Chapter I
An Envisaged Visage
Brian felt an odd premonition tickling the tip of his mind’s tongue.
Though calling it a “premonition” might give him too much credit.
In fact, it’s totally the wrong word.
So is “tickling.” It was more like a burn. He could nearly taste it, but not enough to name the flavor.
It wasn’t so much his feeling as it was mine, which he misinterpreted as an undefined foresight leaked from the past.
But this was different, something important was happening. An internal event unlike anything he’d felt before. Inside him, a suspicion of an idea grew, a process of which he had been previously unaware. Independent of himself, but codependent upon him, this was not simply any idea. This was incredibly significant, possibly surpassing all of Brian’s previous accomplishments, which, put into perspective, wouldn’t be difficult.
However, this one, he thought, gave an intense impression of importance... unless this prevailing feeling was an irritation screaming from his inadvertent neglect of a mundane task. It could very well be something trivial, like his job’s responsibilities, which his boss had informed him earlier. But Brian hadn’t listened, so it was most likely not that.
Maybe he had left the coffee pot on in his apartment, or maybe this idea was possibly the catalyst which would change his life and all of society forever. It was definitely somewhere in-between and/or either one of those two extremes. Whatever it was, Brian could tell something was happening creatively within himself despite his participation, which he was about to trap.
So, still he sat, attempting to gather the enlightenment of exactly what and how amazing this epiphany was destined to be.
It would have very much benefited Brian to know, deep within the depth of his synapses, behind his frontal cortex and through the hallways of regrettable memories locked behind numbered doors, past the library of abandoned life goals and to the left of the study which housed the broken stereo systems playing obnoxious choruses of popular songs on an incessant loop, there, in fact, was a reaction happening.
A bubbling, electric reaction. An active volcano at the breaking point of explosion. An amalgam of brilliance, possibly formed from all the experiences and information Brian had collected throughout the years. All of the external inspirations and knowledge jambalaya he had absorbed up to this very moment brewed into this discovery of a still-undiscovered idea.
And I know this all to be true, for I was a direct witness, because I am Brian’s mind.
Although, personally, I prefer to think Brian is my body.
My dumb, clumsy, uninspiring, rebellious body.
Though unrealized in his envisaged trance, Brian concentrated on what this idea possibly could be, and he kept provoking me to reveal it. He prodded and poked me while staring stupidly out of a small window four feet away from his cubicle, past two of his coworkers’ desks and behind the large printer with the pile of empty boxes on top. He would gaze through the remaining uncovered twelve inches of glass when he was searching for inspiration, not realizing perhaps I didn’t particularly feel like sharing inspiration with him sometimes.
On this day, the earth boasted a warm and inviting pride – or at least twelve inches of the day did which managed to slip through the gray walls.
The irregular part of the small square of the window unhidden by office trash was blue. It was most likely the sky… probably… unless a blue truck had parked outside of the building. Either way, it was a sky-blue spanning across the unseen horizon and eventually drove away from its parking space in the alley revealing an ugly concrete wall.
But upon the wall, growing from the cracks and oozing from the spores, Brian saw a glimpse of the curtain drawing back on my phenomenal creation. His eyes widened and mouth dropped slightly in stupendous awe, as he inched toward the brink of this revelation. Brian’s office contorted into a wormhole pulling the fabric of space-time apart like cotton, which had previously blockaded this Holy Grail of ideas resting in the distance. He ran toward it, leaving the first floor of the small office building and entering a quantum reality vortex spiraling down to the solution of this new mystery of which would surely change his life heretofore. He outstretched his arms in melodic harmony to the conducting symphony enveloping promising aspirations of a climactic conclusion.
It was almost clear, and it was proving to be magnificent indeed.
A phoenix rose from the fires of everything absorbed in Brian’s lifetime, shining bright as a blinding zenith. A pinnacle of creativity pierced the earth climbing into an apex of destiny. His eyes adjusted through the eye-bending fractals and the summit came to focus. A murky vision settling on its form to be revealed. This apogee of modern thinking was absolutely and definitely going to be the best idea he had ever forgotten due to being interrupted by his boss.
“WAKE UP!”
