The Divine Loop - Chapter 35 - Reflection is up.

The Divine Loop - Chapter 33 - Jesus Wept

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The Divine Loop

Prologue

"You ever notice how as soon as you buy a truck shaped like a ham sandwich, then you notice them all over?"

"Heh nice dude. Check out the blonde driving it, I'd impregnate the fuck out of her!"

"Back in Soviet Russia, we had hot blondes as well. They lived in Chernobyl!"

"Dude."

"They were not much up for impregnations, however! I made love to a woman from Chernobyl one time. Our genitals fused together, as in cruel joke from the heavens!"

My fellow stock boy walked away shaking his head, back towards the front of the store.

Vlad was a former Russian soldier who fought in Afghanistan, worked as a butcher in the meat department, and had four fingers. He always had horrifying stories of the Soviets whenever more than one person was standing around talking. Except most of them were likely false as he contradicted himself all the time, and I knew for a fact his name wasn't really Vladimir. I saw his paycheck once. It said "Joseph".

"Am I right? You get joke, yes?"

"Yeah I get it."

"Alright, high four!"

Once upon a time. "Say Vlad, what happened to your finger?"

Vlad, normally smiling, got extra serious. "I was in shack with family. My brother, he come running home one day. Shopkeepers were chasing him for stealing bread. Only they not really shopkeepers, understand? One grab me, demand to know where is my brother. He was hiding in ditch in field. I refuse tell him, I say, my brother he has not been here all day. BAM!" Vlad slammed a butcher's knife into a pork butt. "He chop off my finger."

Everyone was terrified. Vlad was staring at his hand, head hung low. It was so quiet you could hear the value of rubles drop. Then he smiled, and looked up. "But I deserve it for insolence! I never tell another lie in my life!" He went back to chopping meat, and everyone stared wide eyed at each other. Except me.

Another time, I was smoking out back with a couple of the other guys, about some lame party I'd gotten roped into going to the next night. Vlad came outside, apron covered in blood. "Hello fellows, mind if I join in with you in a cigarette?"

"Oh .. no, go ahead."

"Do you have one I can borrow? I will pay you back well."

"Here you go."

We stood silently for a few minutes, staring into thin air across the alley. Vlad turned toward us. "My break is over now, I must get back to work. Farewell, men!" Then he put the cigarette out on his arm.

The other guys stared slack jawed at him. Everyone was in awe of this man, this beast, this demonic alien. No one could wrap their heads around him. What had he gone through to turn into such a thing, no less a man than an animal? Ration lines? Starvation? Torture? No one could concoct a scenario where a child grows from an innocent creature to an unstoppable force of nature; gravity, electromagnetism. Vladimir.

But I knew better. And I smiled at them knowingly, never daring to smash his pedestal. I liked being in on the secret. If you met Bigfoot, but he hid and cowered – would you turn him in? I wouldn't. I'd wave and turn around. I always was more observant than everyone else.

After all, I knew he'd never even lit the thing in the first place.

I stared at his hand without moving mine. "Don't you get sick of that high four joke?"

His wide toothed smile disappeared, then turned into a genuine grin. This was the first time I thought he had ever told me the truth. "Sometimes I do, yes, but people always leave me alone afterwards. A man can never have too much peace. Do you understand?"

I nodded. I could have used more of it myself.

"Hey, where the SHIT are all my stock boys? Get your asses in gear!!"

The manager was yelling at us again. A box of fruit cups had an urgent need to be on grocery shelves immediately, you understand. Never mind that the shelf was already three fourths full of them. "I swear, I should fire every one of you useless dumbasses right now. My goddamned pet goat could do your jobs. BRIAN! I'M TALKING TO YOU!"

He rounded the corner, and saw I was having a chat with Vlad. "Oh. Uh, anyway, just get working on those canned goods next."

"Yeah boss, I'll get right on that." He turned and gave me a dirty look as he kept walking.

"That guy is a royal jackass."

"Do not worry, my American friend. In my country, we have a term for such men."

"What's that?"

"Virgins!"

I laughed, and went to put fruit cups on the shelves. I managed to fit five of them in.

I woke up tangled in a web of lies, an intricate system of shadows and serpents hell-bent on my destruction. I searched the floor for my contacts, but found only empty plastic soda bottles and pizza boxes. Stumbling to the bathroom, I looked in the mirror and saw someone who wasn't myself. He was standing in a long hallway, red walls, burgundy carpet. Records playing in the background, softly, silently singing the world to sleep. When Johnny comes marching home again, hoorah. Hoorah. A blue hue, the echoes of silence and regret from a network of friends and relatives alienated, destroyed, weary and irreplaceable. Every six months, the colors of the universe are inverted. No one is the wiser. They continue their lives unabated, nonplussed by a nonentity such as myself. We'll give him a hearty welcome then hoorah, hoorah. The merchants turn their eyes to avoid his presence. The crowd moves away. The devils fear him. The evil that lurks runs and hides. Finally, they understand what he was sent to do. Don't tell them that, Johnny.

What?

You shouldn't give that away. When Johnny comes marching home again, hoorah, hoorah.

Who's there? No one answers. Lightning flashes behind me. I look outside, but the night sky is bright and powerful. There's movement in the mirror. I turn to look, but I'm gone. When Walter comes marching home again, hoorah. Hoorah! The hallway is green. Orange. Something is happening to me. When Steven .. When George .. When Na..When Johnny comes marching home.

Did I really have it so bad? So many have it so much worse. How many ever get a chance to be redeemed? Or even consider their alternatives? Maybe they too were punished for using their imaginations. But unlike me, they didn't keep doing it in private. They just changed their path. Think of all the possibilities. Imagine what I could be out doing right now, instead of muddling over these words. Fearful of a self fulfilling prophecy, of taking the wrong risk. Answering the wrong question.

Day 200. My anniversary. I sit in the dark, alone. I fear for my life. I fear for the lives of those I've loved. I fear what I'm capable of. I think everyone else fears me as well. But I no longer fear them. They no longer have control over me. They are powerless to stop me. Just as I am.

Get ready for the Jubilee, hoorah. Hoorah.
They'll prove the worth of Rule Three, hoorah! Hoorah!
The crown of thorns is ready now
To place upon his loyal brow
They'll all the rue the day when
Johnny comes marching home.

"Why are you eating bread?"

Bread. I remember bread.

"I don't know. I just wanted some. Do you want a slice?"

I knew why it sounded good. It feels ... safe. Clean. It reminds you of something familiar. For you, maybe your childhood.

"Uh no thanks. Do you want a soda? I'm going to go buy one."

Soda. I wish I had a soda right now.

"Nah, thanks."

The room felt intimate, pulled together, compressed, a singular string of spacetime connecting us, intertwining our fates. There was a great gulf between us, but we were never closer. It was a wonderful feeling, a beautiful feeling. Finally someone was there for me.

Rule three. Rule three!!

Then it was gone.

"How's he doing?" She took a big drink. I couldn't see it, but I could hear it. I wanted a drink. Saline solution. What a sweet elixir.

"They don't know. The tumor's growing again."

"Didn't they take it out?"

"I guess it came back."

"That guy must have the worst luck, first it was cancer and now this?"

