Chapter 1
It’s a cold night, and there is nothing more that I would like to do than to return home and fall asleep with Jasper. Unfortunately, as there must always be, there is something holding me back—my job.
Now, 9 to 5 is sufficient, but this extra volunteeresque bullshit is unnecessary. This company would have us become mercenaries and spies for the “better good” if less of us were obese. In comparison to what is surely the ultimate Suma Inc. goal, my task isn’t too tedious, and it’s lucky that I live in the suburbs despite working in the city.
So, as every other day, I’m parked on the side of the middle of the long stretch of road taking me through nowhere (approx. 8 miles of it). The cheap projector I’ve been so generously given by my boss flickers dimly in front of me as I type in a traffic summary so Suma can “better our transportation”. Most of the roads were clear today, so I really had nothing to report except for the asshole who flashed all of Lipton Street around noon, causing police to swarm by and shut down that signal for ten minutes.
Granted, the summary usually doesn’t take long. But it’s a blockage in the travel from work to home and my temperament isn’t nice enough that late to allow for a pause in the drive, be it for a few minutes. I envy those who can be okay with the task, or even enjoy it. Kie Jang from Editing can make her summary an exciting adventure despite being about traffic perpetually by the shantytowns she passes, and Oregon Sills, the office man-whore from Customer Support, can regale the readers with an erotic drive. Maybe that’s their way with dealing with the monotony of rewriting the same thing day-to-day. For Oregon, though, I suspect it’s the thing lifting him out of the monotony of his life (not including his choice of lifestyle).
When I finish I restart my car and wait for the liquid-to-gas conversion. Ahead of me, it seems like I can see smoke rising, and I brace myself to stop on the road again to report an accident or an unsupervised campfire.
What I see makes me slam down on the accelerator and suddenly the car lurches
Someone shouts
A bloodied face comes too close to my window
And I’m shooting off with my heart racing more quickly than my driving with those faces rushing inwards and an evil creeping into my mind—
Breathe.
I still can’t believe it but I have to because a glance at my window shows a bloodied handprint. The car makes a suspicious clunking sound and even though I desperately want to speed into oblivion, I have to slow down.
The suburban city road sign appears blessedly quickly, and I autopilot my way back home. With disgust, I just barely manage to hose off the blood on the glass into the front lawn, and then re-park in the driveway.
Inside, I want to tell Jasper about what happened, but he’s lost in dreamland and I should know how much he deserves that.
So I squeeze myself as close to his side as possible and try to forget the animal skull-wearing people and slow-burning man on the side of the road.