The abrupt surprise shattered Brian’s vision into chaos. The symphony collapsed into off-key cacophony and a disappointing failure of denouement. The vortex dissipated into stale air of a run-down dump of an office and the phoenix’s flight veered back into the flames screaming for dear life. Its ashes slipped through the spaces between Brian’s clenched grasp dissolving in the winds from Rich Ricchezza’s stupid mouth-breathing face.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOIN’?”
“Sorry, Rich. I was just thinking abo— “
“Don’t interrupt!” barked Rich. “I’m askin’ you a question. Whatever you were doin’, it didn’t look like thinkin’ to me, it looked like daydreamin’!”
The office shushed and turned in a gasp.
“Were you DAAYDREEAAMIN’???” Rich's pupils segmented like compound lenses. Behind each, a miniature spreadsheet updated in real time.
Column B: Insubordination
Row 7: Brian.
The conditional formatting flickered a color-coded warning.
His wiry black hairs twitched like antennae, each standing on end in hostile alignment.
His voice didn’t just shout. It jittered, glitched, reverberated through the office walls like an error code in human form.
Boxes toppled. The ground didn’t shake, but it felt like it should have, purely out of a shared sense of unease from Rich’s awkward form.
He plodded across the sublimated-print carpet like a fourteen-foot manager spitting and hissing from an unbridled superiority complex.
Similarly, the warehouse converted into an office which encased these events was nicknamed, “The Superiority Complex.”
Brian had transported from his vision back to Trite Essentials, L.L.C., the monotonous prison where he was brutally employed as a user experience designer and mercilessly forced to be paid to sit in a chair forty hours a week. His daily responsibilities included selecting header colors for data sheets about products no one needed but somehow all owned already. A multi-micro-step process with redundant checks and reviews which was immediately followed by Rich explaining why Brian’s choice was deeply, almost philosophically wrong. If the mundane and arbitrary tasks weren’t enough, the music in the office alone was some unusual form of torture.
Trite Essentials specialized in the attempt at design, production and distribution of items no normal person would actively purchase but somehow always owned. Rich's dream was to rule the economic marketplace of completely forgettable but technically necessary products which governed over the common people's lives.
Things like the little plastic tab in newly purchased electronics which kept the item from working, or the extra bag of screws in the package of an Ikea desk. Basically, things you pull out and throw away. Rich wanted to corner the direct-to-trash market. But alas, Trite Essentials did not have the rights to little plastic battery tabs or extra screws, for these were but unnatural fantasies only fathomed by gods, and no mortal shall dare attempt to dream lest they gamble to suffer insanity!
Trite Essentials primarily manufactured and distributed little wires which tied the end of bread bags.
No, not Twisty-Ties.
The original bread bag ties. The unpatented, uncolorful, sharp, metal bag wire.
In an attempt to explain daydreaming and thinking weren’t very dissimilar, and were, in fact, part of his own creative process, Brian interrupted Rich again with his usual brand of unsatisfactory conversational dialogue. Answers, however, weren’t part of Rich’s ideal exchange with his subservient employees. So, naturally, he decided to remind Brian of an important story about daydreaming.
Rich pointed to a large, framed portrait hanging prominently in the office. It was of a man from the turn of the eighteenth century, in a laboratory, looking over a small metal wire through a magnifying glass. For some inexplicable reason, one of his feet, clad in a polished Ligonier shoe, rested on the neck of a giant grizzly bear.
“Brian, in 1908, inventor Alexander Twist came up with the invention of a metal wire with the ability to twist and tie around bag openin’s, after discoverin’ and removin’ a metal wire lodged in his knee during his job as a bear fighter. He looked at it, twisted it, studied and tested it for a long time. He sat around a lot thinkin’ about it, daydreamin’ about the endless possibilities of his invention.
“After twenty years, he realized his invention was the greatest advancement in the bagged bread industry since bread itself had been bagged, and he applied for a patent. Shortly after, bagged bread was invented and sure enough it was tied with a metal wire wrapped in a colorful piece of paper you could twist.
“But this was not Alexander’s twistable wire, because durin’ all the time he spent daydreamin’, another company invented a similar product and gave it a much more clever and catchy name, “The Twist Tie.” And they, as you know, went on to be very successful in the bagged-bread tie industry, while Alexander spent his remainin’ days strugglin’ with patents and competin’ with the safe and fun, colorfully-wrapped Twist Ties with his drab-lookin’, sharp-edged and unfortunately named, “Metal Shard Bag-Wires.”
