Hey guys, haven't written much lately to warrant a new post, but I kinda like this one. Let me know what you think and feel free to give me a grammar lesson too.
To Taste Ambrosia
There wasn’t much to see. The trees had faces and they screamed. My axe brought them all down, and I would wipe the sweat from my brow and chest only to turn around see that they had re-birthed themselves and were mocking me with their faces. Dutifully, I would return to work with my axe until their faces were once again gnarled with pain and horror.
“James, wake up. I don’t want to have to tell you again.”
I mumbled what I thought was an apology and a reassurance that it wouldn’t happen again, but when my boss was staring down at me with concern and a hint of scorn I knew he saw right through that lie. To be honest, it wasn’t a lie, I loved my job and if that little fact hadn’t been circulated around the office I’m almost certain I would’ve lost my job by now.
The dreams were getting a little peculiar now and every time I woke up I would remember some other small detail. There was no sun, just a white light that matched the hue of a computer screen. I picked up the bottle marked vitamins on the desk and popped a few of them. I waited for relief. When it came I got back to work on the database, I had a deadline to complete.
I kicked up the papers on my desk into a frenzy with one hand while imputing the data with my other. The numbers were flowing through. I could feel them crawl through my skin, it was like sticking my hand in a wall socket, they would shoot through my nerves rattle around in my brain briefly and fly to my left hand and onto the computer screen. I could see the perfection flow through me in brilliant flashes before my eyes, mistakes were nothing.
I went through an entire day’s work in mere minutes; everyone was so stunned they stared in gape-jawed amazement at my perfection. I was better than them and they knew it, I could see it in their pulsing eyes. I asked them to move aside, I was thirsty. I passed by my boss who could only watch in amazement as I hoisted the water cooler in the air and drank a flood in a single drop.
The walls bent and shook, moving out of the way of my lordly presence. I planted my feet still, yet the walls still moved for me in a fashion that belonged in a play-do world. The building moved around me, I was a rock in a universe that reality was forced to move around. My cubicle loomed ahead in all of its ugly modern looking cubeness. It did not belong in my universe, yet neither would it budge. It was an inevitable meeting of two immovable objects; the man, untethered from reality, and the implacable cube sent to bring men down.
My approach was inescapable, a god trapped in his own delusion. There on my computer screen were the trees with faces and in my chair an old man who stole my birthmark. He sat determinedly, eyes fixed upon the screen staring and typing into oblivion. He grabbed my arm and pulled me to him. We merged.
I awoke to a world full of light and men with masks over their mouths. My arms were restrained and my heartbeat was making the beeping of the monitor go strong.
“Don’t worry James, you’ll be A okay in no time and back to work next week.”
My boss was there. So were my coworkers, one of them, Patty, wore a cast on her left arm, she lifted it a little when she noticed me eyeing it. “Don’t worry, a few weeks and I’ll be all better.” A few minutes of well wishing later and they all left. The doctor came back in and took the straps off my arms and talked through a smile that only a sedative could wipe off.
“Don’t worry there Mr. Allwell, they understand it was an accident, they were really worried about you after you trashed the office, really tore the place up. But don’t worry, this place has a great counseling staff and we’ll get your medication readjusted so there are no more episodes, and just like your boss said, you’ll be up and around in a week.”
I don’t think he noticed the tears running down my cheeks.
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