Real day 2

Work as a means to an end.  The final goal is to make enough money to support yourself. 

It's better when everything is a trade.  Well, everything is a trade.  It's better when you realize everything is a trade.  Just as there are good locksmiths, fighter pilots, doormen, banana farmers, there are good goof-offs.  The show must go on because the show must go on.  We don't have to have anything planned out.  You just act as-if it's going the way it's supposed to and phone that sucker in.  Work is rewarding for being work.  You feel good without realizing what for.  So when you turn being a lazy goof off into work, however inane and irreverent the skills you hone by doing so are to anyone but yourself, you can assuredly see improvement.


9/28 exercise

“..And when he came back out, his hands had been turned into STAPLERS!”  The assistant from accounting shouted, turning the flashlight on and off.

“That only works with light switches!  You just look like a strobe light moron.”  Shelly lambasted his weak ego.  “Now gimme that!”

“If you really want to hear a creepy story,”  She spoke in a low gutteral tone, in a bad impersonation of the witch from Legend.  “You are going to have to follow me.”

Once a year, the office had a sleepover lock-in.  It was mandatory, failure to make it would identify any unfortunate employee as a scaredy cat, and not a team player.   Each year was a different event, with Shelly delighting in the frightening of her fellow employees.  They would tell shitty ghost stories around a fax machine, (to which many preplanned faxes would be sent at a designated time when no one was in the main lobby), eat graham crackers and drink coffee (both of which were free regardless), and prevent others from sleeping by leaving them in a room alone when they passed out, followed by making spooky ghost noises over the intercom.  This was all great for office moral.

Tim started sharply in his makeshift office chair and desk type bed when he heard the sounds of whistling over the loudspeakers.  Silhouttes from behind his office door scampered.  “Very funny, guys.”  Tim thought outloud to himself.  “I am going right fucking back to sleep.  It’s not like I haven’t slept in my office before.”

Shelly led her gang down the tornado emergency tunnel, making sure to walk at a slow enough pace that would enhance the creepiness of the situation.  A few interns were playing games on their cellphones, a particularly exciting game in which the objective is to jump over fire or sometimes sharks.  On occasion the sharks would look like fire, or the fire would turn into snakes.  It was the job of the second player to control the sharks or fire.  Overall, anything to keep your mind off these creepy halls.

Shelly knew well to keep her fear hidden.  She considered herself an honorary bogeyman, more of a member of the nights team than her day team.  One of the phantoms.  The little more experience she had than the rest of her staff did allow her a slight advantage.  However, that creepy shadow hand waving like a dead tree branch in the wind did reach directly into her mind and toy with her senses.  The voice in the darkness calling “Accounting floor, accounting floor!”, which she was positive only she could hear, egged her on when it should have been discouraging.  Shelly smiled through her gritted teeth, and as she looked back on the line and saw the solidarity in indifference amongst her line, she knew they had to continue deeper into the heart of the matter.

Stirring once more, Tim thought it would be a good time to make a quick vending machine run.  Careful to check the door to his office for boobey traps or a well hidden commission based telephone salesmen, Tim stepped out into the hallway.  Beats being at home with the kids. 

The vending machine had a vast assortment of goods.  Any of these tasty treats would survive a nuclear holocaust, so their ability to fortify the human immune system should not be questioned.  There were the cream based Fizz-Pies, the explosive nugget centers of the French Fried Freedom Donuts, the especially savorable (Mesquite Barbeque) Wedge Skins, and the reflection in the vending machine window of the office door at the end of the hall slamming violently open and shut.  A brisk wind whistled down the hallway, encouraging Tim to pick something and make haste back to his own office.

Shelly saw the (literal) light at the end of the tunnel.  It felt similar to being in a prison escape movie; the escape takes you from an enclosed controlled space where paranoia is instilled in each innocent noise to an agoraphobic outdoor world in which nothing is familiar and treachery could be hiding behind any corner.  As she turned the doorknob, moments from last years employee lock-in flashed through her mind.  Although only one man had disappeared, and the survivors had been satisfied by the  subsequent pay-raises and liability waivers, the fact remained that one man had disappeared.  Word around the office was that it was an elaborate stunt, the alleged disappearer was stepping down the next week anyway, and their was a bonus in it for him if he played along.  Furthermore, it wasn’t a guy anyone particularly liked, and he was relatively quiet most of the time.  It wasn’t worth it to cover it up.

Shelly’s biggest worry was that Alan, the disappearer, was still in these back rooms.  Reaching for the doorknob, she knew what was behind.  A division which went on indefinitely, winding corridors leading to more winding corridors.  There were too many dead ends to discern whether or not there really was an end, a sprawling genesis of workspace.  Pushing the door open released the golden light from within, flooding the hallway with dancing golden graham dust particles.  On the inside, it was just as she remembered it; rows upon rows of empty desks.  The outlines of word processors, staplers, and desk lamps hung like ghosts on the vacated desks, the line of which extended in a single column like tombstones in a mist. 

“Uh, Shelly,”  A voice from the line of employees asked.  “This would be a lot creepier with the lights off.” 

“If this isn’t creepy, do you dare follow me into it’s depths?!”  Shelly gave a weak Vincent Price impersonation.  Shrouding herself in an imaginary cape, they proceeded through the tightening catacombs.  “You’re right about the lights though,”  Shelly admitted under her breath.

           Shitty ghost story, yeah!  I kind of hate when you get too many characters involved.  Character management is what you should be working on, brain.  Note to subconscious:  figure out what to do with characters.  They're supposed to lead me to the end of the story, or whatever.  I also noticed the biggest problem of writing from your dreams, which is there usually isn't any ending to those stories.  A lot of ghost stories use that cop out ending where everyone is frozen forever in some ghastly stasis, but I definitely don't want to do that.  Now the big question is whether or not I want to do a new story every day (which I'm leaning towards) or do a weekly thing where I do each one of these stories more on a weekly basis.  The point is 1,000 words so that makes no difference.  Then, next thing you know, 2,000 words!  Building endurance.  I had better stay motivated.  

       REAL DAY TWO IS OVER.