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Join Date: Feb 2006
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fifty stories
This is my first short story and feedback would be greatly appreciated. It is a tad bit longer than usual at around 2700 words, but it goes fast.
fifty stories
the city was bustling, like new york city, or london, or some place that would bustle. the sky was dark but lights exploded everywhere: in store windows, on cars, from the tops of street poles, from the tips of lit cigarettes. the city was aglow. cars lumbered both ways down worn streets, their red and white lights leaving sad trails in the night. taxi drivers were yelling, cars honking, feet scuffling, music roaring. the air vibrated with all the noise. the sidewalks were crammed: people walking, running, jogging, strolling, shuffling. all of them with a place in mind to go. no one was idle. to be idle was to give in to death, and no one here wanted to die.
office buildings loomed up like infinite canyon walls. only those privileged enough to spend their lives cooped up in offices knew the true nature of their exile. from on high one could see the street lights stretching out like thin threads from one infinity to the next. the light and bustle bled through the buildings, making a glowing grid of action. it was enticing. who wouldn't want to be there? everything anyone had ever dreamed was right there, at that intersection, in that coffee shop, down those stairs, in that car, in the mind of that person sitting on that rusty bench. it was all there.
but when one is not there, one has nothing. of all the office buildings, one in particular looked excessively lonely. its entry was crumbling, its sills dusty, its matrix of windows lit up like a television screen showing the same boring crap all day long. behind one window on the top floor, looking out through a smudged and overworked pane of glass, was a man. he wanted it all. he wanted it all but he was fifty stories too high. if only the stack of papers on his desk didn't exist. if only his computer didn't exist. if only his boss didn't exist. if only his office building didn't exist. then he could be down where people stilled lived something called life. if only.
without warning his computer screen threatened to blow out his eyes with a vicious blast of photons, and his stack of papers came to life and began a funeral march across his desk. he was pulled back to work, to his task, to his life. his eyes focused on the screen, turning strange, unintelligable symbols into things his brain could process and understand. slowly they came to him. his eyebrows wrinkled and he looked old, though he was not. he was the perfect age. he was the age that everyone is when they are sitting in their offices and just want to cast off and sail away.
his mouth became pursed. his throat tightened. his fingers tensed. he tried to make himself go. he turned the key and pressed on the gas but nothing happened. his fingers didn't move. they sat poised over the keyboard but they didn't move. and why should they? he could understand their position, but he simply had to have them work. finally, after centuries of persuading, coaxing, debating, and conversing with his fingers, he got one to move. just one, and the letter stood alone. it had no friends, none before and none to follow. the finger was done. they all were.
he stared at the screen, at that letter, at that one dead pixel on the top row of pixels that had always made him want to throw his screen out the window and watch it descend to its artful demise on the black river below. but his computer was his only real friend these days. its backlight lit his darkened office and its humming fan was his only auditory company. but it also represented his sad tie to that disintegrating office building and all that it stood for. he hated it. he hated the papers on his desk and the brutal violence that went into their harvest. he hated the desk and its imitation wood surface. he hated the light switch, and the paper clips, the rubber bands, and the office chair. and he hated the phone, which, at that crucial moment, rang.
it rang. the lights blinked. the noise cascaded off his ear drums and around in his head, triggering his i've-got-to-get-out-of-here safety mechanism. and he had to get out. his chair crashed back. his desk grated. his papers flew. his rubber bands and paper clips went into orbit. his door opened. his feet left the ground. he was gone. his phone kept ringing and blinking off into nowhere.
He was out and around, swinging on corners and bursting through doors. nothing could stop him. nothing except a brick wall that came in the form of words. dreaded words.
"why didn't you pick up the phone?" well, the words themselves weren't really dreaded. nothing was really in the words. it was more the voice. the voice of a brick wall. the voice of his boss and the man that stood between him and that street fifty stories down. "i called your office and you didn't answer. why are you running? did something happen?" if only he knew.
"everything happened sir."
"everything?"
"yes sir."
"what does that even mean? everything. everything..." he rolled it around in its mind, trying to stuff it safely in the box. "well everything couldn't have happened because if everything had happened you would have answered your phone. and that didn't happen."
"everything that mattered, sir. like the street and the papers and the pixel in my computer screen." his boss peered at him. what is wrong with him, he thought.
