young and also charred all around the edges, with some, but not all, melted hair around her head. Death had never seen a portrait quite like it (despite perusing portraits of the dead for several minutes). Her eyes were open and she looked angry.
There was Benito Mussolini. His artist had painted bullet wounds all over his chest and added rope burns to his ankles for effect.
Holy crap, was that Ted Bundy? The plaque said it was. He looked like he had been singed all over. I guess the electric chair would do that to you. There’s John Denver. With a piece of the plane sticking out of his chest. Sonny Bono, with a tree branch stuck to his head. Alexander Hamilton—minus Aaron Burr’s bullet, but with the trace of the bullet wound evident.
And then that one—she looked familiar, but he couldn’t place her. The name, Jane Doe didn’t help either. She was bruised all over, and the date was 1595, which made it unlikely that he and she was compadres, as he entered the realm only ten short years ago, in 1996. But he had definitely seen that face before.
William Wallace, that Scots Braveheart guy from the movie. He did not look good, as he was covered in bruises. He also had a scar running the length of his neck and he had several seams noted along his body, apparently identifying his quarters. That’s when men were men, that’s for sure. Even Death, who killed people for a living, was disturbed by the brutality alluded to in the Portrait Gallery of the Dead.
He was still making his way down the hallway. Which had a horizon line—he could not see the end of the hallway, nor of the room. As far as he could tell, the Portrait Gallery went on forever. He has many questions about this place, but his reverie was interrupted by Deader.
“Let’s go. I found the way to the Library.” She said.
Death followed her, and the rest of the minions gathered together and they all floated across the floor to the door in the floor that led somewhere else. One by one they descended through the floor into the halls below.
Deader was getting cranky, it had now been several hours since she had her last beer and she still had no answers as to why April was immune to her “charms.” This was NOT how she planned to spend her week and in her tizzy, she hadn’t noticed anything about the Portrait Gallery, the liquid gold, the eerie and disturbing portraits themselves. She was on a mission, and, as Deader was not used to losing, she wasn’t about to start now.
Copyright 2008 Antigone Lett. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Trailing behind her as she appeared in the Library of Death (located underneath what mortals know as the Library of Congress in Washington, DC), were Death and a host of Deader’s minions. All were confused initially, as none had ever been in this place before. Indeed, they had only heard whispers of the existence of such a place and even then dismissed it as being improbable. And way too expensive, as the netherworld had seen escalating costs in recent years and were cutting back everywhere. So even if they believed that such a place once existed, they assumed that its contents, both physical and metaphysical, had long ago been sold off to the lowest bidder and or taken up residence in the homes/chalets/palaces of those who make the netherworld go down. Not that they wanted to know too much about those folks. But that was what they figured would happen IF the library of Death had ever actually existed.
But it does and here they are. The only sound in the chamber was the sound of running water. On closer inspection, it wasn’t water. The floors were rivers of liquid gold flowing beneath their feet. As they were dead and didn’t have physical bodies, this wasn’t a problem for them. But it was difficult to tear their eyes away from the molten gold passing beneath them to look around. They were in the narrow galley with two opposing walls, as you might expect from a portrait gallery, and the walls went on for as far as they could see in both directions. The walls were lined with incredible tapestries, with yet more liquid gold running from floor to ceiling. And vice versa. And across the ceiling. The subterranean room was lit entirely by the flowing gold, though Death couldn’t begin to explain the physics of this phenomenon.
Death was awed. Never had he seen such splendor. Even when retrieving from the Palace of Versailles—those out of shape tourists who are sure they can climb all the stairs—he had not seen such breathtaking beauty. He would probably be considered a cynic by you and I, considering what he does for a (non) living, and his jaw hit the floor as he absorbed what was around him. Eventually, Death was able to focus on the portraits snuggled in amongst the gilt.
The enormous portraits of Deadom’s greats wedged about the walls made it evident that this chamber was the Portrait Gallery of the Dead. Who knew there was such a thing? Deader was swearing loudly about finding a map so she could get to the Library itself, oblivious to the marvels of the chamber.
While Deader was trying to find a way out, Death was looking closely at the portrait nearest him. It appeared to be an oil painting of Benjamin Franklin. But he was, well, clearly dead in the painting. And a very old man. A very dead, and, a very old man.
The artistry made it clear that the subjects were dead when the portrait was done—that would take a lot of pressure off the artist—no hurry as long as they didn’t actually paint the wriggling maggots. In many cases, they also made it clear how they died, he concluded after studying a few.
Death had no idea who the victims in many of the portraits were, however, each bore a plaque listing their name, and the date they entered the state of Death, though the dates didn’t all make sense to him, they weren’t even always numbers. On the wall nearest him, next to Ben, was “Lucy”. The rest of the tag was gibberish, but he recognized her from schoolbooks as the Australopithecus afarensis bones found in the 70s in Ethiopia. She looked like a bit more apelike than he’d ever realized. Yikes. He couldn’t tell how she died. She had a lot of fur that could cover a lot of wounds. He looked closer….an arrowhead was lying beside her. Hmmmm.
There was Anne Boleyn, and while her head was (mostly) attached in her portrait, the artist included a gash across her neck along with a few drops of blood. Lest anyone question how she died. Ohh, a portrait of Julius Caesar. The artist made sure you could see the hilt of the knife sticking out over his shoulder. Nice touch.
Joan of Arc’s portrait was stunning. She was beautiful and young and also charred all around the edges, with some, but not all, melted hair around her head. Death had never seen a portrait quite like it (despite perusing portraits of the dead for several minutes). Her eyes were open and she looked angry.
There was Benito Mussolini. His artist had painted bullet wounds all over his chest and added rope burns to his ankles for effect.
Holy crap, was that Ted Bundy? The plaque said it was. He looked like he had been singed all over. I guess the electric chair would do that to you. There’s John Denver. With a piece of the plane sticking out of his chest. Sonny Bono, with a tree branch stuck to his head. Alexander Hamilton—minus Aaron Burr’s bullet, but with the trace of the bullet wound evident.
And then that one—she looked familiar, but he couldn’t place her. The name, Jane Doe didn’t help either. She was bruised all over, and the date was 1595, which made it unlikely that he and she was compadres, as he entered the realm only ten short years ago, in 1996. But he had definitely seen that face before.
William Wallace, that Scots Braveheart guy from the movie. He did not look good, as he was covered in bruises. He also had a scar running the length of his neck and he had several seams noted along his body, apparently identifying his quarters. That’s when men were men, that’s for sure. Even Death, who killed people for a living, was disturbed by the brutality alluded to in the Portrait Gallery of the Dead.
He was still making his way down the hallway. Which had a horizon line—he could not see the end of the hallway, nor of the room. As far as he could tell, the Portrait Gallery went on forever. He has many questions about this place, but his reverie was interrupted by Deader.
“Let’s go. I found the way to the Library.” She said.
Death followed her, and the rest of the minions gathered together and they all floated across the floor to the door in the floor that led somewhere else. One by one they descended through the floor into the halls below.
