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.