Work

I watch the wheels of the gate slowly turn as the gate lumbers open. Smelly factory workers are smoking their smelly cigarettes, and security guards are killing time discussing the doldrums of life.

Rumbling trucks come and go, an occasional tractor towing cages noisily clatters along. The entire neighborhood hears it. A drab olive-green cat lithely glides past me. I want to pet it, but it’s too far away.

Burning tobacco wafts into my nostrils and my head pounds. Was this what my parents envisioned me doing when they brought me home from the hospital 24 years ago?

The sun peeks out behind the murky sky as the humidity level outside milks pint after pint of sweat from my body while I walk back inside.

Jay Chou croons into my ear and keeps me awake and barely interested in the heap of work on my desk. Somewhere inside, my soul is clawing his way out, desperate for any kind of stimulation.

The heat is suffocating in the office. The thick air-conditioning outside is afraid of entering the room; sweat beads my forehead. I think of my cat at home, lounging on my computer chair, most probably tearing her claws into the backrest. I think of my girlfriend, probably surfing the net right now. I silently curse my lack of internet connectivity and ass to grab.

I glance at the window behind me. The men are installing a new machine at Warehouse 1 that arrived this Tuesday. Jay Chou whispers his sentimental tunes into my ears as I stare on.

When the zombie apocalypse hits, the office workers will have the smoothest transition, if at all. They’ll probably be the ones charging into the blazing assault rifles of trigger-happy survival nuts, hungry for their brains and the cold, liberating embrace of death, whichever comes first.

The rhythmic stroking of my week-old goatee is soothing. My eyelids are drooping. It’s those blasted nap bunnies again.

My mind wanders off even further and I silently think back on how I never really did master the flying kick.

The crick in my neck has faded to a vague pinch which resounds with the dull ache in my gut as it dawns on me once again how I’ll never realize my dream of being a writer, along with many of my other dreams. I cut the reverie off before I once again see the future of me being a grumpy old man suffering from a case of midlife crisis and mild hypertension and then a slippery slope into a divorce, a life of drinking and depression, and ultimately, dying alone in my trashy condo or my sister’s basement.

I stare at my list again. Today’s agenda. The loose confederation of letters fails to register in my head, and makes no sense. A few more seconds and my dusty, creaky neurons fire up. Oh. Nothing too urgent for today. My eyes paint across the paper. I wonder how they got the pretty green ink for the printers. People get paid to make formulas for ink?

I have a pile of borrowed PlayStation1 games waiting for me at home. I have yet to buy an old PS1. I miss my friend to whom these games belong. I want to visit him again. He loves playing RPG’s.

Life is an RPG game. And I’m sitting here, with these floating numbers and letters on top of my head.

-1hp

-1hp

-1hp

-1hp

I stand and go back outside to watch the wheels turn as Jay Chou sings his latest songs on and on into my calcified brain.