Deader was getting cranky, it had now been several hours since she had her last beer and she still had no answers as to why April was immune to her “charms.” This was NOT how she planned to spend her week and in her tizzy, she hadn’t noticed anything about the Portrait Gallery, the liquid gold, the eerie and disturbing portraits themselves. She was on a mission, and, as Deader was not used to losing, she wasn’t about to start now.
Copyright 2008 Antigone Lett. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
The 'Holiday" Party
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Let me preface this by saying that this is a departure from my usual Epic. All epics to date have been fiction- something made up from the depths of my twisted mind. This epic, despite being funny, is NON-FICTION. Nothing in this epic is spun form thin air, or even exaggerated. I want to make that very, very clear. The only thing that is not 100% true is the actual timing of the events…I did not track how long each segment lasted, so those times are approximations only. Everything else really happened as I described it.
It was my first year with the company so I did not know what to expect. There were some warning signs, signs that I blithely ignored. I ignored all of the warnings until it was too late. Much too late. I really have to learn to listen to my intuition. And my co-workers.
The first e-mail said the ‘Holiday’ party would be held in mid-January. DING! DING! DING!!! What??? Maybe they picked that date so that they could get the Christmas favors on sale at 75% off? It seems likely, knowing this firm. Maybe the January dates were half-price? That was the first clue to which I should have paid more attention. I should have surveyed my friends to see if they had ever had their company Christmas parties in January. If none of them said yes, I should have RSVP’d NO. I should have heeded the alarm bells. However, it was a free dinner, with two free drinks per person and it was just ten minutes from home. We really did not have anything better to do. At least that’s what we thought. We were wrong.
The second e-mail gave us five pages of complicated instructions for the casino games. Seriously? Holy crap, how hard is it to play name that tune? Or trivia? And are they kidding….are you smarter than a fifth grader. They need five pages of instructions for these games. I am not sure that the folks putting it all together ARE smarter than a fifth grader. That was another warning that I ignored at my peril. DING! DING! DING!
A few weeks ago, I heard that my co-worker, a member on the organizing committee was going cube to cube trying to get people to sign up for the party. Apparently, there was not a crush of folks signing up for the January ‘Holiday’ party (it was close to Martin Luther King’s birthday, they could have changed the theme). I was hoping that the strong-arm tactic was working, because I did not want to be the only one at the party. By the week of the party, I heard that a full one-third of my fellow employees could fit our annual holiday event into their January schedules. DING! DING! DING!!! As far as my ever-dwindling department went, seven out of ten of us were planning to attend. Of course, of those seven, one left the company the Friday before and one was headed to the middle east on a temporary assignment on Monday, so that makes it five of eight folks, so way more than half. One boss would be there, one had found something better to do. But at least I would know people there.
A veteran co-worker (meaning a veteran of previous “Holiday parties”) told me that the grand prize in the employee raffle (must be present to win) was two airline tickets to Europe. Have you priced European travel lately? That would be worth winning, of that there is no doubt. I decided that I would be very lucky that night and win the tickets.
Upon arrival at the fancy hotel ballroom, I realized they did not choose this date for the sale-priced festive decorations, as there are no decorations at all. But, we did get our two drink tickets per person—pooled together, those tickets saved at least one of our lives and possibly a marriage. Luckily, the company sprung for as much water and juice as we could drink, on top of the two beers/alcoholic drinks each. That was nice of them. Ever the faithful spouse, I promptly hand my tickets over.
I sought out my coworkers and we grabbed a spot at a table. The buffet dinner was on, so we dug in. The food was good and though we did not have the gift of foresight to know that this was definitely the highlight of the evening. One ticket gone. From there, while eating, we could peruse the sparse crowd to see who was present. I saw my boss making the rounds, much like a used car salesman. I even heard him, when introduced to someone’s daughter, make the comment that they looked like sisters... Really. I asked about the company president, as I had not seen him. The reason I had not seen him was…..because he was not there. DING! DING! DING!!!! WHAT? The company ‘Holiday’ party and the friggin President of the company could not be bothered to attend! That is unbelievable. What the hell is going on here and why are we here again? Two drink tickets down.
After dinner, which was good, as I said, we decided to check out the extremely complicated casino games to see if they were playable despite the extensive rules. We landed at the Name That Tune table and despite the rules, we were able to catch on and have a good time. And we won. One of the big draws for the casino games was to get extra tickets for the games raffle, which would allegedly take place between 8:30 and 9:15. After I won the final round, for $40,000, we pooled our winnings and scored eight tickets for the raffle. We were feeling lucky. We had no way of knowing that our luck had just run out. Three drink tickets gone.
An announcement was made, and people settled down at their tables, expecting something to happen. Nothing did. No desserts filled the dessert table, nothing was going on on the stage, we all sat down and looked around. This awkward silence lasted for several minutes. Nothing. We did not appreciate the nothingness nearly enough, as what followed, when it followed, was just painful.
After a lull, two senior folks at the firm appeared with socks on their heads, introduced as Howie and Mandell accompanied by a video game projection of the game show “Deal or No Deal”. I do not know about most people, but I have never seen the show, though I wrote it off as soon as I heard of it, as it sounded really stupid. I hate Howie Mandell, and anything he has ever done. So I was not thrilled by this segment of the evening’s entertainment. They selected five “winners” from the game raffle tickets pot. If they had called my number, I would have eaten that ticket and not claimed my spot. This segment went on for at least thirty minutes, likely much longer. It felt like a week of looking at our tablemates asking who thought this would be funny and why. We had not yet hit the low point. This was just the midpoint, though we did not know it then.
Some of the rowdier (more drunk and/or more obnoxious) folks kept yelling DEAL whenever they had the chance in order to encourage our five co-workers up there to take the deal, any deal, just to MAKE IT STOP. They even had a prop phone on which to ‘call’ the banker, which I presume is a big part of the show. The DEAL yelling at the contestants didn’t work at all- those contestants were greedy, they were holding out for a better deal (after wasting more than half an hour of everyone’s lives- time we will never get back- they eventually settled for $40 each. We got nothing.). Our table considered passing the hat around the one hundred or so folks still in the room in order to raise enough money for the greedy contestants so that we could MAKE IT STOP.
Here is what the schedule said: 8:30-9:15- Welcome, Table Game Prizes, SNC "Roast", & All-Employee Raffle Drawings. It should have said: Hopefully you have had several drinks by now and will laugh at anything. In addition, the waiters have removed all sharp implements, including glasses, as you may be tempted to break one to slit your own throat if there isn’t a butter knife within reach. It will be that bad.
There began the longest, most painful part of the evening. We could have only hoped for a better option like Novocain-free root canals in the corner. That would have been a lot funnier that what we had to face. We were still sticking it out for the promise of the airlines tickets and additional raffle tickets. How bad could it be? Actually, it could be really, really bad.
One of the old-timers at the firm, he’s probably been there since the very beginning got up and stage and the paid emcee handed him a microphone (mental note- the professionals should NEVER hand the mic over to an amateur. Never.). That was a terrible mistake and we all paid for it for an hour or so. He cracked a few okay jokes- mostly inside jokes that a small number of people laughed at while most spouses (and many additional employees) just looked bewildered.