"what is wrong with you," he said.
"nothing's wrong sir."
"well i don't know what's going on here. streets, papers, pixels. what's a pixel? you need to get back to work. i need that report, and i need you to type it. i don't pay you to go prancing merrily about the office all day spouting this 'everything' nonsense."
"but sir, i can't."
"what do you mean you can't."
"i just can't make myself, sir. the report won't come. its not there. my lifetank is completely empty. i'm just running on fumes. i need to go refill."
"you can refill on a fresh pot of coffee."
"sir, coffee is not the equivalent of life. that street down there is the equivalent of life. and thats where i'm headed." and off he went, an olympic dash. he looked back once and saw his boss. and his confused eyes and round cheeks and straining buttons and shiny leather penny loafers. he saw it all and it made him run like the wind on a windy day, blowing down streets and alleys and in doors and across faces. door after door passed through him. or maybe he passed through them. it all blended together. then out of his blustery flight loomed the door to the men's bathroom, and he could do nothing but enter its depths.
he pulled on the handle and clicked his heel on the tiles as he walked in. he felt the pressure in his abdomen and took measures to remove it. a row of urinals, a comical scene. one of them flushed. it wasn't his. it must have been the man next to him, the man that looked familiar. in fact he looked much like the ceo of the company the man worked for. suddenly he was nervous and flushed. he walked to the sink and turned on the water. he looked into the mirror and saw two eyes staring back, but they were just his own. he shifted his gaze and strange eyes came into view with a strange patronizing smile down below them. he couldn't look. he swung his eyes back down to his hands, smeared some soap in one and rubbed, then rinsed, then dried, then dashed. his feet flew under him. the walls breezed by.
that smile and those eyes. that ceo was not even a person. all day everyday he gave it all and all he got back was a smile. the smile wasn't even there, it was just the upturned corner of the lips, not a smile at all. what a man he was, or lack of man. the barrier between them was complete and secure. no communication passed between them. it was just a baron and his serf. but that man was long gone. for now he was just gone down the hall. but pretty soon he would be fifty stories up, still stuck in his cage.
the maze lengthened and got more complex. the race was on. the man's shoes were burning, his speed unbearable. he passed a coffee cup and overturned it. he passed a plant and overturned it. he passed a dictatorship and overturned it.
then the slick hall loomed, blossoming out of a bottle neck, showing its glory to the world. its chandeliers and marble and suits and ties were all unnecessary. but they were nice, comforting, otherworldly. he had entered the portal, the exact location in all of the space-time continuum where he had the chance to make his descent. gleaming brass doors stood closed in front of him. an inviting button was nestled close by, alive in the marble. his finger made contact with the button and it exploded violently in a mellow and insignificant notifying glow. he was one step closer.
"are you going down?" the man jumped. who was that? then something came up beside him. it was a craft of some sort, alien in nature. two large wheels, and a chair in between. then reality came swooping back and the alien craft turned into a simple wheelchair. it was quite conventional really.
"is the elevator going down?" the voice asked again. he tried to reach back and grab the words. he had them by the tips of his fingers and replied:
"yes"
"oh good" said the man in the wheelchair.
"yes. i'm going down to the bottom."
"yes?"
"yes. fifty stories."
"thats quite a ways."
"not really."
"it is when your early." he looked at the man in the wheelchair. he was old: wrinkled, grayed, frail.
"what am i early for?"
"for your escape into life."
"i thought it was the perfect time."
"well you see, the perfect time is always too early."
"if its the perfect time then how can it be too early?"
"you just need to think about it..."
"i'd rather not. thinking hasn't gotten me anywhere."
"nowhere?"
"nowhere but that office."
"it got you here to this elevator. isn't that something?"
"if i wasn't thinking so much about everything i wouldn't have come up here in the first place. if i had just started living from the get go this elevator would be useless.
"but thought gives us science and rationality and logic."