Dead silence.

I dreamt I was in an endless sea of green, nothing in any direction could hold back the tidal wave. Shelley was there, and everything was ok again. We were lying in the grass hands behind our heads, smiling, laughing, uninhibited. Reminiscing about everyone we knew, and making fun of them. It was bliss, lying next to each other; the world disappeared, nothing mattered anymore. Then she was gone.

"You really are pathetic."

She was gone, gone yet again. Someone else was taking her place. Her name was Sandy. And wherever I went, she tortured me. I stopped smiling. I couldn't bear to look at her. I put my hands at my sides, and they morphed into fists.

Rule three. Rule number three.

"Look at you, you little baby! Fantasizing about the girl of your dreams and all you do is look at clouds."

Sandy was a girl. She was a girl who I liked once, once upon a time.

"She's already dead thanks to you, so why don't you leave her alone?"

I made the mistake of telling her about it. She made me the laughing stock of the whole high school.

"Seriously not even a blowjob or something? Ha ha, I knew you were a fag!"

I gritted my teeth, and dug my nails into my palms. I couldn't murder an apparition. I couldn't punch a dream. But she was there. She was always there. Nagging me. Making me doubt myself. Every time I went to sleep, Sandy was there. Every time I closed my eyes. Every time someone smiled at me. Every time I tried to be pleasant. To be happy. She was always there. I couldn't make her go away.

"Everyone knows it already anyway. Or expects it!"

"Thanks to you."

"Oh don't be trying to blame me for that, it's not my fault you're such a loser."

"True, I couldn't even score with a skank like you."

"Hey, how's Todd doing?"

"He's good."

Deader silence.

Macaroni macaroni, sweet potato pie. Don't kiss the boys, don't kiss the girls, cause they will make you die.

"Heyyy buddy, you enjoying those wieners?" Henry had just walked in the break room door, and he was already on a roll. He was asking Brian. Brian put his fork down, and didn't look up. I chose to ignore him entirely. I stabbed a couple of my own, and chewed them with reckless abandon. Henry went over to a folding table and started stuffing vegetables in his face, and occupied himself sexually harassing some accounting people.

Laurie came in and sat down. "Hey Johnny, what did you bring for food day?"

"Uh, buns. What did you bring, other than your own buns."

"Hey! Nothing, I'm not having anything. Why would you bring buns and nothing to go in them?"

I planned on putting some wieners in them. I don't like anything in my buns. I forgot to buy the hamburger. "I tried to make roast beef and it didn't turn out very good."

"Better get you a girlfriend who can cook then!" She winked at me. I glared back. "Hey Brian, what'd you bring?"

"Pineapple upside down cake..."

"I wasn't asking you!"

"Too bad."

"I'll have to try some!"

I knew he wanted to make something else. Macaroni and cheese casserole. Everyone always kept asking him to make it. I wasn't sure if he didn't want to be seen as a cook, or was trying to be nice because he knew I couldn't eat it. But I think maybe he just didn't like the attention.

"He killed himself because of you, you know."

"Shut up."

"Ha ha, he had a crush on you!"

"Shut UP!"

Steve came in and sat down with a big plate of meatballs. Steve was new to the company. He had been there four days. He had no idea what he was in for.

"Mind if I sit here?"

"Nope."

"Walter, right?"

"I can live with that."

"Do you not like Walter? Maybe Walt?"

"Oh he doesn't like anything, do you Johnny?" She smiled at me again. Her teeth were too perfect, she was too beautiful. It was annoying. I wanted to punch her in the face, and sire her children. I hated it when good looking people tried to tease me. Except her. Well, I hated it, but I didn't.

I could tell by the look on Steve's face that he had no idea what was going on.

"Yeah, Lettice here is right-"

"Shut up! I hate that name!" She punched me in the arm.

"Then why did you name your son Carrot?"

"His name is Matthew!" She slapped the table, and crossed her arms, an incredulous, open mouthed smile on her face.

"Yeah my real name is Meat. And this here is Potato." I flicked a thumb at Brian. He chuckled. That was rare.

"Stop telling people that!!" She punched me again, a whole lot harder this time.

Steve slowly looked down and took a bite of a meatball.

"I changed my name because I don't like it. You can call me Walter."

Steve swallowed, and looked like he was trying to search for the right words. He pursed his lips, closed his eyes, and pointed his plastic fork at me. "So, you changed your name to Walter?"

"Well, once. I've changed it a lot. Right now it's actually ‘Motorbike St. Francis'."

"Motorbike?? Why Motorbike?"

"Why not Motorbike?"

He looked at me for a while. Shook his head, and pronged another meatball. The nerve of some people, living their lives differently!

Steve was going to be a problem.

"I'd hate to be the one here when he wakes up."

She had no idea.

"Hey Steve, I remember him! You got him fired too, didn't you? Wonder if he killed himself too!" She leered at me and disappeared in flashes, laughing from every direction; the empty void ceaselessly taunting me.

"You'd better get home, Todd'll be wondering where you are!"

"He knows I'm here."

"What a moron! Look at this dumb bitch. Husband and son at home, and she's watching over your ugly carcass. What is it with you and worthless bitches?"

The silence was back, but it was different this time. We were alone together again. More alone than ever.

"I miss you. Get better."

A voice rang out, as the sky flashed darkness. "They're both dead now. I hope you're finally happy. You just had to chase after her, didn't you? And what a last meal she had! Ha ha ha, ha ha!" Everything turned red, black. Invisible.

I knew she was scared. She had no idea what to say to me if I woke up. I knew she would be there, waiting for me. Finally, I knew. She was one of the few who knew about the first Shelley. Or the second, depending on how you look at it. She didn't want to be the one to tell me that now both of them were gone. And it was most likely my fault.

But it was alright. I already knew.

"I wish I could break your neck. I wish I could just reach across infinity, find you in your room, and break your ugly, snot nosed, bull dyke neck!"

There was a burning in the pit of my stomach. It was worse than usual. The fire was real. It wasn't figurative this time. The walls were coming down. Whatever was inside me had finally snapped, and my private hell was about to be unleashed on the world. Heaven help it, for it knows not what it does.

"Something's wrong, is the monitor supposed to be beeping like that??"

"No, something's wrong! Get a nurse!"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!"

The nurses had already came in the room, and were trying to figure out how my heart rate was off the scale as I woke up, grabbed the needle out of my arm, and threw the IV through the window.

"WHERE'S SHELLEY!?"

"John, she ... she"

"I know she's dead, I said where is she!!?"

"How do you .. ?! She's ... they're at the funeral home!"

I ran outside without thinking about what was going on. I didn't know how to get there, but I had to go.

Then, all I saw was a bright light. Something had snapped. I no longer knew what was going on.

"Son? Son, where are you going?"

"Oh, I ... I don't know."

"What's your name?"

Rule 30. Damn it. Rule 30.

"...My name? J..John. John Paul VanHousen."

"Alright John, now think. Where were you just headed?"

Rule 5! Jesus, Rule 5!!

"I ... I think I was going to find some paint."

"Some paint? Why paint?"

"Well ... I need it to go back in time."

