by Craig Proffitt
Eating lunch in my crappy car. Staring at the Swamp’s glass door with the peeling tinted film. Don’t want to be around my coworkers in the lunchroom. Can’t afford to eat out. So many wrong turns. Survive another day. Is that really a goal?
I think another guy is living my life somewhere. Getting rich on my job. Driving my nice car. Inhabiting my house with a woman who should be my wife. Is coveting the same as ambition?
#
Tap my badge on the card reader. No click. Yank on the handles of the glass door with the peeling tinted film anyway. Locked. It’s a bad-luck day.
Mason opens the door. His white-whiskered cheeks spread. He always smiles. Says something about the gadgets being cranky, but my mind is on the Swamp.
“Thanks for taking the heat on those bulbs,” he says as I follow him to the cave where the zombies and vampires dwell.
“Didn’t take it. Just didn’t deny it.”
He whispers, “Nora is trying to pin something on you.”
“Nothing new about that.”
“But she has pull with Hendrix now.”
“What pull?”
He shrugs. “Something happened in the pool at the Phoenix conference. She’s mad as sin at him, and he’s her lapdog now.”
Could it be sex? No way. Even Hendrix wouldn’t have sex with that porcupine.
#
Walk into the Cave of Broken Dreams. Vampires pass with eyes averted. Zombies with empty smiles. Do I have an empty smile?
Pass the dark chamber where Hendrix plots the fate of the zombies. The vampires he leaves alone. Who wants to mess with a vampire? He looks up from his computer at me. The screen’s blue light makes his cadaverous face seem almost alive. Back to his screen. I am dismissed by the Lord of Broken Dreams.
Nora walks down the hall. Bangles jangle on her wrists like chains on a creature that escaped a perverse laboratory. Her threatening Nosferatu eyes blaze at me as she passes.
#
I’m in the vault. That’s the room where my mind leaves my body as I deal with the stuff that has to be organized on shelves. So much stuff comes in. So much goes out. New crate of pens waits by my stool. Forty boxes inside. Fifty pens per box. I steal one and slide it into my pocket. Stealing from the Swamp makes me feel like a rebel. And rebels are human, right?
Threw a party once to liven the zombies and tame the vampires. No one came but Mason. They want to stay dead. They feed on their bleakness. I tell myself I’m different from them because I’m just a guy in a rut. But truth is I’m rotting and bloating. Someday I’ll explode and spray gore all over the vampires and zombies. They’d enjoy that, wouldn’t they? They’d literally eat it up.
But exploding isn’t worst-case scenario. Surviving in the Swamp and getting Hendrix’s job is. I’d be doomed to drive a stupid no-frills German car like him. Live in the worst house in the good part of town like him. I’d probably marry some subordinate who thought catching a guy with an office was a big deal. Hendrix married the receptionist. She got a ridiculously massive boob job and a bunch of other work done after the wedding. Hendrix’s idea, I’m sure. The evil scientist built his perfect sexbot. And I’d probably have a kid like his who picks his nose at fourteen and eats it publicly without remorse.
Yellow sticky note on my computer about Nora’s presentation. Got to ask her how many packages of cheese sandwich crackers she needs.
#
Leave the vault. See Nora on her computer through her half-open office door. Shopping for more bangles. I knock once with the knuckle of my middle finger. Middle finger.
“How many of those cheese cracker things you need for your presentation?” I ask.
“You think I’m psychic?”
No, I think she’s psycho. And she should know how many people are going to show up to her own presentation.
She cackles like a frantic maniac. “Wait! Let me get my crystal ball.”
I’d talk back, but it’s pointless to argue with someone who is searching through their desk for an imaginary crystal ball.
“Just let me know when you know,” I say. Feel her quills darting at my back as I walk away. I have no idea what picayune thing I did, or she imagined, that’s made her hate me. Her hate is the cross she bears. Tolerating her is mine.
#
I look back fondly on my past as I walk into the vault. Had a great job once. Had a great girl. Had a great car and apartment. Then the cycle of bad luck. Will I look back fondly on life in the Swamp someday? Can things ever get that bad? What waits outside the doors if I leave this miserable place? What’s worse than misery? The fear of the unknown that chills my spine. Why do I think fear is worse than a sucky life?
