When I opened the men’s room door, a contingent of bowel-bred particles, much like a swarm of cartoon bees, arranged itself into a fist then clobbered my nose. In response, I pulled up my undershirt to make a ninja mask and also barred mouth-breathing for a time. Because it was time. I took the usual stance--feet spaced and planted as though bracing for tectonic shift--then noticed how the pipework on the urinal distorted my reflection. So wavy and ephemeral...and everything ends. I could have disappeared into that dread forever, waited for a kaleidoscope turbine to shred my consciousness, but an echo, a splatter and splash, rattled my focus. Was he wringing out a sponge in there? Between failures to balance balls of clay over the toilet water? The rare occasions I sat down in a public bathroom, solitude was intensity's beating heart. I made not a sound if another dude came in--no wiping, no throat-clearing, no grunting. And certainly no bubble wrap Indian burns or sauerkraut colliding with chocolate mousse. Especially at work. What if someone recognizes your shoes or belt? They'll know things about your asshole, and they shouldn't. This guy, though, didn’t care. He had jetsam to force out, and rather than consideration, proximal membranes got a mushroom cloud. It sounded extreme. It sounded life-changing, as if he couldn’t come out of that stall the same person. As if he might shit away the memory of what his kids looked like. The instant I finished peeing, I ran. No shaking. No hand-washing. No checking for dots.
I should have looked at the guy’s feet.
Amber’s list took about an hour to complete. As I pushed my cart to Nadine’s desk, Adam from Indexing walked over to meet me.
"Hey, Greg."
"Hello."
Adam wore glasses and the parted hairstyle of an old-timey news anchor. He also wore a polo shirt with khaki pants and loafers every day, even when blue jeans were allowed. Adam seemed like the kind of guy who would give you his just-bought ice cream sundae after seeing you didn’t have one. He also seemed like the kind of guy who would have female coworkers trying to set him up on dates. My niece is in town. There's a gal from church. Et cetera. We sat in on the same group for Compliance training where, between videos and flipcharts, he detailed both the intricacies and virtues of flying radio-controlled aircraft (I declined an offer to go watch him do it). Following that, Adam decided we had an obligation to talk anytime we saw each other. I never fantasized about him dying.
"So, they have you pulling files?"
"Yes."
"Are those getting purged?"
"No. Nadine asked for them."
"Let me check those," Adam said, bending out random file tabs on the side of the stack.
"They got imaged already," he explained. "Nadine can view them on the computer, and you can put all that paper in a shred bin."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah. Those dates are old. We're scanning newer stuff by now."
"Excellent, thank you."
Returning to my cubicle, I couldn't sit down, because a cardboard box, deputized with a sticky note, had usurped my chair. They've replaced me...with a rival I could easily tear apart. The note read MAILROOM!, so I carried the box to the mail room like a wimp who takes orders from all-caps handwriting.
I pushed a door open with my foot, entering the Menagerie of Tedium Not Dissimilar to My Own. The clerks, in a servile loop, in a punishment for crimes against a petty god, put paper inside of other paper, all day. They moved as though programmed; folding, stuffing, sorting, taping, lifting. And generating a barrage of background noise in aggregate. I couldn’t focus on a single detail. Chairs and flat surfaces and packages were involved, along with human workers and a process, but my memory could never grab the configuration. The scene operated outside my comprehension--I felt stupid and useless by merely standing. I went to put my box on the appropriate table, but there wasn’t any room, so I placed it underneath instead.
"What are you doing?" A woman with ragged blonde hair and extra-crispy tanning bed skin confronted me. Phyllis was her name. Phyllis wanted to know what I was doing.
"Dropping off," I said, doubting if she could even hear me above the manifold racket.
"That," she pointed to the box on the floor, "is supposed to go on the table so it can be sorted."
"There wasn’t any room--"
"Then you make room. It’s not. That. Hard." Her voice drew amplitude from the commotion-all-around, the wavelengths intertwining to braid a corrective whip.
"I didn’t want to mess up anyone else’s work--"
"You know what? Just leave it there. I’ll do it." Phyllis started picking up then slamming boxes, some of them to the floor.
Back at my desk, I predicted--came to accept--something. That my encounter with Phyllis would become a story for later. Dumb Greg putting his box on the stupid floor. She didn’t have to yell. Actually, it was pretty loud in there, so maybe she did.
Daydreaming a battle royal populated by vampires and a scrapyard golem ate up the last half hour of my shift. Standing to leave, I reviewed the following mental itinerary:
Remember to get wine.
Stop by Egyptian Mike’s.
Go to the apartment, get ready.
Go to Ruth’s.
I went to clock out, lengthening stride once Tammy crowded my sight.
"Greg?"
Tammy’s fat voice. Surely, I could outrun it.
"Greg, did you fax everything?"
"Yes."
"Good, because--"
"I have to clock out."