Shelley was back from vacation. She spent two weeks with her parents in the Caribbean. At some resort. "Happenings" or "Scores" or something. She had all kinds of stories about lying on the beach; watching people drink cocktails, wind surfing, all that fun stuff. I sat a few tables away and listened. I'd taken a few days off too, but only had 75 dollars. So I drove about a hundred miles, and then came home. In a diner, an old guy stared at me, then I almost ran over a squirrel.

It had been four months since Brian's funeral. I had driven by myself, as no one else in the company seemed to care. Since that time, I hadn't much felt like being around them. Except for Laurie. Laurie was the one person I had left. In another life, we could have been a couple. She was like a big sister, who I wanted to sleep with. Life was complicated. Lunch time doubly so. And brunch, holy shit, brunch was like calculus. Too many cantaloupes.

I sat a few tables away by myself and listened, because Laurie didn't ever eat lunch. That's when she came in. "Hey dude, I've got a problem my computer is locked up."

"Sounds bad." I took a drink. She crossed her arms and chewed her gum some more.

"Yeah, it is. We're supposed to have these things scheduled by 2 pm."

"2 pm? What happens at 2 pm?"

"I don't know! Are you going to come help me or not?!" She smacked me on the shoulder.

"I guess so." I took another drink, a long one. Then I threw the rest of my stuff in the garbage. We went back to her desk, and I fixed it. Thank god it was by 2 pm! I didn't really need to ask what happened at 2 pm; I knew. It was Friday and the account managers wanted to go home early to have extra time to get skanked up for their bars, or parties, or wherever they were going to go hunting for semen. And chlamydia.

"So did you ask her out yet?" She grinned at me, open mouthed, gum about to fall out as always. I gave her an evil eye.

"No."

"Why not?" She smacked me again. "She talks about you all the time you know. And all the stuff you did in high school."

"What stuff?"

"I don't know! Like hanging out and stuff!"

"Oh."

I walked up to Shelley during lunch in high school one day. I hadn't seen her in a few days, and was excited to catch up. I sat down next to her. "Hey, what you reading?"

"The Fountainhead."

"......Oh." I pulled out my algebra book, and we didn't speak the rest of the hour.

I got up from Laurie's desk, and stood there for a minute.

"Want me to ask her out for you?" She laughed. I rolled my eyes. "Not interested?"

"Not really."

"Why not?"

"Just not."

Shelley hadn't gone to Brian's funeral either. The only excuse she had was that she hadn't known him at all. Not that she said that, but I knew that was the only one she could have. It was valid. But I still blamed her for it. I didn't think Laurie would have gone either, but luckily she had a valid excuse. She was in labor at the time.

"Hm, well, if you want to talk about it, let me know."

"Alright." I went back to my desk.

3 pm came, and I called her. "Hey, do you have a minute to come in here."

"Yeah, I'll be right in ... ?" I didn't normally call her. Or anyone. She walked in, with an odd look on her face, and no gum in her face. "Can you close the door."

"What?"

"Yeah, close the door." She did. I opened my desk drawer. "I know you're not going to believe this, but I'm going to tell you anyway. Even though I shouldn't." I pulled the purse out, and sat it in front of her.

"Aw Johnny are you a cross dresser now? We can probably set you up with a nice guy if you want!"

"Very funny. I found this in the locker room a while back."

"Yeah? Hey wait a minute, this is Susan's!" She grabbed it and started playing with the zipper. A big lump formed in my throat. I was terrified she was going to open it.

"Susan?"

"Yeah Susan, oh you weren't here back then. She quit like seven years ago. This was just sitting in the locker room?"

"It was in one of the lockers. I saw it one day and pried the door open. Give me that!"

"Hey! So what are you doing with it?"

"It can talk to dead people."

Now she stopped fidgeting, and stared at me, wide eyed. "It can talk to dead people?? Prove it."

I opened the zipper. There was nothing inside. "Doesn't look like I can right now." I gave it back to her. She opened it up and stuck her face inside.

"Hellooo dead people!"

"I don't think I can give it back to Susan right now, wherever she is."

She tossed it on my desk. "Well you definitely can't give it back to Susan, ‘cause she's dead!" And a piece of paper flew out of the purse and hit me in the face. And it said:

"Yes I am dear, but it's ok! Miss you!!"

I held it up to her. "That is freaky! You should take this on the road. Can you talk to just anyone?"

"There's more." I opened the drawer back up, and pulled out my soap box. It was an individual bar of soap that I found, still in the box. I pulled the bar out, and handed it to her.

"What am I supposed to do with this?"

I closed the box, showed it to her, opened it back up, and pulled out another bar of soap. "Wash with it." I handed her the second bar.

"I am not washing with that!! Where did you get this stuff?"

"This was in another one of the lockers."

"How do you think this happened? You've got to do something with this!"

"I don't know how it happened. But I've got the idea that it was something I don't want to get involved in."

"Why not? This could be huge!"

"There's a guy-"

"What guy?"

"-a guy that's been following me, I think. I bet he's after this stuff."

"You'd better be careful. Now I'm going to be worried about you."

"Heh, all I have to do is find the towel that shoots lasers." She threw the soap at me.

"So who have you talked to? Did you talk to Brian?"

"I tried. He didn't have much to say."

"Where is he? How does it work? The afterlife??"

"I don't know. We talked about computers."

"What?? How could you not ask where he is!"

"I did, but whenever I tried he wouldn't answer."

"Well that sucks!"

"Yeah. Oh, he asked how his dog is. You know. Odin."

"That damn dog! Chewed up my socks the other day. And we renamed him ‘Pretzel'. Hey, and he chewed up my purse too!"

"Well you can have that one. I'm done with it."

"How can you be done with it?"

"It won't let me talk to who I want to. And Brian's not answering anymore anyway. You keep it."

"I can't take this!"

"Sure you can. I need you to keep it. Hey, I think I might go ask Shelley to go eat somewhere tonight."

"Hey! She was talking about you a few minutes ago! She wants to have you over to her place. Take this and talk to like, George Washington or something."

"No I mean it, I need you to keep it. And if anyone asks, it's just a purse." I put the two bars of soap in it, and zipped it back up. Then, as I handed it back to her, the lumps disappeared.

"...Oops."

Then I looked on my computer, and I had an instant message. "hey, would you like to come over for dinner tonight too? I'm cooking :)"

I wondered if Shelley was a good cook. I wondered if there were any dead people she needed to speak to. Then I wondered if she remembered I was lactose intolerant.

By the way – Laurie wasn't her real name. She hated her real name. Her real name is Lettice.

I was reading a newspaper at the library when I had an idea. I wondered what would happen if I put a tree in a blender. It turned out I didn't have any trees, so I had to go to the tree store. Instead of having any good trees, all they had were azalea bushes. So I went home and cut it up, and put it in a blender. It didn't smell or taste very good, probably. That's when I realized an old man had tried to feel me up in the toy aisle. I was checking out the products my former company had recently released, when a man in a maroon fedora came into my aisle. "Well, hello there, " he proclaimed.

"Uh, hello."

Then, he grabbed my shoulder, tipped his hat up, and said in the most stilted, serious tone I've ever heard, "You take it easy, now. It can be a dangerous world out there. Don't let it get you down." And he walked away without looking back.

