sleeping monsters

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

My old workplace had it in for me in the way that only 90 tonnes of concrete can. Hidden beneath the façade of a nineteen thirties department store were columns of human corpses, fine flesh furniture and a million miles of wiring, veins ripped from the unfortunate builders who, having completed such a grand structure had sat down to a well deserved cold meat sandwich laced with arsenic.

He’d said ‘Will you take the job then?’

I’d said ‘Yes, I will, thank you.’

I never saw the guy who interviewed me again; he had a moustache.

I caught asthma there. I caught it breathing the foul air full of itty-bitty particles of dead matter. The glass lift was particularly poisonous. On those rare occasions when the sunlight broke through our windows defences we sat transfixed as the tiny skull like microbes danced their viral swansongs in the air.

Wait, it gets worse, the heating was both noisy and useless yet still I sweated profusely and gained a weak bladder. I didn’t bother the doctor, as I knew what was happening. Every part of me that could was trying to escape.

From the front we overlooked a sombrero shop, the owner a small man in big jeans smiled at us in the morning and later when he shut up shop for siesta. We grimaced back. His hat was the widest one there with a big crimson stripe edged in gold. None of the hats he sold could hold a candle to it. On particularly trying afternoons I sailed off in that enormous sombrero into the sunset, calm blue sea and a fat cigar.

I noticed people disappearing about a month into my time there. The first was a deliveryman who never came back with a lorry load of assorted stationary. After he went many others; a guy in the room opposite went to lunch and never returned; his coffee waited patiently for the rest of the day. It too was gone the following morning. Then my secretary vanished, her shoes found behind the photocopier. Interestingly 13 copies remain unaccounted for that particular day. Eventually I saw my boss about my fears and he took up a position in Frankfurt two days later.

All in all the whole place stunk, I lasted four months, which under the circumstances is pretty good.

Have you anything else to say?

No, that’s why I left my previous job.

We’ll be in touch.