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Next: Bolide Part Three
Bolide Part One
Published July 5, 2009 Fiction , Story , Uncategorized 2 CommentsTags: Recurring, Serial
Its the last moments of the workday before its “Friday Happy Hour” or whatever the boss-ess is calling it. You work at (name of business withheld) all week long staring into a computer monitor while your eyes twitch to your own heartbeat and your ass expands beneath you a little more everyday and now you have to spend the last hour of the week face to face with all the same people you can’t wait to get away from. I would rather continue staring into my monitor and have my eyes melt then to spend face time with these idiots. I mean for christ sake they work here of all places, what a miserable bunch of automatons! But then again I work here, I guess that makes me one of them. When I look around at each of their smiling faces I can’t imagine that’s true.
First you’ve got Steve who thinks he’s some kind of hardass because he got into a slap fight last weekend at some prissy martini bar and now he wears a band-aid to cover a small scratch under his eye as if it’s some kind of trophy or title belt. I guess it must really turn his girlfriend on. The very same girlfriend who suddenly appears every Friday to attend this shindig even though she doesn’t work here. That scowling super self-infatuated, autobiography reciting bitch. How can Steve stand her? How can she stand Steve? I hope they don’t breed!
Then you have Teresa who has got to be just one click above “functional retard”. I cant believe this girl has made it to 27, how has she not managed to kill herself by now? The other day in the break room at lunch she had some kind of salad and she was shaking up some Italian dressing to pour on top and on the first shake it splashed all over her face and chest. The top wasn’t on right. No one saw but I had seen it out of the corner of my eye and all the rest of the day she smelled like a salad and yet no one even mentioned it. I pretended not to see so she wouldn’t feel stupid.
Then there’s the boss lady, the creator of this hour-long misery drama. Amy is the stereotypical woman boss. Imagine, in a whiney little voice that’s trying to come off manly, “I’m the boss and it’s going to go my way”, and “don’t think you can push me around because I’m the boss, I’m the boss, I’m the boss. You’re a man so I have to really show you who’s in charge and don’t stare at my boobs even though I seem to always have them at your eye level and a button is strategically open. This is one strange woman.
And then a whole tree of rotting office fruit who are equally annoying. Five more to be exact.
Well its one hour till quittin’ time and so the boss-ess herds everyone into the break room and the ritual commences like it has for the last year and a half, ever since I started work here.
I sit there and listen to their imbecilic chatter and I wonder, “if these people are human what the fuck am I.”
I try to force my mouth to smile and occasionally grunt to exhibit some sign of mental presence and I imagine the look on my face makes me seem as if I’m some kind of lobotomized ape. My eye lids get heavy and I can feel the drool pool in the corner of my mouth and then I realize “whatever I’m doing and however stupid I look it’s working, these people buy it”. “Do they see me as one of them”? Maybe they’re thinking the same way I am and that to each of them I am just some idiot in their mad stage show, but if that’s the case they sure seem to be enjoying themselves a lot more.
Today we are having margaritas and someone has brought chips but sorry no salsa. So its crappy margaritas, tortilla ships, idiot banter and just a little less then an hour until I’m free of this counterfeit life, free to travel to my other life where things don’t seem to be much better as of late, but at least in that other life none of these zombies have roles.
Tawnya, the cute office girl, asks me what I have planned for the weekend. “Well”, I say, “not a whole lot”. “Oh that’s too bad”, my boyfriend an I are going to…I tune out probably because I care so little, but I do watch Tawnya’s mouth as she speaks and I notice she has the slightest lisp and I wonder “is she just thirsty or has that always been there”. I occasionally nod and she seems to think I’m listening but with every word she says it gets harder to indulge her and I can begin to feel my blood pressure rise. I want to say to her, “do you ever shut the fuck up or do you just like to hear yourself talk”. Luckily she’s asked a question by Blain, another office troll, and she leaves me in peace to ponder the intricacies of her mouth.
So this pack of morons talks fancy about this and that, smacking their lips as they chew their tortilla chips and slurp their margaritas and it gets to the point where I can’t take it and so without saying anything I standup and walk on out. I know boss-woman Amy will have something to say about this on Monday but that’s a long ways away from now and at the moment my sanity needs refuge and it needs it bad. I just hope she doesn’t chase me down, if she lays her girl power bullshit on me now I might just do something I’ll regret.
I’m walking to my car quicker then normal, it’s like I’m escaping. My cell phone rings and I see it’s my friend Ricky. If there are two people on this planet who I feel comfortable around its my two friends Ricky and Chase but lately even they have been getting on my nerves, they have no sense of adventure they always want to do the same thing which is basically nothing, that and smoke pot. Every Friday like clockwork it’s over to my house to play pool and drink into the wee hours, it’s the same thing every week, its beyond monotonous now. Not to mention I don’t smoke pot so after a few hours they both sound like mumbling idiots speaking in tongues. I’m in the room and we’re speaking English and then we aren’t. I don’t understand what the hell their talking about at a certain point. Don’t get me wrong Friday’s at my house was fun for a while but you do anything over and over again and it becomes drudgery. Even porn stars take time off.