The world as we know it has come to a heinous and screeching end, like a dozen tom turkeys being fed through a wood chipper alive.. Forty years of constant uninterrupted phone time with BBF cannot hold a candle to this ass raping.
Vesty Van Cockchoker is now my office mate.
I cannot even begin to relate the visceral, 'I just swallowed a cup of wriggling, ravenous leeches' horror that I am experiencing... but relate I must, as the only thing that is keeping my cranium from doing the Jiffy Pop heat/shake/expand/rupture is my desperation to tell the tale before it consumes me.
Earlier this summer I started the plans that are my doom in motion: I had to fire a graphic designer that shares our office with my permanent office mate, Georgie Cubisthead, and I. Now, George is a great guy, but his head is a cube. He even has a flattop and loves to wear large collared button down shirts that really give you the impression that he not only has no neck, but that he was the model for the original Rockm Sockm Robots dude. He sits next to a big window and he is constantly in 'silhouette' from my viewpoint. If it weren’t for his nose, there would be some question as to in what direction he was sitting at any given time. He is a great guy, not counting his charter membership of "Hypocrites Against Drunk Driving"... but I digress...
Our empty desk space was due to be filled by another graphic designer, a geriatric dude with a centimetre of dandruff accumulated on his threadbare navy cardigan whose breath smells of a mixture of kerosene and rotten cabbage and whose glasses have such a build-up of detritus that they double as welding goggles, or maybe that Mako-toothed set of D-cups that emasculated me in the coffee room recently, but no... Neither of those lesser horrors was to be...
I come into the office earlier than everyone but our owner, who has a cup of Joe with me and we discuss anything but work. He seemed a bit on edge with me this morning alluding to how we are all doing so well with the constraints of our new space, and how everyone is really 'sticking in there' while the rest of our floor gets renovated. I felt the horror enveloping me like the fudgy basting of being locked in a port-o-potty as it is getting rolled down a steep hill... yet I had not found the source of my skin crawl... yet.
As I rounded the corner into my office I saw the talisman of abject horror: the vinyl hanging bag that Missy Von Vondervest keeps his spare 'slacks' and shirt ('just in case') hanging in was not in its safety zone down the hall but rather in my office, hanging near the newly installed set motivational posters above his desk.
I reeled in terror, white-hot phosphenes coursing across my vision, was I dreaming? Could this horror be real? I was confronted by the All Seeing Eye, I was falling head first into Jahannem, the Outer Darkness, as my peripheral vision diminished all I am and would ever be was being consumed in a biblical conflagration. I clutched at my chest, dropped to my weakened knees and as I fell I see what looks like, but could not be, a personal espresso machine on his desk? my gaping maw let go a silent supplication to the most high: save me from the Vest!
When I came to, I was actually seated at my desk and it was 10:30. I had been in the office for nigh on three hours, but had avoided all conscious activity in a vain attempt to stave off the inevitable…. Vaguely, like memories of a forgotten life in chains, sharp, painful tugs of the past hours came lacerating through the protective, fog …
“Hi, Roomies!”
I must kill him. Kill him now.
“Any of you ‘bros’ want a cappuccino?”
Tear open his waxed smooth hairless chest cavity and eat his heart, avoid noticing the pierced nips at all cost.
“Mind if I crank up some tunes?”
Recent Paul McCartney. My fingernails violate my oaken desktop.
“Whatchya doin’ for lunch? The new turkey ‘wraps’ at the shop are LOADED with protein!”
How can I let it live, when it is so obviously, so savagely disabled?
He has pictures of himself on his desk. Fishing, at the beach, in Paris with Notre Dame in the background, somewhere in Spain. JUST him.
He has an inbox/outbox tray system on his desk: we are a paperless office.
He has a paperclip holder that looks like a mini toilet, clips in the bowl.
He goes to fill his protein shaker in the coffee room, but WAITS until he gets back to the office to start shaking it.
He makes smacking sounds after ever sip.
He constantly forces out a ‘What the…?!?’ or a ‘Holy moley!” while obviously browsing the net.
Forced laughter that is actually punctuated by slapping his thigh. Does anyone really do this?
He has a pair of HUGE 1970s looking headphones completely cover the sides of his head so he can’t hear his cell phone ringing the polyphonic star wars theme so I have to MSN message him to answer his own phone, to which he looks up, winks at me and gives me the thumbs up sign.
When he uses the phone, he presses the button for the speaker, which is at full volume of course, THEN goes to look up the number, letting the off the hook sound run for 20+ seconds at full volume.
The end is near.