"Um. Yeah. I'll ... do that."

Who was this fucker, this beast of a man, to stroll into my toy aisle. I didn't know then, and I'm not too sure now. But at least now I know he's been following me.

Life is a wasteland. Sometimes you're knee deep in the shit, sometimes the shit is deep in you. I was walking to the break room to buy a soda and an imaginary copy of People magazine, when I passed Durjaya in the hallway. Durjaya was a fellow programmer, and he was generally a happy fellow. He always had a smile on his face, even when he got stuck with the worst problems. He looked a lot like this:



One could never tell if he enjoyed life, or if he was deranged. I only said "hey" as he passed, because trying to have a conversation with Durjaya was usually quite an adventure. It was worse than pulling teeth. It was like pulling the teeth of a brown recluse, who is also a recluse. He only comes out once a week for groceries, and also he's poisonous.

I was on the phone with some old lady who couldn't right click her touchpad or something, editing my resume, when Henry came, red faced and boiling over, into my office. When Henry wasn't conducting a chocolate concerto, he was freaking out over minor mistakes.

"Uhh, the site is down."

I kept staring at my monitor. Henry looked like he'd seen a ghost. I looked at him without moving my head. "It's down?"

"Uhhhh yes. And I uhhh," (shaking his head vigorously, as if to will our website back to life through pure magical thinking) "I cannot find the problem, I did not cause it, and I will not be responsible."

By this point in time, I had long since moved to other supervision, and thus Henry's blustering had as much effect on my demeanor or actions as a wiffle bat in a hailstorm. I kept staring at my resume. Looked good. "Alright. I'll take a look at it."

Henry was a big fan of Lord of the Rings. Henry had a life-sized portrait of himself commissioned in full medieval regalia, holding an incredibly phallic sword in front of his face. He had it in his living room. I was unable to look at Henry without picturing it. So, I didn't.

He stood in the doorway of my office for a few more seconds, looking absolutely heartbroken. Then, he left. Durjaya stared at Henry's huffy walk back to his cave, and slowly stepped in to talk to me. Durjaya was Brian's replacement. Technically, he was a good one. On a personal level, he was hopeless - and made me feel more lost than ever. "Something is wrong with the web server?" He had his usual look on his face the entire time.

"Oh. No. I think Henry's just having some computer problems. See?" I turned my monitor around, and showed Durjaya our working homepage. I hit refresh a couple of times.

"Oh oh ok." I turned the monitor back around and opened my resume back up. After all, I knew everything was fine. I had pinged Henry's computer to death myself to see how long it would take him to come storming in all red faced. It was a boring day. And Durjaya didn't really care if I had a purse that could talk to dead people, a baseball figurine that refused to move, a plastic wand that kills mold, or an endless individual bar of soap.

"So, how was your weekend?" I looked up, and he was gone. I guess I didn't really care how his weekend was anyway. Looked at my list of instant messenger contacts. Old ladies, middle managers. Everyone interesting was dead or offline. I decided to send Durjaya a message. "so how was your weekend?"

"very good." Then, he signed off.

I decided to make some more thorough edits to my resume. Then I wrote a short story about a programmer from Czechoslovakia who rode the bus every night, and found a magical pair of scissors that could teleport him to work. I decided to call it "Public Transportation."

Then, I drew this picture:

I wonder if there is a calcium carbonate planet where the animals settle their stomachs with humans. I am fine with my consumption of antacids. I consume them. Little bits of fragrance, irrigating the crevices of my bowels, calming the fire that burns within. Ha, holy damn, that sounds so stupid. "Hey, what character is this chapter about?" What. "You know, who-centric is this." It's me centric, who are you talking to. Who is this. "It's me, dumbass." I looked around the room in a daze. What, this is happening now. I'm looking around the room in a daze. I only slept four hours last night. I don't remember how long ago last night was. "Go to bed. I'll talk to you later." I have no idea what is going on anymore. I can't. I can't sleep. "Ever since you found it." Ever since I found it. I've been trying over and over to talk to you. "I know you have." But you won't answer. "I can't." I wish I could talk to you. I just wish I could talk to you again. "But you can't. It won't work." I know. I don't know why it won't work. I don't understand! Tell me!! "I can't tell you." WHY NOT!? "Because this is just you imagining me here. This isn't really me."

I've always been the type of guy who turns to the end of the book before he finishes the first chapter. That way, at least I know what's coming. "You can't say that!!" Why not? "Not without some kind of a plan!" What kind of a plan? "People are going to go read the end now; you put the idea in their heads!" Maybe the idea was already in there, in their heads. Maybe they did it already, and now I've caught them. "Go to bed, asshole." Fine, maybe I will. "Good." Good. It's creepy trying to talk to dead people who aren't answering anyway. "Fine." Fine.

The sweaty pillow fled across the bedroom, and the wordslinger followed.

Early, as the rosy-fingered dawn appeared, I woke in a daze. I was dreading work later that day. I fell back asleep, and woke up fifteen minutes before work. The dawn may be rosy fingered, but 7:45 am is just a finger.

Brian came into my office. He didn't say anything. He just looked at me.

"Hey. What's up."

"Uh, nothing."

"Oh. ...Did you need something, or ..."

"Yeah."

This was a typical conversation with him.

"Well, what is it already?"

"Why is there a purse in your front seat?"

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, and I halted my typing. I looked at him, wide eyed. Looking up from my work was rare enough, but this was on a whole new level. There was an uncomfortable pause, a pause longer than many acquaintanceships, a pause filled with regret, ire, obsessive compulsion. He knew. He knew. Kick him off the cliff. Bury him in the forest. No one can ever know. Lines of potential conversations streamed through my head, repeating over and over, subtly changing, shifting, until I knew how to guide him to where I wanted. I could scarcely imagine what would happen if I told him the truth. Any one of a million things that were rumbling in my belly. He would think I was crazy, or lying, or making fun of his ... preferences. It had gone on too long. I had to say something. All of my plans were terrible. I simply told him the truth.

"Close the door."

"What?" He closed it anyway, and sat down.

"I found it in the locker room."

"And?"

"You're not going to believe this." I said, with an air of dismissal and hopelessness.

"So? Tell me anyway."

I paused again, and kept typing.

"Come on."

"I think ... I think it can talk to the dead."

"Oh, shut up. What's it really for?" I knew why he was asking. He was worried that somehow it would make things worse for him.

"I'm serious." And I pulled a folder out of my desk that was full of slips of notebook paper.

He pulled one out.

"'Shelley doesn't want to talk to you'? I don't get it."

"Not the Shelley in the other room. A different one."

"She's dead?"

"Yeah."

"Oh. What happened?"

"... I killed her."

I was wandering around the third grocery store of the night, when a stockboy asked me if I needed some help. "Oh. No, no. Just looking."

I was in the cookie aisle. He left, and came back with a cardboard box. "You sure you don't need any help?"

"Yeah, I'm sure."

"You look like you need some help." I looked at him, and gave him an expression that said I did. Then I saw his nametag. Brian. Brian, the stockboy. I decided to tell him.

"Well. I'm trying to find Hydrox cookies."