Then he pulled up a chair and settled in. Apparently, someone, somewhere, had told him that he was a funny guy and he took it to heart. He had several pages of prepared material that he read, despite the tepid reaction/non-reaction of the crowd. One must applaud his tenacity, as he did not let the lack of interest, or humor, stop him for a second. He kept right on, reading old jokes, inside jokes, and even….a religious joke, with a peppering of offensive (to someone, there is no doubt) material thrown in now and again to keep up appearances, or something. Fourth ticket gone.
The emcee, (the only entertaining person who was ever NEAR the stage) sought out the head of Human Resources and his spouse and made them come sit directly in front of the stage. I think this was after the religious joke. He must have thought they should have ringside seats to the off-color commentary that could result in one, or several, lawsuits. They were stuck sitting there for over an hour. Despite being HR people, I felt for them.
After three lifetimes of this torment, it ended…..when someone told him he had a phone call and he left via stage right. We could only hope that whatever it was that he was setting up for was better than the previous part of the act, but had no reason to think that it would be. Our low expectations were met, as he came out as Carnac the Magnificent. Yes, that OLD Johnny Carson persona. Now, half of the folks at the party were probably born after 1975 and might have heard of Johnny Carson….but they probably never heard of Carnac the Magnificent. Frankly, those skits were not funny even when Johnny was doing them, but because he was Johnny Carson and spent much of his time laughing at himself, they were watchable. Not so much for the imposter fifteen years after he went off the air. However, people hung in there to win the tickets to Europe. That was the thread that we were all clinging to. Our reason for not poking our eyes out with the stray forks, or running screaming from the banquet room. That took a lot of discipline on all of our parts.
Now, we were out of drink coupons and the only alternative was to pony up $7 for a beer to survive the next leg of the ‘entertainment’. Trust me, there was nothing this evening that anyone would have wanted to pay for. Unless you were a pal of the AWOL President’s administrative assistant, as she was, subtly, I am sure she thought, handing out extra drink coupons like candy to her friends. I was sitting with my back to her (and I do not know her), but was facing her back for any part of the entertainment that I could bear to watch and I saw many tickets change hands. So I asked my co-worker (who had already given away her tickets) to ask her for some, as she knew her. She did, and while giving them to me she told me that the admin apparently was not very happy about it. Hmmmmm. How could that problem have been avoided? Let me think…. One of the new tickets gone.
So, now Carnac is finishing his painful episode and we all applaud that he is on the last joke. We applauded heartily as the torture is about to end. Then someone else gets up and says they are going to draw for the employee prizes (different from the prizes we can win with the tickets we won from the casino games). They draw three names; no one at my table wins any of the prizes. The folks that do are now happy that they spent the last hour and a half being tortured, as they have something to show for it. The rest of us start the stampede to the doors. Some people hold out for the door prize drawings, as we have many tickets, and now drink tickets too.
The folks who did not just win a trip to Europe are now wondering why this was a better option than staying home and braiding the dogs’ hair after giving them flea baths. The rest of us await the drawing of the other raffle tickets. The invite said: You can cash in your chips at anytime to redeem raffle tickets to win one of the door prizes: 5,000 in chips can be traded for 1 raffle ticket. Come early, play the tables... and double or triple your chances of winning one of the prizes! We had eight tickets, and by now had picked up a few more from folks who had fled in pain.
Shortly after 10, the music started and the dancing began. The very first song that they played was Celebration by Kool and the Gang. At least we laughed for the first time in the past 3 weeks. Now the DJ had been here all night and I suspect that he was paid for every hour he was present. So, the logic of paying them not to play music while the amateurs spent over an hour and a half torturing us, I have no idea. Doesn’t seem like the best business decision to me but that is why I am a lowly peon and now making the big bucks…….
Once the music started, those who did not flee the building after they did not win the airline tickets flocked to the dance floor. There were many folks out there for the initial songs, which included the requisite “YMCA”. The emcee (he had been drinking free all night to ease his pain and was quite funny) pointed out that he had never seen an event before where folks insisted on dancing in a big circle. All the time. For some reason, soon after, the circle broke up and people seemed to be dancing in the more traditional groupings.
We stuck it out for a little longer, hopeful that someone will remember the container full of door prize ticket stubs. At least to finish off yet another drink coupon. Most everyone was gone by now, so if they ever do the drawings, the three people left will do quite well. We headed out and my spouse no longer thought that I was exaggerating when I told him some of the unbelievable things that happen (or don’t happen) at work all of the time. It all made sense to him now, as the party was a perfect example of our corporate culture.
And, I guess, if you do the math, that we did triple our chances of winning the door prizes- since they NEVER drew any raffle tickets and 3x0=0 and our chance of winning without the additional tickets was 0, so hell, we increased our chances of winning the door prizes by infinity. We still left empty handed. With a blood-sworn vow that we would NOT make the mistake of attending such a train-wreck of an event again.
The moral of the story is: listen to your intuition and your co-workers (and all accompanying alarm bells). I was very jealous of those of you who had better things to do. Or, who did not want to go and never claimed to have better things to do, because, no matter what you were doing, you had more fun and far less pain than we did.
It was my first year with the company so I did not know what to expect. There were some warning signs, signs that I blithely ignored. I ignored all of the warnings until it was too late. Much too late. I really have to learn to listen to my intuition. And my co-workers.
The first e-mail said the ‘Holiday’ party would be held in mid-January. DING! DING! DING!!! What??? Maybe they picked that date so that they could get the Christmas favors on sale at 75% off? It seems likely, knowing this firm. Maybe the January dates were half-price? That was the first clue to which I should have paid more attention. I should have surveyed my friends to see if they had ever had their company Christmas parties in January. If none of them said yes, I should have RSVP’d NO. I should have heeded the alarm bells. However, it was a free dinner, with two free drinks per person and it was just ten minutes from home. We really did not have anything better to do. At least that’s what we thought. We were wrong.
The second e-mail gave us five pages of complicated instructions for the casino games. Seriously? Holy crap, how hard is it to play name that tune? Or trivia? And are they kidding….are you smarter than a fifth grader. They need five pages of instructions for these games. I am not sure that the folks putting it all together ARE smarter than a fifth grader. That was another warning that I ignored at my peril. DING! DING! DING!
A few weeks ago, I heard that my co-worker, a member on the organizing committee was going cube to cube trying to get people to sign up for the party. Apparently, there was not a crush of folks signing up for the January ‘Holiday’ party (it was close to Martin Luther King’s birthday, they could have changed the theme). I was hoping that the strong-arm tactic was working, because I did not want to be the only one at the party. By the week of the party, I heard that a full one-third of my fellow employees could fit our annual holiday event into their January schedules. DING! DING! DING!!! As far as my ever-dwindling department went, seven out of ten of us were planning to attend. Of course, of those seven, one left the company the Friday before and one was headed to the middle east on a temporary assignment on Monday, so that makes it five of eight folks, so way more than half. One boss would be there, one had found something better to do. But at least I would know people there.