Turning to flee, I felt muscle rip away from tendon as my body fought to escape that giant bitch’s gravity field. I collapsed on the carpet, unable to writhe. Unable to suffer with a full range of motion. Unable to become a late-starting rookie sensation who deludes others into believing that they can accomplish more.
Fuck. I forgot about the faxing. And my tendons and muscles were actually okay.
#
That Friday, the store must’ve had answers on sale, because everyone in the world was there. Compensating for roughly seven minutes of taunting by a busy signal, I--minding the fickle speed and space between human obstacles--alternated a jog with a walk, my gait controlled by something disdainful of rhythm. My mind’s eye looped a vignette: Mr. Mad Iron, the golem, the familiar champion from my "versus" daydreams, lowering his cowcatcher helmet then charging through the consumer mass. Limbs and various not-so-identifiable chunks flying everywhere. Plastic grocery bags tied over my shoes protecting me from the "after" portion...Upon reaching the wine section, my spine straightened, taking a cue from the exclamation point flashing in my brain.
I flinched at the number of bottles, at the orderly shelves that aspired to be corridor walls. None of the labels were awesome-looking. No robots. No monsters. No psychopomps. And relying on descriptions didn’t help me, either. The one-page Beginner’s Guide I found at the end cap infuriated me, was identical to a prank. Words like "dry" and "chewy" and "noble rot" referred to liquid. Ah, yes. Notes of pan-fried knoephla with boiled cartilage. And a hangnail...torn from an earl’s gangrenous thumb. Sweat squeegeed off my unshowered scalp sounded more appealing as a beverage. Despite this, only one factor had relevance. That night’s wine selection, like most everything else, was umbilically bound to my dearth of means. The aerodynamics of poverty led to a "third-most attainable" purchase.
Satisfied, I re-entered the fray, almost kneeing a little kid’s face when the boosters came on for another jog.
And then I despaired.
The checkout lines sprouted from a cloning machine, and the malaise from a Soviet queue for bread stifled every soul. It was a superorganism's languor. The same shuffle, the same face--that racked-shotgun look of weariness justifying a scream, perhaps more--surrounded me. Mr. Mad Iron, post-upgrade, wielded a propeller-hand for crowd dispersal, and the cries of the slain inspired by its use would be requital for my lost time (decapitations without crying were acceptable, too). Propeller, do like your former life! Make things airborne!
The guy in front of me wore a trench coat. Much more notably, however, he spent several (that is, too many) minutes writing a check, because doing so apparently caused him to reminisce about other times he had signed his name. The Employment Agreement for his first job. The birth certificate for his son. The deed for his house. The montage in his mind accompanied either "Runaway" or "Fields of Gold" judging by the wistful look he projected after each pen stroke.
I never saw what he bought, so pretended it was flowers for the grave of his dead wife. Flowers for the only woman who ever loved him, ever tolerated him. They’d been together for 30 years. At his soul-chipping office job, he had become an object of pity; invariably, each new hire would be told about Graham and how he was "never the same" after Beth died. "We just let him work at his own pace now," people explained, really pushing the plunger on exasperation whenever his performance got questioned. After being treated like a baby with osteogenesis imperfecta by coworkers who leached all his dignity through gossip, he would go home then microwave a frozen French bread pizza to eat by himself, using a knife and fork as if it fucking mattered. When he left the store, no space debris, no meteorites, rained down on him as though summoned by me.
I paid. I walked to my car, glancing at the bottle in my hand. This better be the right kind. Or an acceptable wrong kind, I thought, fanning my keys to unlock the car door.
"What’s the occasion?"
"Excuse me?"
"The wine, what’s the occasion?"
A young man wearing a white, button-up shirt and blue slacks awaited my reply, his facial geometry, body language, and pheromones deflating my home-bound urgency in a three-pronged attack. He seemed...tall and blonde and self-assured in a way that I could imagine myself gradually resenting.
"Nothing. No occasion. It’s not for me."
"I understand. So, tell me, what do you think God has planned for you?"
"Pardon me?"
"What does God have planned for your life?"
"Boredom and a low tolerance thereof. I don’t know. I’m not convinced anyone really believes in God."
"Oh. Well here."
Pamphlets appeared.
"Read through these, if you like, then later I can answer any questions you have." He pointed to a phone number on the back of a pamphlet. "My name’s Jeremy, by the way. What’s yours?"
"Greg."
"I hope to hear from you, Greg. May God grant you what is necessary."
We shook hands. Jeremy smiled as we did so, projecting the truest power of fellowship and goodwill from the sun-hazed outline of his body. He was ineffably magnetic--my fucking arm hair wanted to be friends with him. The light--yes, the light from his eyes and teeth could have probably destroyed flies or killed cancerous cells, I thought.
"Um, you too, guy."
I stood and watched him approach another person, deciding I would rather be alone forever than do similarly. Throwing the tracts in the backseat, placing the wine on the passenger side floor, I then drove to my next stop.