"Hydrox cookies? I don't think they even make those anymore."

"I heard they brought them back again, another anniversary. They did that once before, but it was a long time ago."

"Oh. Well, I don't think we have any. But we've got like, six kinds of Oreos."

I winced, and looked at the floor. "They're ... they're not the same. They're just not."

"Oh." He turned, and started opening the box. Maybe this once the universe would give me a win. Just once. Just a little one. Maybe he had some in there. He reached down, and pulled out red, white, and blue filled Oreos. "Sorry. Good luck, though."

"Yeah. You too."

He gave me a puzzled look as I walked out of the aisle.

"You didn't literally kill her. ... Right?"

"No, I didn't literally kill her. But it's my fault she died."

"I doubt that." I didn't answer. "So, you've been trying to talk to her?"

"Yeah."

"But she's not answering?"

"I keep getting messages from someone else instead. I'd show you, but I don't think I should right now."

"Who is it? Who's sending you messages instead of her?"

I stopped typing, and leaned back in my chair.

"Well. He says ... he says his name is Brian."

"Oh. ... You know, a lot of people are named Brian. It's pretty common."

I didn't know how to tell him.

"This one keeps saying ... "

"What?"

"He says he used to work with me, and it's my fault he's dead."

I've made some small but significant edits to Chapter 1. The first few chapters are pretty glaringly different now, and I'll probably make more changes later.

At this point, I'd like to announce I have a title. I'd like to announce that, but I'm not going to right now. I want to play it close to the chest a bit longer, like Nintendo at a press conference. However, I think I do have one. I'm going to sleep on it for a while, and if it sticks, I'll put it here.

We were sitting in the room I'm not sure had a name where Shelley worked. "What do you think I am, a red or a blue?"

"You're definitely a red."

"Bullshit!" She slugged me on the arm, paused, and picked up the red one. Then, she drew big squiggly lines all over her hands and forearms. "So, what about you?" She smiled, and rolled the red marker over to me.

"Um." I stared holes in the red marker in front of me. "I think I'm yellow and green." I gingerly drew a small yellow line on my left palm and a slightly thicker green line on my right.

"Bullllshit! You can't be two colors!"

"Why not?"

"That's against the rules!"

"This has rules now?"

"Heh you're goddamned right it does!"

"I guess I'm green...greener anyway." I drew a green line on top of the yellow one. It turned blue. I showed her and she laughed.

"That's really gay, blue people suck!"

I didn't look up. I was looking at my hand and thinking. Shelley was red for sure. I never thought about it before, but Brian was black. I only thought about it after he was gone. But I knew in my heart that Shelley was blue. And I knew red Shelley wouldn't like blue Shelley, if she ever met her. I didn't want that to happen. Because deep down I was thinking about Shelley whenever I was with Shelley and I knew the opposite would happen if I ever saw her again. I wouldn't meet Brian for a few more years, so I wasn't thinking about all of that yet. Just the three of us. I looked up. Red Shelley wasn't smiling anymore. I wondered what she was thinking about. Lighting my dorm room on fire once we broke up. Running me over with her parents' old car. Burning a bra, and then an effigy of me. I liked her a lot. But she worried me.

"Would you ever wear a corset?"

"What?? A corset? Hell no!" I looked back down at my hand. "I mean, not all the time. Do you want to see me wearing a corset or something?" I looked back up. No hint of a smirk crossed her face. She was being sincere.

"No, not at all. What's your favorite jello flavor?"

"Raspberry. Are you afraid I'm a man hating nut case, or something?"

I kept staring at my hand. "Maybe a little."

"I only took a women's studies class to laugh at it. And I spelled it with an ‘e'. Is that what you're worried about?"

"No."

"Did some skank break your heart? Hey! I'm up here." I looked up from the lines on my palm. "Do you want me to go track her down and cut her?"

I smiled, as best as I could. "That won't be necessary." I looked back down.

"So she did? Does she work in the cafeteria?" She smiled and tossed the red marker at me. I missed it.

"No, she's from high school."

"Oh yeah, what's her name."

"Shelley."

"What?"

"Yeah."

"I said, what's her name."

"Who's on first, what's on second."

"...Oh? OH. Her name is Shelley. Oh, wow."

"Yeah." I looked back up. "And she was blue. Or maybe yellow. I don't know. This is dumb."

"Well you came up it, dumbass! So, we're really nothing alike?"

"Complete opposites. As much as possible."

"That's ... weird." She didn't seem to like that it was weird. But it was.

"It's weird ... that I like you both so much."

"Like, present tense? Are you serious?"

"Yeah. I wish I wasn't, but, yeah."

"So ... what are we doing here? How is this supposed to work?"

"Well, I think we live our lives and try as hard as possible to forget she ever existed."

"OK. ..Done."

It was an unseasonably warm, sunny day in November. It was evening, and we were walking away from the cafeteria. "I wonder what it's like on a banana farm."

"Shut up, they don't have those!"

Suddenly, something hit me in the forehead. "Son of a BITCH!" I was looking at one of the dorms. There was a green dot on the wall. Shelley looked at me, and the hand that I'd let go of her with, to grab my head.

"Oh my god, there's green paint on your forehead!"

Someone behind me was out to get me. I looked around, but there was no one. We were by a road. But it was a cul de sac. I looked up. No open windows. No one peeking out. It was a stairwell and those windows didn't open. No cars, no students. No ... angry brothers, or parents. Just me, Shelley, a green dot on my forehead, and a cloth ball, covered in wet green paint. We were having a fun time. I'd forgotten my problems. I always did when I was with her. And then some jackass, some asshole, some kids, some frat brothers, had to ruin my day. And it had to have taken a lot of effort to do it. And for what? A green dot. I wanted to pick it up and throw it as far as I could. I wanted to kick it, stomp on it, murder it, kill it kill it kill it.

If it weren't for her, I would have. But she picked it up. "Come on let's go wash that shit off. You look like a Catholic on Alien Wednesday." I couldn't help but laugh. I was still pissed off. But I laughed. She grabbed my hand with one hand, and carried the green ball all the way back to her apartment with the other.

But a couple of blocks later, something happened.

A green toy truck seemed to fall in front of us, from nowhere. Actually, it was a blue truck, covered in green paint.

I was in the warehouse, waiting on some files to restore. Someone had accidentally deleted some spreadsheets. And try as she might, she couldn't find another copy. I was staying late to try to get a copy back for her. This time, it was Thursday.

Shelley had invited me over that weekend. She was having a party, of some weird kind. A few of our coworkers were going. I didn't know if I wanted to go. I did, but I didn't. Especially with other people around. In the meantime, I was digging through some boxes, looking for anything useful. That's when I found it.

I found a box of irregular toys – balls, with beans in them. They were striped, some orange with black stripes, some neon green with pink stripes. I smirked, I steamed, thinking back to that night when something really similar had almost pushed me over the brink. I didn't know if it had made a difference that night. But I knew it still bothered me. I still couldn't figure out where it had come from. Sometimes, when I was alone and couldn't sleep, I would think about it. I tried to be rational about it. Someone had thrown it, and they were hiding. We just didn't see them. Someone had shot it out of a potato cannon. Why would they have those in the city? And covered in paint? I couldn't make sense of it. It was just there, glaring at me, defying explanation. Laughing at me from the past. We had washed it off. It was just a ball. Four quadrants. Red, yellow, blue, green. Unremarkable. But unique. It was ugly, it was pointless, but it was all I had left.