“He never overcame his failure, and it haunted him for the rest of his life until one day… while daydreamin’… was viciously mauled by a bear. If Alexander had spent more time focusin’ on his job, he never would have met such a horrible fate and suffered failure throughout his life, and this company would not be in the position it is in today. In fact, we’d prolly be a fuckin’ bear fightin’ factory. And if we were, you’d be getting’ eaten by a bear right now. You ever think of that? No, you haven’t, because you daydream all day.”
“A bear-fighting company?”
“Brian, please,” Rich said. “You’re always interruptin’. You aren’t going to learn anything if you keep interruptin’ me with questions. Just listen. As I was sayin’, daydreamin’ gets you killed, sometimes by bears, but even worse, it makes you non-productive. Because that patent stayed with my family, that is who we are; The Metal Shard Bag Wire company, Trite Essentials, and we need you to stay productive. And I will not tolerate any employee being non-productive. So, keep that in mind, keep focused. And to help you with that, I'd like it if you took ten minutes every day to look at that banner over there and think about that.”
The number of “that’s” stacked up like a multiple car wreck at a broken traffic light. Much like Rich’s mind whenever it attempted to communicate two or more things at once, each one slammed full force into the carnage. The turmoil distracted Brian from hearing Rich’s point.
His setae-covered tarsal claw directed Brian’s gaze to the large number of dot-matrix MS-DOS printouts, perforated edges, sprocket holes and all, running across the office below the drop-panel ceiling. Spanning so long and sloppily off centered, they cornered two perpendicular walls. Each page dedicated to one letter printed in nine-hundred-point font, spelled out the acronym,
WWATHD? DDPAHWEBABSDDDAABP
Brian blinked at the string of letters as if trying to decode a cryptogram.
“What Would Alexander Twist Have Done?” Rich read aloud while pointing to each letter.
“Day Dream Probably, And He Was Eaten By A Bear. So Don’t Day Dream And Always Be Productive.”
Before this, Brian did not know these pages had stood for anything.
Now, in all honesty, I tend to tune out Rich, so I’ll try to explain this to you the best I can remember. I’m not claiming any of this is exact. It's merely my subjective memory of a story I never bothered to listen to in the first place, due to its immediate and overwhelming banality.
Rich Ricchezza. Ugh. Unfortunately, he remains central to all of this. Before I move further, let me get this out of the way.
He’s the kind of man you think you’ve met before; a personification of the worst traits of people you try to forget. A biased composite of mouth-breathing managers and motivational tyrants. The kind of presence you suffer through to get to the better parts. You may know the type. The type who spends their time at home, and often at work, arguing online because they like to believe their comments matter.
He’s the ex-boss you remember with a drop of vomit in your gag reflex. Maybe not the terrible ex-boss who ended up in prison for racketeering. No. He’s the one you look up twelve years later because you’re using him as a basis for a caricature you’re about to savagely take down and discover he owns a successful multi-state cannabis oil distribution network…
Oh.
So, okay. You’d hoped for a darker downfall.
But he’s still ugly. So, I win.
Sorry… another Rich. I went on a bit of a rant there. Different guy.
Rich Ricchezza is the Rich in the prologue you skip. The chapter which nearly makes you put the book down. the slow start to a story you almost abandon, until you realize why it starts this way...
Metaphorically.
Despite what most people would assume, Rich wasn’t short for Richard. Rich Ricchezza wasn’t even his name from birth. He legally changed it from Divorced Alcoholic Coffeebreath, or something. I believe this was his literal birth name for as long as I’ve been saying it. Maybe it was actually Joe.
Rich had indeed changed his name, once he realized he was a “winner.” He needed to pretentiously exemplify success in all aspects of his life, including his name. He chose Ricchezza due to its classy sound and Italian translation, and Rich for a less subtle but identical reason.
Each day, Rich folded his tall, pasty, lanky, weird, black-haired, tarantula-like body into his 1993 Hyundai Stellar, custom-painted Mercedes brand silver. The finishing touch was the iconic Mercedes ornament welded to the hood with misplaced pride. His dyed midnight-black, dried out receding hair fluttered slightly in the breeze of his moon roof as he showboated his style and prestige in his middle-class apartment complex kingdom.