A veteran co-worker (meaning a veteran of previous “Holiday parties”) told me that the grand prize in the employee raffle (must be present to win) was two airline tickets to Europe. Have you priced European travel lately? That would be worth winning, of that there is no doubt. I decided that I would be very lucky that night and win the tickets.
Upon arrival at the fancy hotel ballroom, I realized they did not choose this date for the sale-priced festive decorations, as there are no decorations at all. But, we did get our two drink tickets per person—pooled together, those tickets saved at least one of our lives and possibly a marriage. Luckily, the company sprung for as much water and juice as we could drink, on top of the two beers/alcoholic drinks each. That was nice of them. Ever the faithful spouse, I promptly hand my tickets over.
I sought out my coworkers and we grabbed a spot at a table. The buffet dinner was on, so we dug in. The food was good and though we did not have the gift of foresight to know that this was definitely the highlight of the evening. One ticket gone. From there, while eating, we could peruse the sparse crowd to see who was present. I saw my boss making the rounds, much like a used car salesman. I even heard him, when introduced to someone’s daughter, make the comment that they looked like sisters... Really. I asked about the company president, as I had not seen him. The reason I had not seen him was…..because he was not there. DING! DING! DING!!!! WHAT? The company ‘Holiday’ party and the friggin President of the company could not be bothered to attend! That is unbelievable. What the hell is going on here and why are we here again? Two drink tickets down.
After dinner, which was good, as I said, we decided to check out the extremely complicated casino games to see if they were playable despite the extensive rules. We landed at the Name That Tune table and despite the rules, we were able to catch on and have a good time. And we won. One of the big draws for the casino games was to get extra tickets for the games raffle, which would allegedly take place between 8:30 and 9:15. After I won the final round, for $40,000, we pooled our winnings and scored eight tickets for the raffle. We were feeling lucky. We had no way of knowing that our luck had just run out. Three drink tickets gone.
An announcement was made, and people settled down at their tables, expecting something to happen. Nothing did. No desserts filled the dessert table, nothing was going on on the stage, we all sat down and looked around. This awkward silence lasted for several minutes. Nothing. We did not appreciate the nothingness nearly enough, as what followed, when it followed, was just painful.
After a lull, two senior folks at the firm appeared with socks on their heads, introduced as Howie and Mandell accompanied by a video game projection of the game show “Deal or No Deal”. I do not know about most people, but I have never seen the show, though I wrote it off as soon as I heard of it, as it sounded really stupid. I hate Howie Mandell, and anything he has ever done. So I was not thrilled by this segment of the evening’s entertainment. They selected five “winners” from the game raffle tickets pot. If they had called my number, I would have eaten that ticket and not claimed my spot. This segment went on for at least thirty minutes, likely much longer. It felt like a week of looking at our tablemates asking who thought this would be funny and why. We had not yet hit the low point. This was just the midpoint, though we did not know it then.
Some of the rowdier (more drunk and/or more obnoxious) folks kept yelling DEAL whenever they had the chance in order to encourage our five co-workers up there to take the deal, any deal, just to MAKE IT STOP. They even had a prop phone on which to ‘call’ the banker, which I presume is a big part of the show. The DEAL yelling at the contestants didn’t work at all- those contestants were greedy, they were holding out for a better deal (after wasting more than half an hour of everyone’s lives- time we will never get back- they eventually settled for $40 each. We got nothing.). Our table considered passing the hat around the one hundred or so folks still in the room in order to raise enough money for the greedy contestants so that we could MAKE IT STOP.
Here is what the schedule said: 8:30-9:15- Welcome, Table Game Prizes, SNC "Roast", & All-Employee Raffle Drawings. It should have said: Hopefully you have had several drinks by now and will laugh at anything. In addition, the waiters have removed all sharp implements, including glasses, as you may be tempted to break one to slit your own throat if there isn’t a butter knife within reach. It will be that bad.
There began the longest, most painful part of the evening. We could have only hoped for a better option like Novocain-free root canals in the corner. That would have been a lot funnier that what we had to face. We were still sticking it out for the promise of the airlines tickets and additional raffle tickets. How bad could it be? Actually, it could be really, really bad.
One of the old-timers at the firm, he’s probably been there since the very beginning got up and stage and the paid emcee handed him a microphone (mental note- the professionals should NEVER hand the mic over to an amateur. Never.). That was a terrible mistake and we all paid for it for an hour or so. He cracked a few okay jokes- mostly inside jokes that a small number of people laughed at while most spouses (and many additional employees) just looked bewildered.
Then he pulled up a chair and settled in. Apparently, someone, somewhere, had told him that he was a funny guy and he took it to heart. He had several pages of prepared material that he read, despite the tepid reaction/non-reaction of the crowd. One must applaud his tenacity, as he did not let the lack of interest, or humor, stop him for a second. He kept right on, reading old jokes, inside jokes, and even….a religious joke, with a peppering of offensive (to someone, there is no doubt) material thrown in now and again to keep up appearances, or something. Fourth ticket gone.
The emcee, (the only entertaining person who was ever NEAR the stage) sought out the head of Human Resources and his spouse and made them come sit directly in front of the stage. I think this was after the religious joke. He must have thought they should have ringside seats to the off-color commentary that could result in one, or several, lawsuits. They were stuck sitting there for over an hour. Despite being HR people, I felt for them.
After three lifetimes of this torment, it ended…..when someone told him he had a phone call and he left via stage right. We could only hope that whatever it was that he was setting up for was better than the previous part of the act, but had no reason to think that it would be. Our low expectations were met, as he came out as Carnac the Magnificent. Yes, that OLD Johnny Carson persona. Now, half of the folks at the party were probably born after 1975 and might have heard of Johnny Carson….but they probably never heard of Carnac the Magnificent. Frankly, those skits were not funny even when Johnny was doing them, but because he was Johnny Carson and spent much of his time laughing at himself, they were watchable. Not so much for the imposter fifteen years after he went off the air. However, people hung in there to win the tickets to Europe. That was the thread that we were all clinging to. Our reason for not poking our eyes out with the stray forks, or running screaming from the banquet room. That took a lot of discipline on all of our parts.
Now, we were out of drink coupons and the only alternative was to pony up $7 for a beer to survive the next leg of the ‘entertainment’. Trust me, there was nothing this evening that anyone would have wanted to pay for. Unless you were a pal of the AWOL President’s administrative assistant, as she was, subtly, I am sure she thought, handing out extra drink coupons like candy to her friends. I was sitting with my back to her (and I do not know her), but was facing her back for any part of the entertainment that I could bear to watch and I saw many tickets change hands. So I asked my co-worker (who had already given away her tickets) to ask her for some, as she knew her. She did, and while giving them to me she told me that the admin apparently was not very happy about it. Hmmmmm. How could that problem have been avoided? Let me think…. One of the new tickets gone.