Rule #26: I'm saving this rule for something special. At some point in my life, there'll be a rule that I wish I'd always had, and I'm saving this number for it.

Shelley and I had a weird tradition. Before we went to any sort of party, gathering, family event, we would sit in the car and talk about it. She knew I hated going to them, and so would try to convince me why going was a good thing. "You'll meet people!" "You'll have fun!" "Maybe you'll find a girlfriend!" She always said that one with a huge smile. I never thought it was too funny.

We were sitting in her car, her trying to convince me to go to Thanksgiving at her parents' house. "My brother won't even be there this year!" That was good. I always felt like one day he would try to kill me. "They're deep frying the turkey!" That was good. Really, she didn't have to convince me to go that time. I kind of wanted to go. For whatever reason. Sometimes, I wanted to go. Sometimes I didn't. Even when I wanted to go I would let her try to convince me. She liked it, so I pretended to like it. We were parked in the street, in her car, outside her apartment. She was talking about the mashed potatoes, and hot rolls, and we were parked in the street.

Rule #52: Don't park in the street.

They say I fought the nurses, and almost punched an orderly. They say I was blabbering random nonsense. They would never tell me what kind of nonsense. Colors? Names? It was a blue truck, a man named Walter. A drunk driver, celebrating all the things he had to be thankful for, destroying all of mine. He came to the intersection, and kept going. Broke his neck. Never tried to slow down. They think I should remember how it all happened. Her parents blamed me. Even my friends from high school said it was my fault because we were there. They say I should remember; they think I do. All I remember is the mashed potatoes.

I kept digging. I kept digging. And there I saw, a ball, full of beans, irregular and ominous like a vulture in a thunderstorm. Four colored quadrants, red, yellow, blue, green, and I grabbed it in terror, and threw it across the warehouse. Where it hit the newly painted wall the warehouse shared with the locker rooms, the newly, freshly, splendidly mint green wall, and swiftly disappeared.

One time in college I was sitting in the library reading a horrible book by a famous author about dying after having eight kids or something, when a girl caught my eye. And then, the other one. She was wearing a black dress with red veins, jet black hair with a maroon stripe, and struggling to rotate a bookcase. At least, she seemed to be struggling with a bookcase. In hindsight, I think the bookcase was struggling with her.

Hands on her hips, she stared for a moment, while I did. Then she crawled behind the case, out of sight, and I wondered what was going on. I wanted to help, but I realized that was either my desire to breed or my upbringing talking, and I was no wrangler of bookcases. Still, I kept watching and pretending to read so as not to arouse suspicion, even though no one else would ever dream of sitting near me. Then, she popped up as swiftly as she'd disappeared, carrying a bundle of network cables. That was when I decided she needed some assistance. I walked over.

"Looks like you could use a hand."

"I could use eight hands. Hold this."

She shoved the bundle of cables in my hands and I dropped the book. I was caught off guard.

"What's your name", she flatly stated, while she was crawling on all fours, her head buried in an access panel.

"John. I mean ..."

"You mean? Is it John or not?"

"It's a long story ..."

"Your name is a long story? That's kind of fucked up." She looked at me from her position on the tiles, and I felt like the awkward one. As always. She stood up halfway and grabbed the cables out of my hand. "You weren't staring at my ass, were you?"

"I, uh .."

"Good, I got my period. Faulkner, huh? I guess you want people to see you reading some ‘classic' book in the library." She made air quotes as best she could while holding a bundle of cables, and threw them in the panel.

"Well, not really – I mean, I guess. I wouldn't want to be caught dead reading this actually."

"Hrm. Good thing you're alive then." She smirked, slammed the panel, stood up, and faced me for the first time.

"So John, what are you really doing in the library."

I stared. I didn't know what I was doing in the library. I didn't want to be there. But I didn't want to be anywhere else either.

"Hoping to talk to some girl, I guess."

"How's that working out for you?" She smirked again and blew the hair out of her eyes.

"Uh, not so well. Like always."

"I was a history major." She flapped her arms in frustration.

I couldn't think of anything to say. She had been a history major. Yeah. She pushed me aside, and moved the bookcase back in.

"Got a master's degree and everything. And now I do this. What do you do?"

"Um, I'm a computer science major, I work in one of the labs."

"But mostly you hang out in the library, reading terrible books."

"Not mostly, just this once."

"Too bad, no one ever talks to me in here either. I think it's the job. Or maybe I'm ugly."

"Yeah. Uh! I mean, the networking .. stuff."

She smiled for the first time since I'd met her. Then, she walked away.

"Well, nice talking to you John."

"Oh. Yeah. Uh, you too."

She looked back at me without stopping. "Are you coming, or what?"

"Oh. Yeah. Yeah, I am."

I wasn't sure where I was going, but I was going.

"I tried to get my friend John to work with me on this shift, but he'd rather sit in his apartment and play games all day than talk to me."

We passed into an area I was sure I wasn't really supposed to be in, and I woke up. "Are you sure I'm allowed in here?"

She stopped, and looked at me, and then around the room. "You're in here, so looks like it."

"Were you .. fixing something back there? Because it didn't seem like you did anything .."

"Here, sit. I hid my boss's diary in some panel and I can't find it. One day he said I looked ‘bigger than usual'. I spent four hours crying my eyes out."

"Oh .."

"What a pussy. Half of that diary is love poems to his mistress."

"His mis..."

"I think she's like 17 or something. That guy creeps me out. I hate working with him, it's like he wants to molest me."

"Is that p..."

"One time he told Martin to print out website logs of all the computers in here. He always wants us to do illegal shit."

"...I could never work for someone like that."

"That's what I said." Suddenly, she was silent. I realized how alone we were.

"It's kind of weird, meeting you when John was supposed to be here."

"Well, my name's not John, I change it every year on my birthday."

She opened her eyes wider. "Wow, I should do that, I hate my name. And this picture. I look stoned or something."

She handed me her driver's license.

I almost snapped it in half.


SHELLEY WILLIAMS
756 EAST WATER ST
NEW BUFFALO, MI 49117

For anyone who's missed them previously:

Chapter 1 - Meet the Protagonist
Chapter 2 - These Links are Private
Chapter 3 - Recapture the Rapture
Chapter 4 - Dead Men Walking
Chapter 5 - Meat the Protagonist
Chapter 6 - Horizontal Rule
Chapter 7 - Tuesday The Salesman
Chapter 8 - Prairie Fire
Chapter 9 - Dingleberry Bunghole
Chapter 10 - Three Corners
Chapter 11 - The Book of 'Job
Chapter 12 - Meat Sauce
Chapter 13 - Breaking the Sixth Wall
Chapter 14 - No Thought Was Put Into This
Chapter 15 - Venison Beach
Chapter 16 - A Solitary Occupation
Chapter 17 - Conditioning
Chapter 18 - Just Curious
Chapter 19 - Siding
Chapter 20 - Something Unexpected
Chapter 21 - Maceration
Chapter 22 - A Horizon is Nothing
Chapter 23 - Every Man Casts a Shadow
Chapter 24 - Good Luck, Charms
Chapter 25 - Casual Connection
Chapter 26 - Something Special
Chapter 27 - Hydrox

Rule 23: There's a rational explanation for anything supernatural.

