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Squelch |
| Written by Dylan James Docherty | |
| Thursday, 21 February 2008 | |
He stared at the clock. Eight-thirty seven. If he didn’t leave the house in the next two minutes he would be late for work. The second hand seemed to be moving quicker than usual. He tried willing it to stop. He wanted time to be suspended, the world to stop spinning, life to come to a complete and total standstill. It didn’t work. It never does. He picked the knife up from the table in front of him and slowly traced a circle around the plate knocking the fork onto the floor in the process. The plate had some baked beans and a half slice of toast left on it. He probably wouldn’t have time to eat them. He lifted the mug and took a sip of coffee that was now lukewarm. It tasted bitter. He had forgot to buy sugar. He looked back to the still-ticking clock. Eight-forty one. He was going to be late, he supposed. He put the knife back down and twisted his body away from the table to in order to stand up. On doing this he brought his left foot down onto the fork that he had knocked onto the floor. He pulled the jagged object away and his foot began to bleed. He wished that he had been wearing slippers or that he had put on his shoes before having breakfast. Socks didn’t offer much protection against stray jagged objects. He knew this now. He thought about maybe bandaging the foot or something to stop the bleeding, but he was already late for work and so he decided just to put his shoes on and leave the house. It was bright outside even though the sun wasn’t there. It must’ve been hidden behind some clouds, he supposed. It wasn’t warm but it wasn’t really cold either. It seemed to be a strangely normal day. On the street he passed people that he didn’t recognise. He wondered if they had anything in common with him. Maybe they were late for work too. Maybe if he stopped one of them and started talking to them they would find that they had a lot of things in common and would arrange to meet up for drinks and become friends. He didn’t like talking too people too much. Maybe that’s why he didn’t have many friends. The inside of his left shoe had begun to feel sticky and he noticed that it was making a squelching sound as he walked. He decided to walk faster so that maybe he wouldn’t be too late for work. They didn’t like it when you came in late. They would shout at you and give you written warnings if you did it a lot. They said that you didn’t respect the company, or something. He stopped suddenly. A dog was barking at him. It was a brown dog. He didn’t like dogs. When he was a boy a dog had bitten his hand. From then on he assumed that dogs must not like him and decided that he would describe himself as a ‘cat person’ when asked for a preference. The dog was tied to a lamppost so he knew that if he crossed the road the dog wouldn’t be able to follow him. He crossed the road quickly. There weren’t many cars around so he didn’t have to stop, look, or listen. On the other side of the road there weren’t any dogs so he was able to continue his journey to work. His shoe seemed to be filling up with blood because the squelching sound was getting louder and louder as he walked along. Squelch. Funny word that, he thought. Then he began to wonder if it was actually even a word, maybe it was just a sound and he thought it was a word. It seemed unlikely that squelch would be in the dictionary as he couldn’t think of any meaning to describe it. He considered this and decided that squelch was definitely more of a sound than a word. And he went along squelching his way to work. This thought made him laugh to himself and he almost forgot about his lateness. Still, he wished that he had more to laugh about than squelching though. He opened the front door to his work hoping that no one would notice his lateness. Maybe if no one seen him he could pretend he had been there the whole time. That he had got there early in fact and had been in the toilet because he had been feeling sick. Maybe they’d sympathise with him and let him take the day off and he could go home and bandage his foot, or something. The manager was waiting by his desk. The manager started shouting about the lateness and asked him what his excuse was this time. He tried to think of a good excuse. He then replied that a dog had bitten him when he was walking down the street. The manager did not believe him so he took off his shoe to show him his bloody left foot. This only made the manager even more angry because he was now dripping blood onto the company carpet. The manager said that he still did not believe him because there were no holes in his shoe and unless he had been walking to work in his socks whilst carrying his shoes in his hands that it was impossible that such a thing could happen. He wished that he had thought of a better excuse. The manager told him that he had given him enough warnings and they were pointless because he never learned. He then told him he was sacked with immediate effect and to go home and never come back. He put his shoe back on a left the company building. He noticed that some people were laughing as he passed them by. He wondered what they were laughing about and wished that he had something to laugh about too. As he began to walk home he started to think about what had just happened to him. He wondered why the manager had said that he never learned. Then he wondered exactly what it was that he was supposed to learn. He had learned to do his job the same as everybody else. He also learned that it was wrong to be late for work but that sometimes you can’t help it. Maybe the manager needed to learn that sometimes things happened and that sometimes you could not help being late. He noticed that his foot was still squelching. And here he was squelching his way home when it was not that long ago that he was squelching his way to work. He no longer had a place of work to squelch to. He then wondered what he would do tomorrow and he could not think of anything. The dog was no longer there so there was no need for him to cross the road again. There were still not many cars and it was still not really warm and not really cold. Nothing had changed that much. Everything still seemed to be strangely normal in fact. When he got home he went to the kitchen. The clock was still ticking and the fork was still lying on the floor. He squelched over to the jagged object and picked it up. It had some dried blood on it. It all seemed ridiculous. He probably wouldn’t have been late for work if he hadn’t stepped on the jagged object. It must have cost him at least a couple of minutes. Ridiculous. Not knowing what else to do he stabbed the fork into his leg several times. This caused a lot of bleeding. He found it funny. I’m like a baked potato, he thought. He continued with the stabbing all over his body and started to find it harder and harder to breathe. He continued to laugh at the thought of being like a baked potato. He then decided that he wanted to see exactly what a potato would see and laughing and wheezing and covered in blood he stuck the jagged object directly into his left eye with a squelch. Copyright 2008 Dylan James Docherty |
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| Last Updated ( Thursday, 21 February 2008 ) |
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