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Bolide Part Two

Part Two:
I answer my phone and say, “What’s going on man”. Ricky says, “Not much, got off of work early and went to Rhino and got a few CD’s to listen to.
“Oh yeah”, I say.
“Yeah, Spellbound and Three Blue Teardrops”,
“That’s cool have you listened to them yet?”
Just a little of the Three Blue Teardrops, It seems like it’s good so far. Hey, you want to play pool at you house tonight?”.
I can’t believe he just said that, we nearly got in a fistfight last weekend when I tried to convince the boys we needed to get out in the world a little more. It’s like they don’t even hear what I’m saying or they’ve suddenly become agoraphobic and are ignoring my suggestions as a result of their mutual psychosis, some kind of diversion tactic to cope with their new phobia.
“Again! Man we have got to come up with something else to do, I’m sick of spending Friday nights at my own house, plus there’s no girls there, how are we ever gonna get chicks if were locked up in my house playing pool every Friday night?”.
Ricky answers, “Chase and I don’t want to go out, it costs too much and the bars suck anyway, lets just play pool at your house tonight and try to think of something to do for next Friday as we’re playing, I’m sure we’ll come up with something”.
It sounds like bullshit to me, basically a runaround but whatever, they’re just not up for anything so I say, “Fine I’ll see you over there, I might be a little late, I gotta stop and get some food.
“All right we’ll wait out front of your house.”
“Don’t smoke that shit as your sitting there, I don’t want my neighbors thinking my house is some kind of drug den”.
Ricky laughs, “Don’t worry we wont”. I hang up quick hoping he can sense my irritation at the loss of another night of possibilities.
A crap day looks to become a crap night. Are my friends becoming just like the miserable horde I work with? That’s a scary thought, I’m running out of sanctuary in this world. What do you do when you hate your job and then you go home and your own house seems like a prison and you hate that also? Damn things suck right now”.
I think maybe I’ll get on the road and drive right past my place and keep on going, keep driving till I’m face to face with some kind of adventure, some kind of situation that requires more from me then just breathing. I find it unfathomable that at this point in my life I am surrounded by people who seem to be content, even those close to me just smoke their weed, debate the latest baseball trade and tune out of life. They’re crawling their way through life. I don’t want to crawl, I wasn’t god damned born to live like this, you find contentment at the end of you life if your lucky not at thirty fucking three. If you’re thirty-three and content you’re already dead, you just don’t realize it. I can feel my blood boiling, I wanna hurt someone, I wanna lash out like a caged lion that’s just escaped and is looking for revenge. I wanna punch those two fuck heads sitting in front of my house right now right in their glassy fucking eyes, take that bong and smash it over their heads bring them back to reality where things actually happen, rip them out of their hideout fantasy world.
I should just keep driving, maybe rob a bank and finance my own gang of robbers, we’ll travel around from sea to sea robbing and stealing like the James gang. It’s too bad modern technology makes that nearly impossible, it would be a much shorter career then it was in the past. There must be some other way. Maybe a “Travels with Charlie” kind of deal, hit the road with my dog and just meet different people and see where fate takes me. That’s a nice idea, but it would cost a lot of money even if done on the cheap, not to mention I would loose my job. I don’t know……., fuck it lets see what the boys are up to.
I answer my phone and say, “What’s going on man”. Ricky says, “Not much, got off of work early and went to Rhino and got a few CD’s to listen to.
“Oh yeah”, I say.
“Yeah, Spellbound and Three Blue Teardrops”,
“That’s cool have you listened to them yet?”
Just a little of the Three Blue Teardrops, It seems like it’s good so far. Hey, you want to play pool at you house tonight?”.
I can’t believe he just said that, we nearly got in a fistfight last weekend when I tried to convince the boys we needed to get out in the world a little more. It’s like they don’t even hear what I’m saying or they’ve suddenly become agoraphobic and are ignoring my suggestions as a result of their mutual psychosis, some kind of diversion tactic to cope with their new phobia.
“Again! Man we have got to come up with something else to do, I’m sick of spending Friday nights at my own house, plus there’s no girls there, how are we ever gonna get chicks if we’re locked up in my house playing pool every Friday night?”.
Ricky answers, “Chase and I don’t want to go out, it costs too much and the bars suck anyway, lets just play pool at your house tonight and try to think of something to do for next Friday as we’re playing, I’m sure we’ll come up with something”.
It sounds like bullshit to me, basically a runaround but whatever, they’re just not up for anything so I say, “Fine I’ll see you over there, I might be a little late, I gotta stop and get some food.
“All right we’ll wait out front of your house.”
“Don’t smoke that shit as your sitting there, I don’t want my neighbors thinking my house is some kind of drug den”.
Ricky laughs, “Don’t worry we wont”. I hang up quick hoping he can sense my irritation at the loss of another night of possibilities.
A crap day looks to become a crap night. Are my friends becoming just like the miserable horde I work with? That’s a scary thought, I’m running out of sanctuary in this world. What do you do when you hate your job and then you go home and your own house seems like a prison and you hate that also? Damn things suck right now”.
I think maybe I’ll get on the road and drive right past my place and keep on going, keep driving till I’m face to face with some kind of adventure, some kind of situation that requires more from me then just breathing. I find it unfathomable that at this point in my life I am surrounded by people who seem to be content, even those close to me just smoke their weed, debate the latest baseball trade and tune out of life. They’re crawling their way through life. I don’t want to crawl, I wasn’t god damned born to live like this, you find contentment at the end of you life if your lucky not at thirty fucking three. If you’re thirty-three and content you’re already dead, you just don’t realize it. I can feel my blood boiling, I wanna hurt someone, I wanna lash out like a caged lion that’s just escaped and is looking for revenge. I wanna punch those two fuck heads sitting in front of my house right now right in their glassy fucking eyes, take that bong and smash it over their heads bring them back to reality where things actually happen, rip them out of their hideout fantasy world.
I should just keep driving, maybe rob a bank and finance my own gang of robbers, we’ll travel around from sea to sea robbing and stealing like the James gang. It’s too bad modern technology makes that nearly impossible, it would be a much shorter career then it was in the past. There must be some other way. Maybe a “Travels with Charlie” kind of deal, hit the road with my dog and just meet different people and see where fate takes me. That’s a nice idea, but it would cost a lot of money even if done on the cheap, not to mention I would loose my job. I don’t know……., fuck it lets see what the boys are up to.

Next: Bolide Part Three

Bolide Part One

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.

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.

Next: Bolide Part Two


Bolide is a story in rough draft form. Bolide is a Myth Syndicate project.