"...How the hell did you get here?!"

I was alone in the building again, sitting in a coworker's office. Her computer had malfunctioned spectacularly, and she was going to have to come in over the weekend to use a different one to finish up payroll paperwork. None of the managers seemed to care whether anyone was going to get paid the next week, and they took Thursday and Friday off - turning off their cell phones, while renting Mercedes cars in Cancun, going to wine "tastings", or whatever they did to waste all the money they made that they didn't deserve. Tech support being one of, if not the primary, job responsibility of myself, I stayed late Friday to get it working. It wasn't a big deal, technically speaking. I didn't really understand how it had happened, but that was fine. I could fix it. But I had a couple of hours to kill while it all righted itself.

April Fools' Day was tomorrow. Five months since I'd found the purse. Three months since I'd lost it on purpose. I had been walking around the office again, pushing in chairs, straightening papers, the typical OCD stuff. In my hand I had The ball player. The ball player was a blank faced batter, in inhuman colors. Blue face, pink shirt, neon green hat, red legs. No nose, no eyes, no ears. Five fingers. I assumed he had been part of an old line of toys, and had been miscast somehow. He was on his own in the world, no others of his kind existed – or had ever even been conceived of. The ball player lived on the filing cabinet of my coworker whose weekend I was attempting to save. I stopped in another department, and smiled. Then I took another coworker's name plate off her cubicle wall, and taped it to the men's room door. I was hilarious like that sometimes.

Then, I put The ball player randomly on someone's chair, and went back to Stephanie's office. Stephanie was an annoying woman who I either wanted to sleep with or choke to death. I guess that describes a lot of people. So other than that, she was unremarkable. Her middle name was something I can't remember, which she liked better than her first name, which wasn't Stephanie, but I also can't remember it. What I do remember is that most of the time, The ball player lived on top of her filing cabinet. I went back and finished what I was doing. Restart required! That will take another ten minutes. I got up to go buy a soda.

And when I stood up, The ball player was on top of the filing cabinet.

Pretend you're a raindrop. You start in the sky, and you're falling, and falling. All you can see is the ground beneath you, hurtling at terminal velocity. There's nothing you can do to stop it. Soon enough, it will all be over. It's going to get you. They've won at last. What can you do, but take it? And, worst of all, you're nobody. You're a literal drop in the bucket. If you had more support, more friends, at least as a group you could make a big splash. Your only chance is to get them the next time around. The next water cycle. You'd better get prepared.

I jumped back, startled. Immediately went to see if someone else was in the building. But there was no one. No cars in the parking lot. No one driving by. It was silent, eerily so. Suddenly, nothing was very funny anymore. I went and looked in the chair where I had placed him. It was empty. I decided it had been a sign. I put the name plate back where it belonged.

You know what; I don't have much to say about it. I got rid of the purse because I couldn't handle the thought of what it meant, and I didn't like the idea of this figurine either. I went home without a soda and without going back in her office. Monday morning came.

"Hey, I got your computer working again."

"Thanks, I guess, or whatever I said. Not like I was remarkable enough to remember. I was pretty grateful though, right?"

"No, it didn't take too long to fix. I didn't have any plans anyway."

"Something about the weekend, maybe my kids – oh right a baseball game or whatever."

"Well, she asked if I wanted to catch a movie or something Friday night, but I was here ... "

"More blather you didn't listen to – you never really listened to me, did you?"

"I think she went to a wedding Saturday – this ... mutual friend from high school. I wasn't invited ..."

"That's too bad – you two seem like a good couple - a, a good couple of friends!"

She actually said that line. I'll never forget that one. I've forgotten the others, in favor of that one. For people being unremarkable, and meaningless – sometimes their opinions can be devastating.

"Say, that baseball player - how long have you had him. Um, that?"

"That thing?! I hate that thing! But every time I try to get rid of it someone brings it back in here. Here, you can have it if you want!" She threw it at me. I had no choice but to catch him. Death. Burning. I was terrified. I wanted to run away. I pictured spirits coming for me. Slicing me to shreds. Stealing my soul in the night. The purple, black, darkened sky, a lonely road, burying my corpse while dogs from hell tear at my soul. I'm a rational person. I have a degree in computer science. There's no such thing as a magical action figure. There's a rational explanation. You can't use a handbag to communicate with the dead. It was just a momentary lapse of reason. There has to be a rational explanation.

I threw him back instantly. "NO! No! .. No thanks, no. Just wondering. ... Where he came from."

It startled me – he startled me, when he had reappeared on his own. But more than that, I was terrified. I knew what it meant. I hadn't forgotten. I remembered every time I stepped foot in the building. Every time I went to the store. Every time I tried to go to sleep. The memory was lingering there. It was eating away at me.

I had hoped it was an isolated incident. But when I saw he had come back, I knew. It wasn't an isolated incident. It never was. That's one thing I've learned in my life. Maybe I should make a new rule out of it. No incident is ever isolated. Only people.

Where he came from? Well, now I know where he came from. He came from the same place they all come from. The warehouse, the locker rooms, the other end of the building, the memories. Storage. There was no name for it. But they came from places where everything had gone wrong.

So we shared a special kinship.

I slammed my car door in the rain. Walking quickly through puddles, soaking the legs of my jeans, I slammed my mailbox door in the rain. Saturday, no mail. Vaulted up the stairs. Turned the balcony light off as hard as I could. "Idiots. If you're not using something, turn it off!" Idiots I had never met or seen. I stomped towards my apartment, listening to the old floor boards creaking under my anger. I threw open my screen door like a wounded tarantula hides under an overpass, and turned around. My car door had bounced open. It was hard not to leave it and go inside. But I flew back down – the other set of stairs – and gingerly closed it as hard as my arm muscles would allow. "Fuck. YOU." I pointed with intensity at the door. The silence of its laughter grated on my nerves. I could feel it smiling from behind me as I huffed my way back inside. My hand touched the screen door's handle, and the sun came out to shine. The clouds passed away, and the rain stopped for days. This only infuriated me more. Nature was making fun of me again.

I was soaking wet, and every second I stood on the carpet made it worse. One percent of my floor was now darker than the rest. I took my pants off, went to get a towel, and flung them towards my bedroom with reckless abandon. I was no pro pitcher in the blue jean leagues, however, and they flew too high, and one of the loops got caught on the moulding above my bedroom door. It was too much. I had an impromptu denim curtain in my hallway. I started laughing. They'd called me incompetent. Well, they'd implied it by not letting me talk. They never let me talk. No one ever listened.

