Alan toiled in Building #3 at Acme MegaCorp, Inc. He had a small gray cubicle, in which we worked on various invoices. Situated on his desk was a stapler, tape dispenser, computer monitor, keyboard, mouse, papers, paperclips, inbox, outbox, and Kleenex box. Alan found the environment and the items on his desk, deeply exciting, not just enjoyable, but instead extremely stimulating, burrowing down to the core of his essence, igniting his soul into a flaming inferno. As the other employees trudged into work, and slumped down into their workplaces, Alan would arrive, get his cup of coffee, sit upright in his cubicle, and be nearly brought to orgasm by the vision of the stapler at the corner of his desk.
Alan walked into the office break area. Just looking at his shoes easing into the gray fiber carpeting caused so much joyful electricity to shoot through his spine and brain that Alan had to return to his desk, sweating from over-stimulation. He looked at the Kleenex box on the left corner of his desk. He had run out of Kleenex yesterday, and gone to the grocery store to purchase a new box. This new box had gray swirly designs on it, instead of the previous box's blue swirly designs. Upon viewing this, Alan could not contain the hard pressure valve on the vivid roses, tape, glue, irises, effluvium, medicated leaves, staples, and replica paper ponies flowing out of his head, and he ran through the office area, screaming exuberantly.
Alan's employers at Acme MegaCorp, Inc. decided that he needed a vacation, and insisted that he take time off, arranging a trip for him to a beautiful tropical island. When Alan got off the plane, he looked at the brilliant green trees, blue sky, and white sand. He felt a grey tiredness taking over, and it increased with each bright color viewed, causing his eyelids to slowly close. However, an accidental entrance into the resort's utility room, with its gray machinery, pipes, and walls revived him, and he ended up enjoying his vacation, though most of it was spent in the gray utility room.
It wasn't always this way. Alan used to love color, in fact more so than most people. He remembered when he would commute to the office and look at the billboards, thinking, "What if all of these billboards were brilliantly hued designs, if there were bright, colorful murals everywhere, instead of grayness?" He went around town painting psychedelic murals on fences, and the walls of abandoned buildings. Alan had vivid posters in his cubicle, and colorful work tools on his desk. That was when Acme MegaCorp, in order to create a more professional, regulated office environment, issued a mandatory office desk template to the employees, dominated by gray. Manager #3 had approached Alan's desk. "Alan, get rid of that purple tape dispenser! Aren't you a team player?" At first, Alan objected, but he learned to adjust. That was years ago.
When the Kleenex box with gray swirly designs on it ran out of tissues, Alan purchased a Kleenex box with purple swirly designs on it. Sitting in his ergonomic office chair, he contemplated the box, words filling his mind:
the purple vendetta
dark eyes rolling down the highway
big white spheres oozing down the eyeway
revenge, recriminations, thick maroon fingers
rubber-banding the pus of hurt onto a wall
splattering a black bubbling tar
full of scowling laughers and writhing snakes
a purple neon shroud flashing off and on
covering the brain, slipping off, re-adhering, slipping off
a low dark rumble, sick spilling clouds
and then daylight on the highway.
Manager #3 passed by Alan's cubicle, and looked in. "Alan, is that a purple Kleenex box? You know the rules." Alan reached into his bag and got out an AK-47. It was painted bright yellow.
Horace sat in the Antarctic research station. When taking a break from his important work of environmental inspection, Horace would meditate on how penguins had become a cute, cuddly animal for the cultural subconscious. Society loved the penguin, which had long ago morphed into a commerce tool. Horace's sister Doris, who he considered to be a philistine, had become obsessed with motorized penguins as a way of expressing herself, and making money. She had created a tagging inspection system for her motorized penguins. Ever since being children, Horace and Doris had been very competitive with each other, and Horace derided Doris' efforts as 'capitalist bilge'.
The tag on the mechanical bird said 'Inspected by Number 54'. Doris looked at it apprehensively. "I just tore this tag off the other day," she said to herself. "I know I did." She began to experience that uneasy feeling again, so she walked across the hall into Gus' den. Gus, or 'Weatherman Gus', which he was better known as, was pacing about the den. "Where's my motorized penguin?" asked Gus intensely, "I need to know!" "Stop babbling dear, we have more important fish to fry," said Doris impatiently. "Look at this tag, what does it mean?" "It means Inspected by Number 54," said Gus with a wry grin "HEH-HEH-HEH-HEH-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!!" "God help him," thought Doris. Whatever happened to that strapping young 'Weather Guy' she had married? He had been the darling of the Channel 7 news, wearing his toupees with flair, and turning the 1970's weatherman task of writing numbers on glass backwards into an art. The motorized penguins whizzed by in the hallway and Doris let out a sigh of relief. "Well thank goodness, at least there's something I can rely on," and she busied herself with the mechanics of her ever-growing army of motorized birds. Over the next few months, Doris would manage, via an instinctual eye during well-placed potluck dinners, to establish a network of connections that would enable her to lucratively install the motorized penguins in airports as a mode of baggage conveyance, especially popular in extremely northern or southern airports, generating dollars as Gus' mental health deteriorated, and Horace continued to send condescending letters from his Antarctic outpost.
When the government grant for his important environment inspection work ran out, Horace began sewing sweaters for the penguins. His reasoning was complex. "In various dreams I have, there are recurrent images of a nurturing penguin, guiding me down important avenues of whatever incarnation I happen to be in. Thus I need to provide protective fabrics for these guiding lights. Secondly, on a more practical level, I have reliable information indicating that penguins will become the 'Pet du jour', as pigs were previously, among the cultural elite in New York & Los Angeles, and that as the low temperature pet habitats are created in various dwellings, penguin sweaters will be in high demand. "A penguin will be considered nude without one!" Meanwhile, Gus somehow managed to send a weather bulletin to Horace at the research station, predicting 'cold'.
In the next few months, as Horace's plan inevitably failed, he appealed to his sister Doris for financial assistance. In response, Doris sent a motorized penguin, tagged 'Inspected by Number 54', which rotated aimlessly on the ice, wearing a weatherman toupee, as Horace looked on, hoping for answers. The motorized penguin eventually fell into the sea, and Horace was there at Antarctic research station 54 to meditate on its departure. Doris eventually paid the bill for his living expenses.
Comments (closed)
j
2010-10-25 12:53:06
stupid
tinam
2010-10-28 06:46:48
I really liked these two stories. Surreal and fun. Nice work.
josell
2010-10-29 11:45:12
love the absurdity and playfulness
maryla
2010-10-29 14:01:10
I like how you fit a viewpoint into an absurd context.