Stultifying Stan the god of paperwork-

 

 

 

Stultifying Stan the god of paperwork I get to the point I cannot write another note so what do we do sit and look out the window at the snow and it doesn’t matter that is one of stultifying Stans weapons he makes everything mean nothing and makes all things nothing

 

Everyone around me is no longer themselves anymore they are co workers and so the snow accumulates in the parkinglot and everybody sits at their windows and dream about taking a vacation

 

We before I except after they is what they taught us in office school like a school of fishes in our fishbowl we turn our noses all together now as we lift our voices into a monotone of giggles and flat ham sandwiches from the breakroom are all we can tolerate to eat

 

Thanksgiving tomorrow so we are as happy as we allow ourselves which isn’t full happiness but a facsimile we do it to ourselves of course we let stultifying stan the god of paperwork have our souls which sounds melodramatic or something

 

If you think and think the same thing over and over about notes and schedules and time production and all the other stuff that computers dare breath out onto us you begin to talk it like a language and it is a pattern and it tells you things

 

Whispers in your ear about stan and what he will do to you later later being conception itself as it changes from the computers soft breath out out into the air as you change a tire in the parkinglot having forgotten your gloves and find out that the spare is also flat the store where you buy a cellophane wrapped sandwich is a mile

 

It is dark by the time you get there and you forgot your cell phone the sandwich is ten cents more than you got the clerk doesn’t care the door slams against the snow as it is getting deeper you return to the car and decide to go back in to the cubical

 

The office is warm and no one is here the computer is still humming its song stan is laughing at you you put your purse down on the keyboard the computer jumps awake you decide that maybe you should do some notes since you are here anyway so you get down on your knees to reach under to push the button but the computer is already alive and begins to talk it tells you about your life it tells you about swinging at aunt julias house up on the canadien border it tells you how you would ride your bicycle and spin under the big trees in the front when you visited aunt julias house your dress would spin with you as you waited for aunt julia aunt julia pulled her big buick car around the house pushing open the passenger door so you can jump right in and float away to a day with aunt julia

 

But before that you have noticed how yellow the light is it is bright and sunny and a butterfly comes toward you from across the road it floats and lifts out of the mowing field and it touches you it lands right there on your nose and then

 

Someone hits you in the face with a hammer you have fallen off your desk you had fallen asleep like a door closing from your dream you wake you stand up you notice the dream has never existed the computer and your life as a co worker is all there really is all there really ever has been and so you decide to go to the water purification jug to get a plastic glass of water

 

Reviews

[kmartell]

thanksgiving today i go in spurts i will write a story every ! well every once in a great while i will write so sporadiclly it doesnt qualify as sporadic

maybe eposodic like homer wrote the odyssey once every 900 years or so

however i promise i will finish this story about anna bannana it is a sad storoy and i dont know how it will ever turn out

[Emily B]

Big Brother is definitely watching. But you spun a story here that I couldn't look away from. I saw myself. I saw my co-workers. I saw a life before . . . but I couldn't see a life after . . .