The new ZigZag© X7 Rocket, impress your friends! Confuse your enemies! Ride around on a Day-Glo colored, scale model of a dangerous explosive device! One lead website developer had this to say about this wonderful toy for the whole family (as long as they're gay toddlers): "man, that thing looks like BOY GEORGE'S COCK." May have been doing the moonwalk at the time, in the bathroom. Some assembly required. Gasoline also required. Help line? People are smart, they don't need help, shut up Walter! What's this; we're being inundated with calls because someone didn't collate the manual correctly? No problem, everyone can work an extra four hours on the phones! I'm sorry your son is being burned alive ma'am, but there's really nothing I can do over the phone for him. Might I suggest a hospital?

ZigZag Fun Factory, Incorporated. What a pointless name. I always tried to ask around to see if anyone knew where the name came from. No one knew. Maybe the founders wanted to be last in the phonebook under "questionable toy manufacturers". Not that we manufactured anything. We just took the worst, most generic ideas, had some guys in China slap it together, and put our name on the box. And we sure as hell had nothing to do with the creation, maintenance, or even assembly of fun. Maybe they just had a sick sense of irony, and foresaw no one ever thinking through any of their executive decisions.

I was job hunting and roaming the warehouse. Not at the same time. But I was doing one while thinking about the other. Couldn't leave yet, because my shift calming down the mothers of toddlers who got napalmed by our product wasn't over. Of course, I had no intention of talking to anyone else that night, even if they did call. But the phones were finally dead. I contemplated inserting a fake record in the time card system, since I was the one who set it up, and no one else knew anything about it. Goddamn did I want a new job. But I couldn't bring myself to leave Shelley behind yet. Even though it was clear we weren't going anywhere. We were civil, and it was nice when we were together. But we were never together.

I liked to browse the old boxes of things that we couldn't sell when I had downtime. Ugly boxes of toy soldiers, miniature flags, plastic grenades. Tiny magic cards that weren't very magical. They smelled like fortune cookies, or formaldehyde. A row of baby blue, yellow, and pink plastic bicycles. Never released. They snapped in half whenever a kid tried to ride one. Gene wouldn't let anyone throw them out. So there they sat.

There was a big cardboard box of assorted miscellany, with "DISCARDS" written in permanent industrial marker. The kind that you have to have skin grafts to remove. It was next to the door to the locker room. Or, I should say, the opening to the locker room. At some point, the door broke, locking the janitor in all night until the early morning shift came in. Gene was too cheap to pay for a new door. And when the janitor refused to come to work anymore, Gene was too cheap to hire a new janitor. Instead, we got a cleaning service to come every night and – I assume – nap in our chairs, because nothing was ever clean again.

The locker room was a strange place. It was separated into a men's and women's locker room, but there weren't any doors. There were showers, and lockers. And a busted treadmill in the men's section. Some dumbbells (especially when my coworkers went in), and half of a stair machine. I'd never been in the women's section, but I heard once they had a couch in there. I couldn't figure out why they would want to sit on a gross couch in what was a glorified bathroom, but I couldn't figure out a lot of things about women.

No one used their lockers – except Henry. He kept a padlock on his. I walked slowly, cautiously around the middle section of lockers. I opened a locker. There was nothing inside. I opened another. A blank piece of paper. And some gross, green gum. With a big fingerprint in the middle. I shuddered, closed the door, turned around. I paused for a second with an involuntarily raised eyebrow. I'd seen something between the slits at the bottom of locker 23. Something turquoise.

The concept of "supernatural" is odd. After all, if anything supernatural is real, that means it's natural. We just might not understand it yet. Curses, and superstitions, and ghosts, and talking to the dead. Maybe it's real and perfectly explainable once you figure out the physics. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Maybe both, if the chicken was already inside the egg. Who can say? If you think it means anything above and beyond nature, then how do you define nature? It's like when people separate things into natural and man-made. Does that mean humans aren't natural? Even worse, how can some people use that same argument to justify polluting the environment? Just because chaos is natural doesn't mean you should contribute to it.

I don't know if there's anything higher than humanity or not. I'm sure if we advance enough, everything can be explained somehow. I kicked the door of one of the lockers one time. It had just been installed, along with six or seven others, to replace some that had been rusted and dingy and gross. One had been bloody. I put a big dent in the door of this locker. It was still there when I left. The locker, and the door, but more specifically the dent. So was Gene. Did Gene have a designer? I don't know. He was basically a human dent. Those lockers were designed by someone, because each one had a little metal nameplate that said where they were made. The old ones didn't, but I assumed someone had designed them. The plastic bicycles that injured the kids that tested them had a designer, a horrible one, and they were garbage. But someone designed them. Of course, humans weren't perfect. Then again, neither was the universe.

I walked up to locker 23 and gingerly tried to open the door. Nothing happened. I pulled up harder. Still nothing happened. Maybe the designer of this locker was defective. Piece of crap! I jerked on the door, harder and harder. It wouldn't budge. Maybe no one had designed this locker. Maybe it was willed into existence. Or it evolved from a hope chest. I walked back out to the warehouse.

Maybe destiny is real. I don't know. I would like to think otherwise. I would like to think that the future isn't written and we're all masters of our own lives. But we know that's not true. So many things happen we have no control over. I couldn't stop Brian from killing himself, even though I hadn't tried. Or known that I should have been trying. I couldn't bring myself to let anyone in on my secrets. I didn't like talking to people. I didn't like discussing myself. I couldn't admit weakness. I couldn't tell anyone I loved them. I couldn't stop my sister from dying of breast cancer at 14. Even though I thought I could at the time.

My grandfather was the person I was closest to when I was a kid. He was the one who understood me. Him, above all other people. Everyone else treated me like a strange, mystical being, different from them. Incapable of feeling, incapable of any number of mortal endeavors. But he was different, and I knew it. And he knew it. And I made sense. And I didn't get to say goodbye to him before he died. There was so much he could have taught me. So many things he knew about me that I'll never know now. Because he knew them about himself. Maybe it was destiny. But a destiny unfulfilled.

I grabbed a old screwdriver from the warehouse and jammed it into the door of locker 23, and it opened with a loud CRACK. And it sat empty inside, except for a women's purse sitting on the bottom. Turquoise, beautiful, the color of a sky after a devastating flood. I snickered, grabbed it, and sat down. Under my breath, I muttered. "What an ugly piece of work this is." I smirked. Then I immediately felt bad. "I like it though. So it's no wonder no one else liked it enough to keep it. Must be why it's been abandoned in here…" And I unzipped it, recklessly, not expecting anything inside.

And inside, I found nothing. It was empty inside. I grunted, and zipped it back up. Threw it in the air a few times, looked around the room. We didn't have a lost and found box, and I knew no one felt like they had lost this in the first place. I played with the zipper. I unzipped it, zipped it, unzipped it. Twirled it in my hands.

It hit me. A wave of hopelessness, the terrible empty scent of being alone in the world. An ugly purse, a rusted locker, a man sitting on a scarred wooden bench. No one would miss them. They could disappear from the world entirely without as much as a blink, without so much as a whisper. None of them had affected anything in their time on Earth, except each other. I held the purse perpendicularly in my hands. I flicked the zipper, and unzipped it again.

And a piece of notebook paper fell out. And it read, in blue, ballpoint, practiced script, the kind demonstrated for me when I was learning to write, the kind I studied, idolized, missed with all my heart:

"Be patient, John.
The time will come."