My only happiness is the three beers I drink at the bar after work and sleeping with another guy’s girl who used to be mine. I took Alice from another. Then another took her from me. Now she sleeps with me on the side. Alice says she loves me. To keep someone on the side that one loves is cruel, but I endure because the sex is good. Alice borrows money and never pays it back. Don’t want to admit what our relationship really is. Like to think she would still see me—sleep with me— if I were penniless. Should end it for the sake of my sanity, but she reminds me of who I was.
This job was supposed to be just a limb I perched on while I made some cash and mended after the cycle of troubles. I’ve made a nest from my patches. So many cycles of troubles. This life, the woman I sleep with—they feel like they belong to someone else. Well, Alice does belong to someone else, but this sucky job and my sucky life are mine.
Time for a piss.
#
The vampires avert their eyes. The zombies waddle around with empty smiles. Nora steps out of Hendrix’s office and targets me with another glare. I don’t need her imaginary crystal ball to know something’s up.
“Thomas,” calls Hendrix. See him behind his desk. “Can you come to my office in ten minutes?”
He phrased the request as a question instead of an order. Uncharacteristic. Called me by my first name too. Also strange. I nod at the peril. Look at my watch and start the countdown.
#
I’m thinking of my badge not working as I walk to the bathroom. Was it shut off? Am I paranoid? Am I going demented? What if my personality splits? That’d be nice. The cool side of me could be a guy named Ryder who stays out all night chasing babes. The sad side could remain Tom, and he works to pay for Ryder’s lifestyle. Maybe Ryder could take up the guitar and become a rock star. It’s not the eighties anymore. Maybe he’d be a country singer—they still play guitars. Country isn’t my thing, but maybe it’s Ryder’s thing.
My mind is back to my malfunctioning badge and the peril. Stop it! Time for happy thoughts. Maybe I’m being transferred to another branch? Maybe Hendrix wants to promote me—that would be both great and horrible. I might never leave the Swamp if my salary actually paid the bills.
Three urinals. Mason is at the middle one. The stalls are all open, but I don’t want to offend by not peeing beside him. Storm clouds in my head as I urinate. Need to vent them.
Turn to Mason, not literally since we’re at adjoining urinals, but turn to him with my mind and say: “You were transferred here, right, Mason?”
“From the Tampa branch.”
“Did they shut off your badge when you were transferred?”
Feel his eyes on my face as he urinates. Such poor form. “You think they shut off your badge?”
“Don’t know, but Hendrix wants to talk to me about something, and Nora is giving me the stink eye.”
His entire body waggles as he shakes off the last drop. One flick is usually enough for me. He must be impressive.
“When you first strutted into this sewer,” says Mason, “with your big smile and your fancy haircut, I knew you were a goner.”
He goes to the sink. Finish my business and join him.
“What’s that mean?” I ask.
“Hendrix belongs here. He’d fail anywhere else. Same for most of them. This place is a sewer, but some creatures thrive in sewers. Like rats and snakes and all sorts of creepy-crawlies. You’re not a sewer creature. You’re a different kind of cat. What made you take a job at this place?”
“Needed to make a buck.”
“Congrats.” He laughs. “You got what you asked for. Keep asking for stupid stuff and you’ll keep getting it.”
He leaves me confused, but I suspect he’s made a point. Not sure what it is. Look at my watch. It’s showtime.
#
Hendrix’s door is open an inch. Catches my eye from behind his desk and curls his finger like he’s reeling me in. When I shut the door, he says, “I have to let you go.”
Let me go? Was I being held here? I’m so bewildered that I don’t hear his explanation, which is probably lame. Then the gloom of my reality hits. I have lost my job. Lost my three beers at the bar, and my apartment, and my car, and my romps with the girl that used to be mine but now belongs to someone else. Hendrix stole my nest of patches.
He stands with a document. Hands me a pen and says I need to sign if I want to get paid for the rest of the week.
Take the pen because I’m still following orders from the guy who just fired me. A realization causes me to hesitate before signing. I have become the stupid things I have been clinging to. If I didn’t like my job, why didn’t I quit? If I didn’t like the woman I slept with, why didn’t I stop sleeping with her? That’s not the best logic, since I’m a bit of a sex maniac, but there’s still truth in that. Point is, I wasn’t trying to survive another day in the Swamp. I was trying to survive for another day. And this is the day.
Feel a smile as I glare at Hendrix with indolent eyes. Sometimes you need your enemies. With the pen in my hand, I march through the Swamp and toward the glass door with the peeling tinted film. There’s a reason why that door only locks from the outside. I drop the pen, slap the door open, and march out to something.