So, now Carnac is finishing his painful episode and we all applaud that he is on the last joke. We applauded heartily as the torture is about to end. Then someone else gets up and says they are going to draw for the employee prizes (different from the prizes we can win with the tickets we won from the casino games). They draw three names; no one at my table wins any of the prizes. The folks that do are now happy that they spent the last hour and a half being tortured, as they have something to show for it. The rest of us start the stampede to the doors. Some people hold out for the door prize drawings, as we have many tickets, and now drink tickets too.
The folks who did not just win a trip to Europe are now wondering why this was a better option than staying home and braiding the dogs’ hair after giving them flea baths. The rest of us await the drawing of the other raffle tickets. The invite said: You can cash in your chips at anytime to redeem raffle tickets to win one of the door prizes: 5,000 in chips can be traded for 1 raffle ticket. Come early, play the tables... and double or triple your chances of winning one of the prizes! We had eight tickets, and by now had picked up a few more from folks who had fled in pain.
Shortly after 10, the music started and the dancing began. The very first song that they played was Celebration by Kool and the Gang. At least we laughed for the first time in the past 3 weeks. Now the DJ had been here all night and I suspect that he was paid for every hour he was present. So, the logic of paying them not to play music while the amateurs spent over an hour and a half torturing us, I have no idea. Doesn’t seem like the best business decision to me but that is why I am a lowly peon and now making the big bucks…….
Once the music started, those who did not flee the building after they did not win the airline tickets flocked to the dance floor. There were many folks out there for the initial songs, which included the requisite “YMCA”. The emcee (he had been drinking free all night to ease his pain and was quite funny) pointed out that he had never seen an event before where folks insisted on dancing in a big circle. All the time. For some reason, soon after, the circle broke up and people seemed to be dancing in the more traditional groupings.
We stuck it out for a little longer, hopeful that someone will remember the container full of door prize ticket stubs. At least to finish off yet another drink coupon. Most everyone was gone by now, so if they ever do the drawings, the three people left will do quite well. We headed out and my spouse no longer thought that I was exaggerating when I told him some of the unbelievable things that happen (or don’t happen) at work all of the time. It all made sense to him now, as the party was a perfect example of our corporate culture.
And, I guess, if you do the math, that we did triple our chances of winning the door prizes- since they NEVER drew any raffle tickets and 3x0=0 and our chance of winning without the additional tickets was 0, so hell, we increased our chances of winning the door prizes by infinity. We still left empty handed. With a blood-sworn vow that we would NOT make the mistake of attending such a train-wreck of an event again.
The moral of the story is: listen to your intuition and your co-workers (and all accompanying alarm bells). I was very jealous of those of you who had better things to do. Or, who did not want to go and never claimed to have better things to do, because, no matter what you were doing, you had more fun and far less pain than we did.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
The Stalker, Part 4
Dumpy’s boss snorted in disgust, noting the projectile on her screen, but he did grasp what had happened and was glad that he had stopped by. He was always looking to reduce the department’s headcount, but doing it that way always struck him as extreme. He questioned April about what had happened and confirmed that she was now fine. He ran to get her a bottle of water. He also grabbed the Windex and paper towels so she could see through her monitor again.
Death was beside himself. Inconsolable. Not only would April live to play again another day, BUT she was on guard now- might be pondering that someone really is out to get her. Plus, he may as well hang up his scythe right now, and he didn’t t even want to think about what Deader was going to do to him in retaliation for interrupting her favorite recreational activity of an island hopping golf scramble. She could be so mean when her month-long binges were disturbed—especially if she thought the reason for the disruption was lame. And there was no doubt that she would think that, because it was Death’s sheer incompetence that would be interrupting her. Again. She had sworn to him last time that if his ineptitude cost her any more of her hard-earned time off, he would pay dearly and forever.
Death sulked in the window. He blotted out all hints of the brilliant sunshine without, making the pane black as night. While he was not visible to the naked eye—nor the clothed one—the river of tears flowing from what would be his eyes if he were in traditional human form, were visible. April headed over to investigate why water was pouring from the windowsill like a mountain waterfall during spring runoff. Death was so distraught that he did not even notice that April was kneeling directly in front of him floating a paper boat in the unexplained, indoor river—within strangling distance. Since he had given up all pretense of subtly, strangling her would have easily accomplished his goal of ending her life, and his quest. But, alas, he missed the easiest opportunity of the day. Story of his post-death life.
By the time he realized the opportunity before him, it was a memory. He began trying to pull himself together so he was somewhat presentable when Deader arrived. He would need his wits about him; else, she would eviscerate him on the spot. She might well do that anyway, it was a crapshoot.
April was thanking her lucky stars, and coming to the realization that maybe it was not her lucky day, as she had almost knowingly died twice within the past two hours. She realized the possibility that she could have unknowingly cheated death a few more times already and then sat down heavily to ponder this. However, maybe it was her luckiest day, after all. Maybe she could not die today. Testing that theory would require much more thought, not to mention a level of courage that she doubted she possessed. She’ would put that one on the back burner and come back to it later. No, she would banish the entire concept- she was just having a bad day, no invisible force was trying to kill her. Accepting that possibility, that someone/something was trying to kill her opened up doors in her mind that led down hallways that she refused to acknowledge. It was not possible. She was just unlucky followed by unbelievably lucky. Twice. That is all there was to it. It was all there could be.
A startling sound from the windows interrupted her reverie. Thunderclaps echoed throughout the cube farm. The sounds came from the darkened window and April swore that she saw several lightning bolts, but she knew she was indoors and that it was a beautiful day outside. April’s mind raced. It was overloaded with emotion from the two near death incidents and now from sights and sounds coming from inside the window. She collapsed in her chair in a dead faint.
Death missed this opportunity also, as he was being ‘schooled’ by Deader in how to do his job. It appears that she was midway though the twelfth round of the tournament, which with Deader means twelve cases of beer into the festival (it was a weeklong tournament that started early), and that hole was on Maui. She loved Maui and was not the least bit happy at being summoned to do the job of a worthless minion. She let Death know if no uncertain terms that he would be her caddy for eternity for this one. She carried a lot of clubs, and beer. And, she took them everywhere, not just to the golf course. She liked to be ready at all times, for all things, and thus had a host of demoted minions following her around as she flounced about the world pretending to do spot checks and train those of her staff who needed it. The minion carrying the golf/beer bag was ecstatic. He could not thrust the gargantuan golf bag onto Death’s back soon enough. Then he pranced around doing a happy dance that would have energized the most lifeless of the Buffalo Bills offensive players. Death, physically burdened on top of the mental anguish he had been suffering collapsed in the corner sniveling.
Deader got right to work. She filleted Death for his incompetence and then squared her drunken and quite broad shoulders, cape flying overhead. She pounced over to April, still passed out. She towered over her chair screeching her frustration at Death’s incompetence and April’s resilience in infrasonic waves that April could not hear, but would definitely have felt, were she awake and not hopped up on Benadryl and snickers bars. Heck, she should have felt it anyway.
Deader, used to her minions and every human she encountered quailing in front of her when she spoke, though they never had any idea why they were trembling in fear, was taken aback. April was non-responsive. Her breath came in a steady rhythm, but she was not absorbing anything that Deader was sending her way. This was unusual and made Deader stop to think. Normally, even when they were sleeping, Deader could see the fright on the faces and bodies of the folks receiving her less-than-welcome attentions, but this time there was no response.