"i don't want that. its just clutter. i just want the world as i can see. just the reality waiting for me fifty stories down." then the majestic brass doors opened and the man passed through, into the chamber that would bring him back to life. he turned around as he entered, and faced the space-time portal for the last time. the old man was gone, whisked away on some temporal breeze.
those fifty stories went by slowly. people got on and off, coming and going to different places in life. no one stayed long. maybe it was because they didn't like his presence, or maybe they were just too caught up in everything: stacks of papers, computers, phones. how strange it all seemed to him now. he plummeted down, ever onward.
then someone got on. and she was different. she looked just like everyone else in the way that she dressed and walked and held her papers. but there was something different about her. at first he thought it was something in her eyes. but really, eyes are just eyes. they don't tell secrets. it was something else. it was like he could see her inner self. the self that was jumping and yelling and dancing and laughing and crying and exploding. the self that was hidden to most.
"where are you headed?" she asked.
"the bottom. where are you headed?"
"somewhere. i'm not sure. wherever the papers are headed i guess."
"i see."
"why the bottom?"
"don't you know?"
"what do you mean?"
"you know why i'm going down. i know you know."
"well... yes, i know."
"that's why."
"i think about it. about life. about what its like down there." the elevator stopped. "it's enticing. it's just so far away." the doors opened.
"it isn't really. you could come if you'd like. break out. live." she looked at him and smiled. it wasn't a happy smile, but it had some life in it.
"maybe tomorrow." she said. and then she was gone, her legs carrying her out and away, never to come back. the doors closed. the elevator started down again.
then the moment came; the moment he had been waiting for. it was the moment that the elevator doors opened. they opened uneventfully. he thought maybe he would see a glorious light and hear the voice of some external creator, but there was nothing. it was just the same old lobby with dusty marble and cracking leather cushions. nothing was new.
but there in front of him, way off on the horizon, so far off in the distance as to almost be invisible, were the doors. those doors that led to his freedom were only separated from him by a vast sea of marble and strands of humanoid marsh grass. the elevator doors began to close but he squeezed through their fingers. now it was time for the trek across the desert.
slowly he made his way, weaving left and right between the indifferent people. they were all blind and deaf and on their way to nowhere. their expressions were stony. they looked like walking monoliths. the giant stone creations lumbered around under the fluorescent lights, stumbling to find their places in life. once or twice he was hit by one of the granite goliaths, but they were so insubstantial that they crumbled at his touch. they were nothing more than shells.
eventually, after one hundred grueling days without food or water, in constant contention with those crude stone sculptures, he had made it. there were the doors with the security desk next to it, and the portly fellow with a policeman's cap on, sitting behind it. he had a coffee in hand. what else was there to do at that time of night but drink coffee? just flood your veins with caffeine and you're all right. the security man looked up at him. they smiled. they knew each other. it wasn't a close relationship, but one that deserved a conversation, and so one ensued:
"where are you going? isn't it a little early to be leaving?"
"early is the perfect time."
"oh really?"
"so they say." the capped man looked at him as if he were expecting more. his eyebrows raised.
"i just couldn't take it anymore, it was just too much.
"what do you mean?"
"just everything: the stack of papers, the computer, the phone."
"oh." he didn't get it. he was content.
"are you happy here?"
"yeah i'm happy, i guess. i don't know. the coffee's free."
"yeah."
"yeah."
"well, it's time for me to go. i'm off to see the lights."
"alright. well, i hope you like it. i hope you find what you're looking for."
"thanks." he waved. then extended his leg and took a step, then another, and another. his hand reached out and grabbed the door handle, swung the door out, and stepped through. he was here.
it hit hard. all those things and just too much to sense. but it was beautiful, vivid, real. it was just as he had imagined all those years, sitting up at his desk doing nothing but gazing fifty stories down. now he himself was fifty stories down. he was among the living, with everyone and everything. he looked up and down the street. he saw all the lights and all the people and all the cars; all the intent and all the action. he heard all the sounds: voices, whispers, yells, screams. he felt the cool air, felt the people brush past him. he felt the life in everything he sensed out on that street. even the cracked sidewalk and the dusty sills. from down here it was all beautiful and all perfect and all complete.
he began walking. he wasn't sure where he would end up, but he was going all the same. he was on the move and living. blocks and blocks passed. cars passed. people passed. he looked back. there it was, his former prison and place of employment, that matrix of lights showing the same boring crap all day long. and there, on the very top floor, was that one dark window, that one empty room, that one dead pixel that represented his journey. he stood and stared for a while, soaking it all in. this is perfect, he thought, i'm alive. then his shoes scuffed, kicked up off the ground, and he was off down the street.
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