Short and Long Stories Part 2

In The Mind's Eye

Blake flinched as the earbuds were ripped out of his ears. The ambient drone music he'd been listening to reflected his flat mood and the monotony of packing boxes for a living.

He turned around knowing it was one of his co-workers whose idea of fun was to pick on the guy who wasn't one of them. He didn't want to be like them: jackasses whose horizons rarely stretched beyond beer and football. A part of him knew that boredom brings out the worst in people, but he wondered why they couldn't daydream like him to pass the time instead of acting like a pack of wolves in search of prey. In the last year at the factory he'd become public enemy number one just because he didn't have a girlfriend and liked weird music. He'd admit that much of his music was weird by most people's standards, and wished he'd never told anybody what he listened to.

"Hey. Boss wants you to help out in dispatch for an hour as they're a man down and overworked," Daryl said, smirking. As he spoke his breathing acted like a fan blowing trashy breath stink into Blake's face.

Blake hated it when that guy stood so close to him that he had to stifle the urge to gag and turn away from the halitosis. Ironically, Daryl was the one who was always well groomed and who you wouldn't expect to have dog breath, whereas Blake's pasty and greasy complexion warned people not to get too close.

The stress of working with these guys had rubbed away Blake's sense of self-esteem. He'd forgotten what having self-esteem and not feeling on edge while at work felt like. Lately he'd taken to grinding his teeth whenever one of them called him a faggot, or if he overheard them using the word in what passed for conversation between them. Even kids had more interesting things to say than most of his co-workers. He suspected that someone in the factory must be gay because he'd read it was commonplace, which made it aggravating that he was the butt of anti-gay jokes when he was straight – he just didn't know how to get a girlfriend.

In all likelihood this was another prank, again. Daryl was the supervisor, so Blake was left in a bind. If he ignored the instruction and it was for real then he'd be in trouble, and he had the feeling Daryl would like nothing better than an opportunity to give him a formal warning.

Robotically Blake packed another box while deciding what to do. He imagined shooting Daryl in the back of the head when he walked away. With a shotgun. Yeah, that would make the best noise and splatter bits of brain, bone and blood over the boxes and floor. His body tingled during this reverie. And he could pack bits of brain into one of the boxes with a note to the customer that the cost of their product wasn't only money, it was people.

Daryl turned around and caught the stare. "Get down to dispatch and leave those fuckin boxes for the others to do."

That was it, Blake had to go. Better to be jerked around if it was Daryl pulling his chain rather than risk his job.

"Okay, boss. I'm goin," he said wearily. Now he dreamt of shooting the bastard in the crotch first before finishing him off with a head shot. Then doing the same to the rest of them. Yeah, that'd give them what they deserved. A smile broke his beleaguered expression.

It came as no surprise when John, the dispatch supervisor, denied asking Daryl to send someone to help. There was no sympathy, he just laughed and told Blake to get back to packing.

Was John in on this attempt to belittle him further? Blake suspected so as he and Daryl were drinking buddies. His list of imaginary victims grew by one person. A voice told him to "Shoot them all before they turn on you physically. That's what they'll do one day. You know it."

He looked around to see who had said it, but there was nobody. And the voice, it had sounded like his own. How could that be? He was sure that he hadn't spoken aloud. It must have been in his head, an aural hallucination. Recently he'd sometimes heard sounds or indistinct voices that weren't there in the real world. Also, he felt tired all the time as though he'd been getting half the amount of sleep he actually had. Upping his coffee intake hadn't helped. Surprisingly, he hadn't been yawning more than usual. Something was wrong and now he wondered if he needed to see a doctor. But he couldn't afford to. The job didn't provide any medical insurance, and his meager savings were to be left untouched in case of a real emergency like losing his job.