His mustache, a wiry thicket of dead cricket legs, typically clung to food chunks for sustenance.
He enjoyed informing his lower-level employees he would be purchasing four-grand cigars and later dipping them in Brandy.
Naturally, this meant buying a four-pack of “Grand Cigars” for $12.95 at the gas station down the street, just before picking up Brandi from her pimp.
His original ‘Ar-Money’ suits were tailored so the left sleeve would be short enough to display Rich’s gold-plated Rolex wristwatch, meticulously hand-crafted by fine artisans who specialized in the removal of the bottom of ‘B’s on watches to change Bolex to Rolex. A detail, I imagine, he took pride in every time he glanced down at his treasured possession to count how long it had been since he had a real friend. Or how long since his last divorce. Or how much time it will be until his son spoke to him again.
Rich was a self-proclaimed winner in every self-delusional sense of self-proclamation.
Then when Rich was 50, he acquired a family-owned patent. And with it he created Trite Essentials L.L.C. where he crowned himself as President and CEO, CFO, CTO, CMO, COO, Vice President of Managing Managers and VP of sales and VP of merchandising, Supreme Commander of Water Cooler Breaks and whatever other title he felt was prestigious enough to wield mundane power over others. He then leased a 50,000 square foot warehouse unit attached to the back of another warehouse, registered the business name, ‘TRITE ESSENTIALS L.L.C.’, which became a pillar of the vacant industrial park community for nearly the last seventeen weeks.
“I came up with the Alexander Twist banner one day many weeks ago. I was sittin’ in my office, staring out of the window, brainstormin’ how I could prevent daydreamin’ and slackin’ off in the workplace,” Rich boasted.
“This banner is for you. All of you!” he raised his voice theatrically, addressing the entire office like a benevolent overlord.
“It’s what keeps you focused. It’s what keeps you safe. And it’s why they love me. Because I allow them to work here. I allow them the privilege of survivin’.”
Brian attempted to defend himself, “Rich I was being productive, I was thinking about our Metal Shard Bag-Wires by promoting them as an environmentally friendly product since they do not incorporate the non-biodegradable plastic which covers Twist-Ties.”
“What are you, some tree-fuckin’ libtard?”
“Well I… what? Why would I fu-? No, I mean…think about it.”
“Get with the times, we ain’t just Bag Wire resellers, as of this Mundee mornin’ we are shiftin’ gears to my next big idea; Advertisin’.”
“Advertising... what?”
“Everythin’. People will pay us to advertise. This is a fast-paced environment Brian, you need to keep up. I've been in this business for 17 weeks so I know what I'm talkin’ about. They did a big study the other day. They gathered all the great intellects, 71 of us. And only two got it right; me and another guy who happens to be very smart. 69 people got it wrong, and it was concluded they are not very smart.”
“What study?”
“Get the wax out your ears. I said, ‘intellects.’” Rich concluded this with an extra wrinkle on his catcher’s mitt of a face.
“Hey Rich, Brad Rogbin, Senior Junior Sales Executive, has something to tell you.” said Brad Rogbin, Senior Junior Sales Executive.
Rich turned without a word of thanks and walked off to speak with Brad. If there had ever existed a hierarchy beneath Rich’s absolute rule, Brad Rogbin would’ve been perched on its second tier. The title Senior Junior was confusing at first until Brian realized it was because Rich was the Senior Sales Executive. They were definitely talking about something of uber importance judging by how serious their faces were. Brad Rogbin seemed to love his name, and constantly introduced himself with it in full along with his title, even when he had met the person a thousand times.
“Sixteen minutes… really?” said a concerned Rich, deviating from the whispers.
“Nina!” he yelled.
Nina Forne was a dedicated and ruthlessly precise salesperson who led the department in both performance and presentation. Her desk was the only organized space in the building. The calm eye in a cyclone of smoldering paperwork and overheated egos. Everything had a designated place, and each item honored its role without deviation.
Four pens, Purple, Blue, Light Blue, Black. And three markers,Yellow, Orange and Red, aligned themselves with military discipline, each maintaining exactly half an inch of social distance. The black stayed in the center as this was her normal go-to. Purple was reserved for when she was feeling fun. Her travel mug bore no fingerprints, no lip stains, no identity. Her black tea with mint and honey was consumed in total silence, without a single wasted drop, as if the cup itself had never truly been opened.
