The Heat

Steve stood with the freezer door open, just trying to imagine he was somewhere else.  Perhaps he was on frozen tundra somewhere running with polar bears; or perhaps sitting in a log cabin somewhere in the Swiss Alps.  Steven’s mind cycled through dozens of places.  Where ever Steven imagine, it was certainly cooler than here.

            The air conditioner had gone out 2 days ago.  He swore it would be fixed by now.  That bloated, wheezing, mound of a man who was always wiping himself with that stained handkerchief was nowhere to be seen.  He was probably off spending Steven’s rent money. Steven would have put in a window unit by now, but the bars on the windows made that an impossibility.  Many of Steven’s neighbors had already fled, like rats fleeing a sinking ship.  Steven would have done the same, but he was stubborn.  Plus his girlfriend was out of town.

            So Steven stood in his apartment amongst the fans, naked except for his white briefs.  He would have discarded them as well if it were not for his massive feelings of inadequacy that somehow managed to manifest even when he was alone.  The sweat rolled down his skin as he paced his tiny hovel, trying to keep his mind on other things.  He had tried to go into work, but Mr. Eliott, his boss, made him stay home.  The old buzzard wanted Steven to cook, to bake in his own frustration.  It would not surprise Steven if Mr. Eliott had arranged the whole thing.  He had probably sent in one of his ninja squads to disable the AC and then paid off the landlord to do nothing. 

            That is why Steven needed to survive.  He had to beat this Inferno-like torture and emerge unscathed, excepting a few pounds lost.  He wiped the sweat from his eyes again and plotted his survival.  He reached for the frozen bag of peas one more time and regretted for the one thousandth time finding an apartment on craigslist.

Steven's Favorite Movies

Here is a list of Steven's favorite movies.

1)  Ground Hog's Day

2)  Sophie's Choice

3)  Requiem for a Dream

4)  Idiocracy

5)  No Country for Old Men

6)  Les Miserables

7)  One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest

8)  When Harry Met Sally

9)  12 Years a Slave

10)  The Lovely Bones

The Box

Steven was suffocating in this confinement.  He was restricted in a way he did not think was possible.  He clutched his bag to his chest as if it carried something precious, something sacred to him.  The doors opened again, and more people crowded in.  Where they managed to find the space to fit in, Steven had no idea.  He had gotten on the elevator on the first floor; he feared he would never reach the top.

            He was just trying to get to work.  His boss, Mr. Elliot, had called him in early for a one-on-one.  Steven suspected there would be little collaboration.  More likely the old buzzard would berate him for 20 minutes before finally, mercifully, releasing him to the sanctuary of his desk. 

            Being forced to be here early had thrown off his entire routine.  His customary morning ritual of a bowl of frosted mini wheat’s and the morning paper had been cut short this day.  Funny, he thought; how the universe managed even to alter Steven’s most basic routines and rituals.  Before long, even his nightly habit of comic books and a fudge bar would be lost to him forever. 

            The doors opened again and, amazingly, even more people managed to pour themselves into the cracks that remained between bodies.  Steven was now convinced that this was not, in fact, an elevator, but some sort of pocket dimension that he had stumbled into.  Here the laws of physics no longer held sway and matter and energy could act in all sorts of bizarre ways that would make even Stephen Hawking blush.  Steven half expected to be pushed through the walls of the elevator into a whole new plane of existence.  Perhaps that might be for the best.  Where ever he ended up would no doubt be preferable to this sweaty, fart infused elevator to hell.

The Meeting

This is a selection from a larger piece which is intended to be the first part of a much longer story.

The overhead fan squeaked as it whirled in place, seemingly trying to tear itself loose from its mounting and escape.  Steven was envious of it.  For though he was not physically anchored in place, he could just as soon leave as sprout wings and fly.  These morning status meetings were the worst, the absolute last thing he ever wanted to do.  Greg was seated next to him at the long conference table, audibly snoring.  How he could get away with such blazon disregard for the rules, Steven did not know.  Surely others heard it.  He had all the subtlety of a water buffalo as he sawed through logs in his sleep.

            Steven’s boss, Mr. Elliot, was an ancient man.  There were certainly hieroglyphics in Egypt bearing his likeness.  It seemed likely that the only thing keeping him from disintegrating into a pile of dust was his loathing for his employees; Specifically, Steven.  The old man lived to make his life miserable.  “Mr. Caldwell!,” he spouted, “If you find this meeting so boring that you insist on sleeping through it, perhaps you would rather clean out your desk?”

            Steven fumed.  Greg sat next to him, still snoring away like an old lawnmower.  The fact that Mr. Elliot assumed Steven was the culprit was nothing new.  He had grown to accept that the fossil was put here by the universe to make his life miserable.  He was not human, something that could not be reasoned with or understood.  This, Steven could at least deal with.  The universe could not be reasoned with.

            His co-workers, however, were a different story.  They were completely useless.  Even his best friend Greg, whom he hated, never once took responsibility for the things he did.  This was not the first time Steven had been pegged for something Greg did.  There was the time that Greg actually slept in Mr. Elliot’s office for 3 hours while the old man was in a meeting.  When he returned to find Greg on the couch, somehow Steven got roped into a 5 hour HR seminar about improper use of company time.

            But Greg was far from the only person at Smith Marketing that made Steven miserable on a daily basis.  The whole building must have been built over a portal to another dimension.  This dimension seemed to be occupied entirely by idiots, whose sole purpose was to travel to this plane of existence to make Steven’s day more difficult.