Deader waved the back of her hand at April, backhanding April’s head. Nothing. That should have snapped her neck instantly. But it did not. Maybe it was not purely incompetence at work here. Deader kicked April in the shin- the most accessible part of her, as she was still in her chair. No response. No sign of any physical pain whatsoever. Death ventured over, dragging Deader’s golf clubs behind him. As a minion, he had little physical power over his consignees, that is why he had to manipulate their worldly circumstances to kill them. However, he could, if he really, really concentrated, hurt people physically from within his realm. Death picked up a stapler, wound up like a beefed-up Roger Clemens, and pitched it at April’s body. It glanced off before it even struck her.
This was something that he had never seen before, but that did not mean much. He did not get out much and only knew the things that happened to him (and those he killed) by rote. But Deader had seen a lot more than he, frankly had been around a lot longer, though she hated when he pointed that out. She did not like what she was not seeing here.
Deader gave it one last try- she pulled out her 189-iron (bigger course and much more powerful players than we humans are used to) and she whacked April’s sleeping form with it. Sparks flew as the club ricocheted off April’s motionless form and back at Deader with more force than she had swung it with and she screamed as she let it go. The last that they saw of the 189-iron, it was sailing through the air high over the parking lot. April, in blissful repose on her chair, smiled, just a tiny bit, at the corners of her mouth.
Deader and Death huddled over by the window, careful, despite not being in physical forms, to avoid the puddles that remained of Death’s earlier uncontrollable crying jag. They spoke briefly about what they were seeing. Deader had to go to her home base to do some research on deathipedia to try to figure out why April could not be touched. In addition, she had to ask some of the elders if they had any ideas or if they had seen such a thing before. Deader dissipated and Death, dragging Deader’s clubs behind him, as though they were some kind of dead animal, followed meekly.
April sat up and smiled. She felt refreshed.
Copyright 2007 Antigone Lett. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Death was beside himself. Inconsolable. Not only would April live to play again another day, BUT she was on guard now- might be pondering that someone really is out to get her. Plus, he may as well hang up his scythe right now, and he didn’t t even want to think about what Deader was going to do to him in retaliation for interrupting her favorite recreational activity of an island hopping golf scramble. She could be so mean when her month-long binges were disturbed—especially if she thought the reason for the disruption was lame. And there was no doubt that she would think that, because it was Death’s sheer incompetence that would be interrupting her. Again. She had sworn to him last time that if his ineptitude cost her any more of her hard-earned time off, he would pay dearly and forever.
Death sulked in the window. He blotted out all hints of the brilliant sunshine without, making the pane black as night. While he was not visible to the naked eye—nor the clothed one—the river of tears flowing from what would be his eyes if he were in traditional human form, were visible. April headed over to investigate why water was pouring from the windowsill like a mountain waterfall during spring runoff. Death was so distraught that he did not even notice that April was kneeling directly in front of him floating a paper boat in the unexplained, indoor river—within strangling distance. Since he had given up all pretense of subtly, strangling her would have easily accomplished his goal of ending her life, and his quest. But, alas, he missed the easiest opportunity of the day. Story of his post-death life.
By the time he realized the opportunity before him, it was a memory. He began trying to pull himself together so he was somewhat presentable when Deader arrived. He would need his wits about him; else, she would eviscerate him on the spot. She might well do that anyway, it was a crapshoot.
April was thanking her lucky stars, and coming to the realization that maybe it was not her lucky day, as she had almost knowingly died twice within the past two hours. She realized the possibility that she could have unknowingly cheated death a few more times already and then sat down heavily to ponder this. However, maybe it was her luckiest day, after all. Maybe she could not die today. Testing that theory would require much more thought, not to mention a level of courage that she doubted she possessed. She’ would put that one on the back burner and come back to it later. No, she would banish the entire concept- she was just having a bad day, no invisible force was trying to kill her. Accepting that possibility, that someone/something was trying to kill her opened up doors in her mind that led down hallways that she refused to acknowledge. It was not possible. She was just unlucky followed by unbelievably lucky. Twice. That is all there was to it. It was all there could be.
A startling sound from the windows interrupted her reverie. Thunderclaps echoed throughout the cube farm. The sounds came from the darkened window and April swore that she saw several lightning bolts, but she knew she was indoors and that it was a beautiful day outside. April’s mind raced. It was overloaded with emotion from the two near death incidents and now from sights and sounds coming from inside the window. She collapsed in her chair in a dead faint.
Death missed this opportunity also, as he was being ‘schooled’ by Deader in how to do his job. It appears that she was midway though the twelfth round of the tournament, which with Deader means twelve cases of beer into the festival (it was a weeklong tournament that started early), and that hole was on Maui. She loved Maui and was not the least bit happy at being summoned to do the job of a worthless minion. She let Death know if no uncertain terms that he would be her caddy for eternity for this one. She carried a lot of clubs, and beer. And, she took them everywhere, not just to the golf course. She liked to be ready at all times, for all things, and thus had a host of demoted minions following her around as she flounced about the world pretending to do spot checks and train those of her staff who needed it. The minion carrying the golf/beer bag was ecstatic. He could not thrust the gargantuan golf bag onto Death’s back soon enough. Then he pranced around doing a happy dance that would have energized the most lifeless of the Buffalo Bills offensive players. Death, physically burdened on top of the mental anguish he had been suffering collapsed in the corner sniveling.
Deader got right to work. She filleted Death for his incompetence and then squared her drunken and quite broad shoulders, cape flying overhead. She pounced over to April, still passed out. She towered over her chair screeching her frustration at Death’s incompetence and April’s resilience in infrasonic waves that April could not hear, but would definitely have felt, were she awake and not hopped up on Benadryl and snickers bars. Heck, she should have felt it anyway.
Deader, used to her minions and every human she encountered quailing in front of her when she spoke, though they never had any idea why they were trembling in fear, was taken aback. April was non-responsive. Her breath came in a steady rhythm, but she was not absorbing anything that Deader was sending her way. This was unusual and made Deader stop to think. Normally, even when they were sleeping, Deader could see the fright on the faces and bodies of the folks receiving her less-than-welcome attentions, but this time there was no response.
Deader waved the back of her hand at April, backhanding April’s head. Nothing. That should have snapped her neck instantly. But it did not. Maybe it was not purely incompetence at work here. Deader kicked April in the shin- the most accessible part of her, as she was still in her chair. No response. No sign of any physical pain whatsoever. Death ventured over, dragging Deader’s golf clubs behind him. As a minion, he had little physical power over his consignees, that is why he had to manipulate their worldly circumstances to kill them. However, he could, if he really, really concentrated, hurt people physically from within his realm. Death picked up a stapler, wound up like a beefed-up Roger Clemens, and pitched it at April’s body. It glanced off before it even struck her.
This was something that he had never seen before, but that did not mean much. He did not get out much and only knew the things that happened to him (and those he killed) by rote. But Deader had seen a lot more than he, frankly had been around a lot longer, though she hated when he pointed that out. She did not like what she was not seeing here.