Even her binders gleamed slick, orderly portfolios of wins and quotas, cooled to the touch, as though they'd never been held by a hand with doubt or desire.
But Nina had one fatal, unforgivable flaw in the eyes of this company:
Nina… was A WOMAN.
“Brad tells me you used the terlit for sixteen minutes?”
“Brad Rogbin, Senior Junior Sales Executive” Brad Rogbin politely corrected his superior.
Nina was perceivably confused, “Well, yeah, I…”
“Terlit time is time theft and I’m dockin’ your pay for one minute! 24.04 cents!”
Rich wrote on a post-it note and said aloud, “NEGATIVE twenty five and four one-hundredths cents, US Dollars.”
He stuck it to Nina’s head. The note publicly branded her like a defective toy.
-$0.24 4⁄100 USD – RR
“From now on, Nina, and this goes for everyone, you will log your terlit activity in the Terlit Utilization Logbook. We need metrics and time efficiency if we’re gonna hit our goals.”
He wrote on white masking tape pasted to a binder, “TOILET LOG.”
“And that, folks, is leadership,” he said, arms out like a dictator expecting cheers.
One brave intern began a slow clap, and the rest followed, faces pale. Nina peeled the post-it off her forehead without speaking.
Rich birthed an idea, “New office motto! TERLIT TIME IS UNPAID TIME. Nina, record it in my QQB, also why don’t you wear skirts? I like my girls to show some leg.”
The bullpen of salesmen forced a confusing “HA. HA. HA.” which sounded like it was spelled like laughter, but it definitely was not. Brian was in shock over the comment. Nina seemed to ignore it. Everyone else thought it was... funny? No, funny is the wrong word. Terrifying feels closer.
“The QQB,” as Rich called it, stood for The Quotable Quote Binder, more accurately and formally, its title on the cover was, Memoirs of Brilliance: Quotable Moments from the mind of Rich Ricchezza. A large black binder filled with idioms Rich thought up without thinking, demanded be archived immediately, and forgot just as fast. I imagine he flipped through it every night in a grotesque act of self-masturbatory worship.
He required every new hire to read it on their first day.
“The recession is a hurricane, but I have a pocket full of bullets.”- RR
There’s one entry I actually remember. Well, and I guess also;
“Toilet time is unpaid time.” - RR
“Also Nina, ‘I like my girls to show some leg’ can go in there too.” he yelled from his office, having slithered back like a ghoul to its crypt.
“I like my girls to show some leg.” - RR
I now remember three.
An inexplicable pressure behind his eyes zapped Brian, as though Nina’s humiliation had short-circuited something deep inside. She seemed to be constantly faced with sexism and humiliation from Rich, and her looks were always the topic despite her appearing to Brian to be the only professional in this place. Brian became painfully aware of how deeply sexism infected the workplace, which made him hesitant to flirt with her at work… at least until he could figure out how to flirt with her at work in a not-sexist-in-the-workplace way.
He wondered why she never said anything or why she seemed to ignore it. Maybe she didn’t mind. Maybe she even liked the attention. Or maybe after generations of women, groomed by men in charge to be second-class fuck toys under threat of career ruin, had left her in a state of powerless impotence. Who knows?
Brian wasn’t sure how any self-respecting person could work here. Then again, he worked here. But then again, he didn’t have much respect for himself. Nina must have, or at least should have. She carried herself like she did, pride, intelligence, something approximating professionalism, but maybe it was a projection of his respect for her. Maybe he only thought she was hot. Maybe he could somehow turn his admiration for her professionalism into sex with her at the workplace.
The truth was, they both needed the job. It was a thin, fraying thread, suspending them above their own personal financial pitfalls, its stretched fibers laboring to stay intact, just enough to stitch their lives together beneath the flimsiest illusion of stability. He felt Nina’s thread had the opportunity to unravel. Brian’s felt his would tether him to Trite Essentials forever, and it was only his third day.
Rich, meanwhile, seemed like the kind of man who would seize any pitiful scrap of authority to grind someone else beneath it. Still, maybe this was a bad week, Brian told himself. A rough first impression. Maybe things would level out.
But if they didn’t, if this was the job, then he already knew what came next. The slow dissociation. The creeping apathy. He’d stop caring, do the bare minimum, ride it out until something better came along or the place collapsed under the weight of its own idiocy. He’d been down this road before.
