The Absurdium

The sad gray eyes had slid down from the spot where his face has recently been and now examined him in his work. He continued to gather the papers. The eyes surveyed the ground around him, out of boredom, out of uncertainty. She did not know why she felt this far away from him. They were close, they always had been. The stress he brought home each night pulled her down too, only compounded by the stress she felt at work each day.

She didn’t want to feel like this. No one did. It was the unfortunate product of the lives they both lived, or so she believed. A voice would nag, and try and tell her that things could be better under the same circumstances. Then why weren’t they? Almost every night for weeks now he had come home late. She worked up to ten hours a day articling, but she’d still always manage to beat him home. That was her limit, ten hours, she wasn’t about to become a slave to her work. It was enjoyable work, but it wasn’t her life. He was supposed to be a more important part of her life, were he ever around.
“I’m sorry,” He had stood up now, papers rearranged, and his words had startled her out of her thoughts.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Why should you?” the case fell recklessly from his hand again, but the clasp held. He moved slowly, carried like a wraith by a gentle and stuttering wind, and sat down next to her. The indent his weight made in the mattress pulled her unwillingly closer to him.

She adjusted herself away.

“Why can’t you say no? Why can’t you tell them that you’ve got a life outside of their felted walls? Tell them you’ve got me, and that I deserve some – more than some – a lot of your time. But I don’t get any.” The tired and troubled eyes reached out, pleaded, “I miss you.”

*

Sometimes you step out into the street and wish that unseen car were there, like a daemon out of some 19th century novel: A Frankenstein to kill you before your family, to just swiftly take you out of it all. More likely, of course, a car, to splatter you everywhere and make a horrible mess for the paramedics and the family memories alike. You wouldn’t kill yourself, at least I wouldn’t. I’m too afraid. You just wish some random event would come and let fate decide it for you. But God hates the weak. You can be certain that if you feel you deserve to die, you probably won’t. Instead life will slow, and each day and every sleepless night, will drag on.

*

It had been about six months now, since the work started piling on. He had finished school years ago, and was proud of the Certificate of Accounting and later Bachelor of Economics degree he had earned. They had always been to him a sign of permanence. People would leave him, happiness would fleet, but those pieces of paper, awarded to him, would always carry their weight. He’d thought, in his own graceful, thoughtless way, that the letters behind his name made him whole and vindicated his existence.
They’d both said they could cope, decided they would cope. As always, all is easier said than done. One fundamental block lay in their path. He did not come home worn out yet satisfied, instead it was an empty exhaustion. Many nights he would not sleep, sometimes his mind wouldn’t stop moving, crunching numbers and flying ideas. Other nights it was opposite. His mind would blank, and he’d lie for hours that dragged on for years unable to even close his eyes. He was unable to perform sexually. Their arguments became more frequent.

*

Dark like night and deep like the grave. That’s the kind of sleep I want. One so satisfying you wake from it as if from death itself, and reborn you feel nothing but joy. Each breath is a wonder, and each new moment a reason to stop and appreciate. Snow blankets the ground when it’s young, but suffocates when you’re old. And glinting frost in sunlight refracts the spectrum of your desires.

*

Harry awoke again and found himself not in his dream world but back in the real world. In the real world it was six-thirty in the AM, too late to bother going back to bed. The last time he remembered glancing at his alarm clock it had read 4:15 in bright red. He sat up into air that was too frigid, and swung his feet onto a floor that was too cold. The warm inviting body lay beside him, but its comforts were no match for the anxiety restless sleep brings. Awakened again by what stirs inside, he was left helpless. Like a child, frustrated and lonely, he sat. He did nothing. Not because nothing occurred to him, but because no action seamed worth doing. It was a most pitiful state.

A long wait ensued, and several bright red minutes ticked by on the clock. Finally, an urge to urinate roused him enough to bring him to move. The steps were meager, unnoticeable. In short shuffles they carried him to the bathroom.

Passing the mirror a loathsome figure looked him in the face, jaw askew. The circles under the eyes had grown since their last meeting, these two. He and an unkind reflection met far more often than either would like.

*
Harry walked in the office, ten minutes late as usual. His boss saw these late arrivals, didn’t see the late hours and endless nights. It worked against him. From inside the open door that read Rodney Hinkle bellowed a voice:

“Stevens? That you coming in late again?” Harry had passed the door, quickly returned to heed this beckoning.

“Good, gave me more time to set stuff aside from you.” The hulking man smiled a mischievous smile. He lifted a large stack of file folders neatly labeled and loose sheets tightly stacked and came around the desk.
“Enjoy,” was all Harry’s boss said as he handed them the papers. His smile faded into serenity. The hulking Rodney slipped his feet pleasantly onto his desk, his hefty burden now passed on the his unfortunate underling.

The beings portrayed in this story are no more real than you or I. Their names have been left unchanged to reveal their identities.

I drive a piece of shit and so do you. We all drive pieces of shit, do useless shit. I’ve come to accept it and so should you. I’m pissed and stuck in my car and beaming my negativity at all you suckers around me. Is it ironic that I always get caught on my way home from work in the throes of the theater crowd? That’s a stupid question. The real question is why I feel I have to take it out on the poor sap stuck in front of me. He’s just like me, and me, like him. Just like that obese guy to my right, looking like a trained and overfed monkey in his tight suit. Or the crazy blond in the red Honda up ahead, she looks almost as unhappy as I do. I’d hate to be her. I’m happier knowing. That was the trouble, the sheer uncertainty. As I often sit here like this, somewhere on the wasteland between what I call work and what I call home, I wonder. I wonder if I always feel like this. If it’s just me or a product of my situation, if all the people around me feel like I do.
But I realize I have my ups and downs, most people do. The awkwardness is the worst, when you forget how to interact, forget what normal is. You still feel obliged to do it, but it’s just one of those days. And you can’t help but ask yourself: Are they strange or am I?

*

He hadn’t always been so morbid, or so people told him. He was just a regular guy, and to look at him you wouldn’t think anything wrong. Like so many the turmoil in his head wouldn’t leave him alone. He sought conflict, but only the kinds he could blame on others. He bred distrust within himself, he even carried himself in a hardened manner, but soft. An ugly slouch pulled his back down into and deep concave, the caricature of a drunken boxer. The deeper he sank, the darker his mood. It made his chest a gaping hole, making him look as though the world had delivered some blow from which he never was to recover.
He told himself that the doldrums of everyday life were the weight upon his soul. When he got home that night he shuffled through the door of his small studio apartment, shared with one, and dropped his coat half a world away from the rack. Sad, huge, grey eyes greeted him from the corner of the queen bed, on the threshold of the kitchen. These sunken holes called eyes sat deep in the darkened eye sockets of a soft round face and a slender figure aged and curved beyond its years.

“You stayed late again,” a tired voice harkened from behind those eyes.

“I had too,” replied the saggy silhouette, still standing in the doorframe, bag in hand.

“You always have to. Ever occur to say no? Or maybe ask for overtime?”

“It’s expected of me, what do you expect me to do?” He shuffled a few feet forward and let the worn leather case fall to the floor. The old clasp gave and the hinges swung open, revealing a flurry of creased and disorganized documents. “Shit.”

He bent down to gather them up, shuffling into neat piles and restoring them to the case. Such neatness seamed inappropriate within the general hubbub of the apartment. It was small and they were young. A few days worth of dishes littered the deep blue countertops of the kitchen and rain splattered the large window that sat above the bed. Closer, in the hall, shoes were strewn about and the closet lay open, stuffed with more jackets and other clothes than it had ever been intended to take.