/yesod

Tag: work

  • trail

    Walking to work this morning, something caught my attention: Small bits of red licorice scattered along the sidewalk, trailing over three blocks.

    I didn’t follow to find out to where they led. I know better.

    It’s October.

  • doppelgänger

    IMG_0084…and as I walk back into my office, I see — or I think I see — a man standing to one side and looking through my filing cabinet.

    It is me, myself. I am the one standing there, dressed in the same clothes I am wearing today.

    I blink.

    He is gone.

    I am gone.

    Unnerved, I get back to work.

  • “Hey Dad?”

    Walking through the office I hear — or I think I hear — my son’s voice, very distinct and clear, call to me.

    I look back down the hallway but, of course, no one is there.

  • payroll

    …I find that I have overslept and am in a rush to get a stack of deposits to the University’s bank by noon, otherwise all of the faculty and staff paychecks will bounce.

    The deposit is a stack of checks and slips totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. There are pink and yellow carbon copies, very slippery to keep in order. I leave the darkened school library — exhausted students sprawl here and there across chairs and couches, utterly done in by finals and the drunken afterglow parties.

    I pass through a maze of corridors and stairwells, time slipping away. Once I get out to the parking lot, I see a few professors heading to their cars. Everyone wants to get to the bank before noon. It closes early on the weekends, of course.

    Running out of time, I try to flag down one of the faculty but they do not see me. I end up running through the surrounding office park, cutting between buildings and scrambling over landscaping.

    Arriving at the bank, I see the tellers inside beginning to pack up for the day. I bang on the door but they wave me off, mouthing “we’re closed.”

    Somehow I manage to climb up to a small skylight and, quite suddenly, burst through to the floor below in a shower of glass.

    But, after all that, I make the deposit in time.

  • the new office

    …and I’m surprised to find out that not only are each of us getting our own office in the new building, but we’ll have an attached bedroom as well. A few of my coworkers even have bunkbeds.

    The gossip around the office is that this is to allow for a more Mad Men like atmosphere.

    “Aren’t we way too busy for a bunch of womanizing?” I ask.

    No one answers. They’re all too busy getting ready for the big new photo shoot with our latest client, Versace.

    The office is full of art directors, make up artists, and celebrities called in for the shoot.

    I pass by an office where Christian Bale is getting his hair dyed a brilliant royal blue.

    I trade quips with George Clooney in the hall. He is wearing a two foot tall jet black fright wig and sports an impressive handlebar mustache — perfectly suited to go with his leather chaps and Village People bondage gear.

    It’s going to be an interesting day, I think to myself.

    (For what it’s worth, the tag line for the advertising agency where I work is “Exactly like nobody else.”)

  • the girl in the warehouse

    [This is directly transcribed, without changes or edits, from a journal entry dated May 4th, 2000]

    …and because I have been thrown out of my house, lost any connection to my wife and children, I am living in an old building adjacent to where I work — downtown, in the old industrial district, where an empty warehouse is easy to find.

    I barely have any clothes and none of my belongings, but I make due — hiding my shame by getting to work extra early each day and staying late.

    Shortly I come to realize that the place where I am staying is haunted — a small girl with dark hair and pale clothes flits about shyly in the evenings. She is sad and somewhat horrible as well. The is a demoniac sense to her, the way she pops up without warning.

    Late in the evening, on my way back to my new “home”, I pass by a bar and some women out front shout at me. One of the comes over and after a brief conversation she suggests I bring her home with me. I do.

    We get back to my small room. She is already all over me.and before I can lock the door she is kneeling on the bed, unclothed, pulling her dress up over her head.

    I turn to see her there, and I stop for a moment.

    She smiled wide and warm, and then I see her eyes dart to a place beside me and her smile falters.

    There dark girl is there, hideous and livid.

    And I suddenly realize that she is not a ghost, never was a ghost — this thing was never alive, never drew breath or felt joy. What has come is older than anything in creation, masquerading,

    She looks at my companion, frozen in a parody of her formerly seductive pose, and she speaks.

    I don’t remember what was said, but the truth of it strikes home with such force that my “date” is driven from the room, sobbing and weeping.

    And, alone with that terrible pale girl, I wait. She looks at me for a moment.

    And then she is gone.

    The next day, in my dream, my secret is found out by the people I work for. I can’t recall how, but it is discovered.

    The big surprises: First, they aren’t angry with me for being there, they’re sympathetic in fact. I find out that one of them also did a similar thing with his ex-wife — he stayed where I am staying.

    Face with this information, I don’t say anything but I know my face tells it all.

    “Yeah, I was there for a few weeks,” he says, watching me.

    “Is the ghost still there?” He asks, offhand.

    “Yes.” I am dumbfounded.

    “Man, she used to scare the shit out of me.” He laughs.

    One of the others says “What’s this ghost?”

    We tell him and, goaded by his fascination, I offer to bring him down.

    “I gotta see this,” he says.

    As we walk down the hallway, it begins.

    Far up the hall, we can see her standing there watching us.

    As we approach, I recognize a familiar feeling of cold dread.

    Brackets and boxes fly off shelves, thrown at us by unseen forces.

    Prepared for this, nerves ringing like an alarm, I knock them away from us — grabbing a broom and brandishing it like a sword.

    My friend marvels at my skill.

    “Yeah, I’ve got a high midichlorian count.”

    We continue on towards the girl. She is hideous and pale, and the lines other face are very dark, her eyes like pits.

    I know what she is, and it is no ghost — she is something far older, engaged in a grotesque masquerade, playacting the child in a diabolically ironic manner.

    We sit and speak of childish things. I am hoping to draw her away from my real thoughts but I can feel the rage boiling within her and I cannot stop it when it finally surfaces.

    Nearby an old man sleeps on the sidewalk, drunk beyond all waking.

    She finally reveals what I already know.

    I am talking with her, realizing that my phony jocular child voice is not only annoying to her, but entirely unnecessary… I know she knows that I know what she truly is, and I know that she knows that I know that she knows that I know.

    But I keep up the pretense; I can see her fighting it at every step.

    Finally, we discuss the colder weather and Halloween is coming soon, I remark.

    And with that, she goes ballistic — force and rage radiating off of her, she’s halfway levitating, screaming with rage.

    And then I wake up, frightened by one of my own dreams for the first time in a very long time.

    [2013 Addendum: Although this dream raised a number of disturbing feelings, I remember being very proud of the Star Wars joke. In fact, I still am.]