Of course, this time was different. Because this time, he had an idea. A brilliant, life-altering idea. It hadn’t arrived yet, but it was coming. Any day now. And when it did, he’d quit dramatically, beautifully. He’d give a speech. Something devastating. Something shattering to Rich’s paper-thin ego leaving him gasping in the ruins of his own mediocrity.
“Look at him,” I said to Brian.
“Big, dumb asshole. Look how dumb he looks talking to Brad and occasionally looking back at you, and now his dumb body is walking over here and crossing his arms about to tell you how good your idea was. The stupid moron.”
“Now back to you.” Rich scolded. “Brian, listen to me. Your job here is to be creative with projects strictly based on the project directions I give you, executed exactly the way I want in every detail. You have no business tellin’ me how to advertise. I’ve been doin’ this for a long time. Your creativity is confined to your computer within the boundaries I’ve already chosen for you. You can be as creative as you want in the image placeholder where I’ve given you three options. Pick any of those three, and hopefully you’ll notice that two of them are wrong. Use your creativity.
“I want you to think outside of the box, but don’t reinvent the wheel. Don’t go crazy, but create somethin’ we’ve never seen before, as long as it’s based on my exact directions.
“Hit the ground running, but not in any weird or unexpected way.
“And if you have an idea… we’ll cross the bridge when we come to it.”
Brian was confused, it seemed whoever had been pushing the buttons for Rich’s soundboard had mashed the prompts.
“I have absolutely no idea what you’re trying to say. Can I ask—”
“Stop interruptin’!” he stomped and woofed.
“Questions are for people who have no confidence! Do you lack confidence, or are you stupid?”
The false dichotomy provoked Brian to think about it, but before he could answer, Rich began speaking again.
“It’s simple, stupid. Don’t cross a bridge ‘til you get to it. You can’t cross bridges you ain’t at yet, but when you get to the bridge, cross it, then, and only then, not now. So hit the ground runnin’, don’t go crazy, don’t reinvent the wheel but think outside of the box as long as I have approved it first.”
“Which box’s interior is the one I should think outside?”
Rich’s patience shortened quickly.
“Now you’re not makin’ sense. Do I need to mother you and hold your hand? Fine. Come on with me, baby. Grab the box on the floor of my office and follow mommy.”
“You’re my mommy?” Brian smirked. There were some anonymous chuckles behind cubicle walls.
“Pick up the box, NOW!” he shrieked, his wiry hair shaking off flakes of Aqua Net and raw, unchecked managerial authority.
Brian picked up a large white cardboard box, handle holes on each side, and a flimsy lid on top. It was heavily filled with unknowns. He didn’t question them. He followed Rich into a large, empty annex filled with ghost-town cubicles.
They entered the center one. Rich snatched the box from his hands and placed it dead center on the floor.
“It’s four o’clock now. For the last hour today, I want you to stay in here and think outside of the box, and then every mornin’ come in here and do the same thing.”
“Really? Like, literally?”
“If you want to be a baby about this, I’ll treat you like one. This is an exercise, and it will teach you to not waste my time, so you think on it, while also learnin’ how to think outside the box.”
“This cubicle is a box, this room is a box. I’m thinking inside of them, right? If you want to be literal. This building is a box too, maybe I should spend an hour outside?”
“You can’t leave the buildin’!” The incredulous and surprise in Rich’s tone almost made his voice crack.
“This ain’t a box; it’s a cubicle. That’s a box, now think outside of it or pack your shit and don’t come back.”
Brian didn’t know how to respond other than a pandering, ‘yes, sir’ which put them both in a position where neither of them knew what to say next.
They stood there…
…in silence…
…for what seemed to be a really long time.
Brian’s mouth started to open to say something, I am unsure of what, I didn’t have anything I knew to say, and I don’t think he did either.
“Uh…”
“Well?” Rich teased, “you gonna start?”
“Oh, you want me to… yeah. Okay, now? I guess… you’re going to watch? Um, all…right,”
Brian tried to think of something. Anything. But the only image he could summon was the confused mosaic of what Rich expected this to look like.
So he stood next to the box. Staring at it. Then stepped slightly to the left.
“Is this outside enough?”
Rich stared at him.