Deader gave it one last try- she pulled out her 189-iron (bigger course and much more powerful players than we humans are used to) and she whacked April’s sleeping form with it. Sparks flew as the club ricocheted off April’s motionless form and back at Deader with more force than she had swung it with and she screamed as she let it go. The last that they saw of the 189-iron, it was sailing through the air high over the parking lot. April, in blissful repose on her chair, smiled, just a tiny bit, at the corners of her mouth.
Deader and Death huddled over by the window, careful, despite not being in physical forms, to avoid the puddles that remained of Death’s earlier uncontrollable crying jag. They spoke briefly about what they were seeing. Deader had to go to her home base to do some research on deathipedia to try to figure out why April could not be touched. In addition, she had to ask some of the elders if they had any ideas or if they had seen such a thing before. Deader dissipated and Death, dragging Deader’s clubs behind him, as though they were some kind of dead animal, followed meekly.
April sat up and smiled. She felt refreshed.
Copyright 2007 Antigone Lett. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Friday, November 30, 2007
The Stalker, Part III
April was halfway to a two Snickers sugar buzz and was grateful to be alive. She was pounding through her work in record time, replying to three month's worth of e-mail-all at once in one mass, slightly hysterical rambling e-mail-and had changed her e-mail signature to read "Today is the greatest day of your life. Trust me, I know". She spouted about how she was saved by the Benadryl, and encouraged everyone she knew to set up their own personal Benadryl alter at their desks in order to properly worship the god that had inadvertently saved her. There was much snickering by the recipients in the Cube Farm, but April didn't care, so was high on life and Snickers bars.
Death sat on the windowsill fuming. His nebulous black presence filtered out all light, making it look like it was dusk. But only in the window in which he sat. Through the other windows, it looked like the brilliant summer morning that it was. Some of April's coworkers noticed this, but no one was motivated enough to hoist themselves from their chairs to try to figure out why one the view from window was nearly black and the others not. Some of her more industrious coworkers tried to look the phenomenon up on wikipedia.com, but since they didn't have a concrete name for it, it made searching it out a challenge. Some spent hours trying to come up with answers, but death, though technically invisible must still have given off some eerie vibe, as no one moseyed over to see what he looked like close up.
Death could not believe that she could get that lucky. Again. It was getting old, and now his beach plans were shot to hell, as well as his weekend frisbee football tournament plans. There was no way to recover and stay within his proscribed forty-hour workweek. Now he was going to have to get his supervisor to sign off on his working of the weekend, and at this point, that was the best-case scenario. The worst- case scenario would be to have to hand this case over to his boss and let her finish April off. Asking for that kind of assistance was for the losers-nobody wanted to escalate to Deader, that kind of thing had a way of coming back to haunt you at performance evaluation time. Not to mention raise time. CRAP! It was time to get mean and ugly and to work smarter, not harder. If only he could figure out what that meant, he might be able to pull it off.....
Death skulked in the window looking for answers, sending tiny black clouds soaring across the ceiling of the cube farm, further puzzling the Wikkies who struggled to find meaning for them, while taking video of the scuttling clouds on their cell phones and calling CNN to report their weird indoor weather. How could she die? It had to be fast-like now. It had to be painful, as she was really starting to piss him off and it had to let him dissipate so he could move on to his next stop. He still had eighteen people to knock off by his department's next update meeting, which would be Monday meeting. It was now Friday, near lunchtime for those who could still ingest solid foods.
Lunchtime.... Somehow April's lunch was going to kill her. This was Plan D and he couldn't go any farther than that, so it had to work. That was it- wherever she was, whatever she was doing, she would choke to death, it would be lonely and painful and she's be conscious for two to three minutes, so she'd get to look in his face as she checked out and he would triumph. He drifted back toward her desk to figure out what she had planned for lunch.
April, who usually walked for an hour on her lunch, was trying to figure out the same thing. She was feeling lazy, did she want to get her three miles in today, making over fifteen miles for the week? Or did she want to go nap in the car and try to get close to the recommended eight hours of sleep that she was three hours short on for last night alone? She wasn't that hungry, since the celebratory Snickers infusion, so she grabbed her apple and put her coat on. She would decide once she got outside if she was walking just to her car, or out to the "Nature Trail", which mostly portrayed the ills of human nature over any other kind, but underneath the flotsam of litter, running water was visible flowing through the creek bed.
She grabbed an apple from her fruit bowl. April hated to shop and hated to run out of things even more, so when she did finally shop, she bough in quantity and she bought two of everything, so that she had a full supply of food at work. This worked fine for bagels and small quantities of fruit to be eaten quickly, but sometimes the bowl of rapidly decomposing fruit and its accompanying flies was an issue in the Cube Farm. Today, however, there were just a few items of barely ripe and still firm fruit, so there had been no protestors about. A few more days, however...and they'd all be out there circling with their signs and chanting in front of her cube in support of the decaying fruit.
April bit into her apple, just as her e-mail notification dinged. She sat back down to read the e-mail while chewing a too-large bite of apple. Or trying to chew. Death, perched on her desk next to her monitor screen smirked as he watched each movement of her jaw muscles. He was counting down. NOW. April swallowed, realizing too late that she hadn't chewed that chunk of Granny Smith's bitter apple nearly enough. The chunk lodged in her throat and shut down her airway. She was beginning to panic, she realized that she could not 'cough, speak or breathe', like the posters all say and would dearly love some intervention. But everyone else was at lunch. Those folks are never late to a meal, and no one was around. She quickly traipsed through the cubes, looking for just one hard working person who didn't run off to lunch at the stroke of noon (or, knowing her co-workers, half an hour before noon.) She found no one.
Her eyes started to bulge out of their sockets and their watering sent salty tears cascading down her face. She thought it ironic that while she was choking to death, she could still taste the salt of her own tears. She thought about calling 9-1-1, but realized that they couldn't arrive soon enough to save her. She recognized that she was down to a minute, maybe thirty seconds left. She hurled herself against the wall, but this resulted in the apple wedging itself deeper yet and breaking her left radius, not that that would matter much longer.
April couldn't believe that it could end this way. She touched up her lipstick and brushed her hair. She was aware that a whole bunch of people would soon be staring at her lifeless body, for the last time in fact, so she may as well look as good as possible under the circumstances. Her final thought was of her dogs waiting for her at home. Death's leer could practically be heard from a mile away and his celebratory dance-a combination of the moonwalk, the cabbage patch and a little bit of the bus stop-was inspired.
April didn't hear the door open, nor feel the resonant booming voice of Dumpy's boss as he strolled into the farm. He came up behind her, assuming that she was reading the e-mail still open on her screen and heartily whacked her on the back a few times in his typical hello gesture. This was his normal greeting, and while she had come to hate it and mastered avoiding interacting with him after the last time when he broke three ribs and she bit off and swallowed the tip of her tongue, this time she could not resist.
Death, watching the events unfold, screamed "NO!" He formed dark circling clouds and tried to blot out Dumpy's boss, but to no avail.