May God grant me all green lights.
"Aww shit. It’s motherfuckin’ Prophet and shit."
Three guys lounged on Egyptian Mike’s porch, daring someone to care about it. Two of them sank into a broken couch, spacious denim oozing from bowling shirt bottoms to ankles. The other sat on a ledge, dressed in a black t-shirt and jeans, knit-capped head slowly nodding agreement with whatever played on his earphones. As I walked up the peeling-paint stairs, one of the guys on the couch offered his fist.
"Prophet," he grinned.
"You know it," I replied, touching knuckles with him then the others.
"Is Mike around?"
"Yeah man. He’s trying to hook up this new surround sound."
The front door was open, so I peaked in. Mike sat hunched on the floor in front of the entertainment center, looking over his shoulder to greet me.
"Hey, Prophet. What’s up, man?"
"The same thing, I suppose."
Honestly, I couldn’t believe someone would sit on that floor. That pliable stain masquerading as carpet, the green turning to brown from night after night of shoes and spilled drinks. I never once saw vacuum cleaner tracks, although the carpet was perhaps so beaten down that none could be perked up anymore.
"Why you just standin’ there, dog? Come in, relax."
I picked a loveseat then sat down. Mike leaned back to swat hands, bang fists.
"Man, I’ve been trying to hook this shit up for like an hour. My cousin said he could do it, but I can’t get a hold of him."
"That sucks."
Mike got up off the floor, pulling down on his pant legs then pinching at his jersey to make a few adjustments. He had a roundish face, one level below cherubic, with eyes advertising the glint of someone continuously gauging the situation. His cosmetic staples were a shaved head and manicured goatee, and his oft-worn expression appeared half-amused about existence in general. Mike had a stocky, stubborn build; I pictured him stepping through whitewater rapids, unperturbed, with the same bulldozing nonchalance as when he crossed a street. The way he gestured while telling a story or jumped up to give someone his seat portended the centrifuge of BOOM! SPLAT! coursing through his frame.
"Yeah, fuck it. I’ll just make him do it later."
As I theorized about scenarios in which Mike’s cousin could refuse, a girl I barely noticed walked out of the kitchen.
"Hey Prophet," she said offhandedly, talking on a cordless phone as she went upstairs.
"Hey Lucy."
No one at Egyptian Mike’s used my real name. Everyone referred to me as Prophet (for reasons that made sense). The origin of that nickname--
This guy from the Czech Republic had brought absinthe. I wasn’t planning to partake, but required coaxing was minimal after vodka waterboarded my independence. So, someone handed me this long test tube of green fluid then told me to "drink that shit down." A glass tube, I later learned, because everyone thought it was "some tripped-out shit." I downed the contents, shook off the resulting grimace. Scolded myself as fennel seared into my tongue. Afterward, I grabbed a couple beers then plunked down on the broken couch outside, taking slow pulls between telling folks "hi" or "bye" as they passed. Then, while sitting there, sweating in the breeze, a flying-kick epiphany smashed the windshield of my worldview.
"What?"
"If God is omniscient...if he has knowledge about every permutation of all possible possibilities...then he would know what it feels like to twist a newborn’s head until the head detaches from the body."
"What the fuck?"
"If God knows everything...about everything...then he would know what it feels like to fuck someone's laryngectomy throat hole."
"Who invited the big downer?"
"This man is not funny."
Possessed by divine impetus, I marched through the mob, educating the human race one conversation at a time. Purpose lugged my feet from one person to the next as I grabbed random shoulders to swivel attention toward me. Did they understand how much of a burden that must be? Experiencing the sensory and emotional scintilla of any conceivable atrocity? We really should feel sorry for God, I told them. How can you party while God is forced to remember the pain of being hung by his hind legs then skinned alive?
"Bro, stop yelling. I warned you."
The grim, sweeping curvature from periphery to that which lay behind me spun a vortex to suck me away from The Mission. But I couldn’t stop. Shouting, pushing, and a sloppy, drunk-guy hip toss met my efforts to give away the truth.
"Where is your sympathy for God?"
I woke up the next day in Mike’s living room, kneeling with my head buried in the loveseat.
I must have moaned.
"Prophet awakens," someone announced. My disciples thought it appropriate to laugh.
Ever since then, I was Prophet.
A wall-sized painting in Mike’s living room featured pyramids, crocodiles, and a river. So, basically, a wall-sized painting in Mike’s living room featured my nuanced impression of Egypt. One time, I took someone aside there and asked her if our mutual friend was really Egyptian.
"Um, I have a boyfriend. What are you trying to do?"
Mike sold me drugs on occasion. Mainly I went there to get all wasted and avoid my roommates, but this time was for drugs.
"That pink shit? Yeah man, I got more of that."
"Cool. Ten doses should...last me a while."
"Whatever you say, man. Prophet Discount is active, y’all," Mike proclaimed, running upstairs to grab the meds. Chapter Three