They weren’t breaking eye contact.
It was quiet. And uncomfortable. Brian’s social anxiety cranked up to full. It was something he suspected his boss looked at as a sign of fear, which fueled Rich with such self-fulfilling fervor he achieved the largest one-and-a-half-inch erection he had ever experienced in his life.
Still, the hypnotic staring made Brian’s neck stiff and knees locked. He’d forgotten the proper way to position his arms while standing. They were stiffly shooting down to the ground and his fingers were oddly spread apart. I informed him this was wrong, but he couldn’t think of another way to place them.
Brian couldn’t understand how Rich seemed so unperturbed by this, perhaps it was because all the blood flow was redirected into his assumed tiny excuse for a penis. His long wiry body leaned on his bony shoulder to the edge of the cubicle entrance. The kind of lean suggesting he had earned a C- on his first semester at Howtostand University.
His arms crossed each other and he looked aggressively relaxed. His black corduroy pants did not match anything in any sensible way and were too short and too baggy for his stick legs, folded like crepe paper in his bent knee of the leg crossed the front of the other. His black-collared shirt tucked into his brown belt and parachuted out around his sickly-thin, leather-skinned, steel wool-haired middle-aged body. Everything about him suggested he relished the discomfort of others, his appearance was another tool in his arsenal of weaponized unpleasantness and invasive presence. Brian started to wonder if it was all intentional. Could someone’s aura be this unpleasant purely by accident? Could he somehow be an idiot savant of pure foulness?
Luckily, it was now five o’clock.
“Okay, well… I’ll start back on Monday.”
Brian awkwardly shuffled his feet to walk past him, but couldn’t get by without Rich getting the last word, which was something he needed, no matter how redundant.
“Yeah, start on Mundee or don’t bother showin’ up.” he turned and left.
Usually, the dread of it being only his third day in what was obviously a toxic environment would have been soul-crushing. But this time? It was a relief. Today Brian especially found the vapidity of the workplace’s existence, because he had an idea to catch.
He mimicked the pronunciation of Monday under his breath in a superior act of defiance. None of this mattered. Not Rich. Not the job. Not even the threat of losing it.
“Fuck Rich. He’s a footnote.
One day in the future I’ll be sitting in my mansion. The breakfast nook. The one overhanging a cliff with a panoramic view of the Pacific Ocean. I’ll be sitting easy on a pile of money in the kingdom built upon the foundation of my idea.”
“Your idea?” I laughed.
“I’ll be having a gourmet breakfast served by my wait staff and opening the paper to his obituary.”
Rich Ricchezza, former alive person, was pronounced dead Monday morning at home. After a long battle with sub-mediocrity, authorities listed the cause of death as “overwhelming failure as a human being,” which reportedly caused the back of his head to explode.
He achieved nothing of note during his 62 years.
He is survived by no one willing to be identified, though it was made explicitly clear nobody loved him and he died alone, because he was, by all accounts, an abhorrent person.
He leaves behind a book of his own quotations, which will be available for public viewing and mockery. He was a hated man, and deeply, but justifiably, lonely. Everyone in the world was uncomfortable with the way he spoke, appeared, smelled and generally existed. The Earth is, objectively, a better planet now he’s finally gone.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks you to simply go about your day and forget he ever was alive, as he was not someone of note and, again, NO ONE EVER LOVED HIM.
(Rich’s family specifically requested it be repeated ad nauseam.)
No services will be held. Rich will lay to rest in eternal inadequacy at the Loser’s Cemetery on Dumbass Street in the Immaculate Idiot Section.
If you do take time to visit his final resting place, please take note it will be unpaid time.
Brian relaxed back into his extremely expensive breakfast throne and took a satisfying sip of coffee, brewed by Peruvian artisans in the earlier morning, with a soul releasing “aah.” He glanced outward to the majestic sea rolling toward the crest of his estate.
But something was amiss. The water was rising, fast. It covered his home until his panoramic window looked like an aquarium. And in the distant sea, a murky figure floated toward him. Brian couldn’t tell if it was some kind of octopus or a jellyfish.
It moved closer, it was a brain.
Brian tapped the glass, which cracked.
A warning blasted, and a red light pulsed.
FAILURE IMMINENT.
The crack grew, along with a low, electric buzz in his skull, louder, until…