Dumpy's boss hid his surprise at the resulting violent explosion of air and still recognizable apple that splattered across her monitor, as he glanced at her slick, reddened face her eyes popped open (she had closed them- she didn't want everyone to see her body with bulging eyes and was worried that closing a dead person's eyes wasn't as easy as they made it look on TV.) He stepped back. She breathed deeply, aware that for the second time in barely as many hours, she had escaped death. As her brain's oxygen supply returned to normal, she was beginning to notice a pattern. And she didn't like it.
Death was reduced to hysterical tears, sobbing and screaming and thinking about how this woman clearly has one hell of a guardian angel looking out for her. What the hell was he going to do now? Time to call in help, even if it means a demotion. There could be other powers at work here, powers that he didn't even know about, much less have any idea how to defeat...
Copyright 2007 Antigone Lett. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Death sat on the windowsill fuming. His nebulous black presence filtered out all light, making it look like it was dusk. But only in the window in which he sat. Through the other windows, it looked like the brilliant summer morning that it was. Some of April's coworkers noticed this, but no one was motivated enough to hoist themselves from their chairs to try to figure out why one the view from window was nearly black and the others not. Some of her more industrious coworkers tried to look the phenomenon up on wikipedia.com, but since they didn't have a concrete name for it, it made searching it out a challenge. Some spent hours trying to come up with answers, but death, though technically invisible must still have given off some eerie vibe, as no one moseyed over to see what he looked like close up.
Death could not believe that she could get that lucky. Again. It was getting old, and now his beach plans were shot to hell, as well as his weekend frisbee football tournament plans. There was no way to recover and stay within his proscribed forty-hour workweek. Now he was going to have to get his supervisor to sign off on his working of the weekend, and at this point, that was the best-case scenario. The worst- case scenario would be to have to hand this case over to his boss and let her finish April off. Asking for that kind of assistance was for the losers-nobody wanted to escalate to Deader, that kind of thing had a way of coming back to haunt you at performance evaluation time. Not to mention raise time. CRAP! It was time to get mean and ugly and to work smarter, not harder. If only he could figure out what that meant, he might be able to pull it off.....
Death skulked in the window looking for answers, sending tiny black clouds soaring across the ceiling of the cube farm, further puzzling the Wikkies who struggled to find meaning for them, while taking video of the scuttling clouds on their cell phones and calling CNN to report their weird indoor weather. How could she die? It had to be fast-like now. It had to be painful, as she was really starting to piss him off and it had to let him dissipate so he could move on to his next stop. He still had eighteen people to knock off by his department's next update meeting, which would be Monday meeting. It was now Friday, near lunchtime for those who could still ingest solid foods.
Lunchtime.... Somehow April's lunch was going to kill her. This was Plan D and he couldn't go any farther than that, so it had to work. That was it- wherever she was, whatever she was doing, she would choke to death, it would be lonely and painful and she's be conscious for two to three minutes, so she'd get to look in his face as she checked out and he would triumph. He drifted back toward her desk to figure out what she had planned for lunch.
April, who usually walked for an hour on her lunch, was trying to figure out the same thing. She was feeling lazy, did she want to get her three miles in today, making over fifteen miles for the week? Or did she want to go nap in the car and try to get close to the recommended eight hours of sleep that she was three hours short on for last night alone? She wasn't that hungry, since the celebratory Snickers infusion, so she grabbed her apple and put her coat on. She would decide once she got outside if she was walking just to her car, or out to the "Nature Trail", which mostly portrayed the ills of human nature over any other kind, but underneath the flotsam of litter, running water was visible flowing through the creek bed.
She grabbed an apple from her fruit bowl. April hated to shop and hated to run out of things even more, so when she did finally shop, she bough in quantity and she bought two of everything, so that she had a full supply of food at work. This worked fine for bagels and small quantities of fruit to be eaten quickly, but sometimes the bowl of rapidly decomposing fruit and its accompanying flies was an issue in the Cube Farm. Today, however, there were just a few items of barely ripe and still firm fruit, so there had been no protestors about. A few more days, however...and they'd all be out there circling with their signs and chanting in front of her cube in support of the decaying fruit.
April bit into her apple, just as her e-mail notification dinged. She sat back down to read the e-mail while chewing a too-large bite of apple. Or trying to chew. Death, perched on her desk next to her monitor screen smirked as he watched each movement of her jaw muscles. He was counting down. NOW. April swallowed, realizing too late that she hadn't chewed that chunk of Granny Smith's bitter apple nearly enough. The chunk lodged in her throat and shut down her airway. She was beginning to panic, she realized that she could not 'cough, speak or breathe', like the posters all say and would dearly love some intervention. But everyone else was at lunch. Those folks are never late to a meal, and no one was around. She quickly traipsed through the cubes, looking for just one hard working person who didn't run off to lunch at the stroke of noon (or, knowing her co-workers, half an hour before noon.) She found no one.
Her eyes started to bulge out of their sockets and their watering sent salty tears cascading down her face. She thought it ironic that while she was choking to death, she could still taste the salt of her own tears. She thought about calling 9-1-1, but realized that they couldn't arrive soon enough to save her. She recognized that she was down to a minute, maybe thirty seconds left. She hurled herself against the wall, but this resulted in the apple wedging itself deeper yet and breaking her left radius, not that that would matter much longer.
April couldn't believe that it could end this way. She touched up her lipstick and brushed her hair. She was aware that a whole bunch of people would soon be staring at her lifeless body, for the last time in fact, so she may as well look as good as possible under the circumstances. Her final thought was of her dogs waiting for her at home. Death's leer could practically be heard from a mile away and his celebratory dance-a combination of the moonwalk, the cabbage patch and a little bit of the bus stop-was inspired.
April didn't hear the door open, nor feel the resonant booming voice of Dumpy's boss as he strolled into the farm. He came up behind her, assuming that she was reading the e-mail still open on her screen and heartily whacked her on the back a few times in his typical hello gesture. This was his normal greeting, and while she had come to hate it and mastered avoiding interacting with him after the last time when he broke three ribs and she bit off and swallowed the tip of her tongue, this time she could not resist.
Death, watching the events unfold, screamed "NO!" He formed dark circling clouds and tried to blot out Dumpy's boss, but to no avail.
Dumpy's boss hid his surprise at the resulting violent explosion of air and still recognizable apple that splattered across her monitor, as he glanced at her slick, reddened face her eyes popped open (she had closed them- she didn't want everyone to see her body with bulging eyes and was worried that closing a dead person's eyes wasn't as easy as they made it look on TV.) He stepped back. She breathed deeply, aware that for the second time in barely as many hours, she had escaped death. As her brain's oxygen supply returned to normal, she was beginning to notice a pattern. And she didn't like it.
Death was reduced to hysterical tears, sobbing and screaming and thinking about how this woman clearly has one hell of a guardian angel looking out for her. What the hell was he going to do now? Time to call in help, even if it means a demotion. There could be other powers at work here, powers that he didn't even know about, much less have any idea how to defeat...
Copyright 2007 Antigone Lett. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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