The Son

“Speak now.” “Yes, to go, please.” He walked out of the café/bookstore/grocery store/clothing store hybrid into the rushing public, charting a path between the tall, small, male and female figures to the building just in eyesight a couple of blocks away. The bicycles on the path next to the sidewalk didn’t need to be taken into consideration since it’s only the sidewalk pedestrians walk on, and yet there is occasionally a cyclist who could not care less about any other people’s motives or lives and simply rushes through the people walking, slashing their shoulders with any object hanging from the cyclists’ backpacks or jackets. “Watch where you’re going! Trying to get through!” A person of this example yells at Him and, as anticipated, slashes His shoulder. A split-second decision had to be made. Time stood still as He decided whether or not to yell ferociously, politely excuse himself, or be the idiot and run after the bike and push it handlebar first into the street. “Yell ‘sorry’ and keep walking.” “Sorry, sir!” He kept walking, Time resumed, and He eventually reached his office building. 

The elevator door dinged, people got out, and He went in. He stood in the far corner of the metal box, to retract Himself from any conflict regarding women with strollers, obnoxious yellers with bikes wearing non-work appropriate biker shorts, or a flock of monotonously inclined businessmen with well and close shaved beards and grey suits with funky ties, which, naturally, were decorated with two-toned stripes instead of ordinary black, red, or a darker shade of grey. As anticipated, all three elevator characters entered the dull, poorly lit elevator. A child, sleeping comfortably in a stroller two feet away from him at 8:48 in the morning, woke up when the elevator started moving. Also because of this, it started wailing at a frequency able to wake up a person much faster and intensely than the cup of coffee He had just paid $6 for. “Shh,” its mother (presumably) began, “It’s alright, it’s just an elevator, yeah?” She turned to Him after picking up the child, swaddling and rocking it in her arms. “Kids, right? They freak out so easily. Then again if I knew nothing of the world and woke up from my nap because the ground I was on started levitating, I think I would cry, as well. Wouldn’t you?” She asked him, now rocking the child more than she had done just a second ago. “Agree with her, then coo at the child while simultaneously reassuring it with empty encouragement for enough time to fill the elevator ride to avoid further small talk with this mother.” “Yes, I would, you’re right. And I assure you, my dear boy, that the ground levitating is just one of man's great inventions. I am sure your mother wouldn’t have liked to take the stairs 14 floors, would she? When you grow up, little man, you will make humans strong enough to levitate, and you won’t cry at your invention. You will stand, proud, and humble the rest of the world with your greatness.” Ding. “Tell her and the child to have a nice day as they’re walking out.” The doors opened, and the mother placed her son who had now calmed down a little bit back into the stroller and started pushing it out of the elevator. “You have a nice day, and be sure to remind him of the Man in the Elevator at bedtime.” He said and made a polite wave at the two while the doors were closing.

It was always of some level of enjoyment to Him to make people happy. Still, He thought it was just a way to make people too full of serotonin and dopamine to notice Him slowly and strategically backing out of the situation. He always liked to retreat and observe from afar. He liked observing the human's natural behaviors, and how to maneuver around and manipulate them. He liked observing how humans get flustered, happy, embarrassed, and angry. He enjoyed how much of it they tried to hide, and how much they pushed themselves to show, even though it wasn’t always sincere. He watched and listened to the (oftentimes) obnoxious panegyrics performed by hopeless romantics, defense attorneys, and kindergarten teachers. At any given time, though not usually visible, He was present. At any given time, you could rely on him to never use any of the information he gained in the future, but keep it in the lock-and-key archives in his mind. The “memory lanes” in His mind stretched so far that it was a beautiful scenery, a cityscape to walk amongst all His memories, His ideas, and His thoughts. 

Having finally reached His floor, He stepped out of the now much less crowded elevator and walked through the bullpen of copy-and-pasted desks ‘till He was close enough to focus

 his eyes on the nameplate on His desk that read “ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT, Mr. -redacted-”. “Focus on that object, lest your balance will be impacted.” Strutting with a single hand in one of His pockets, the other gripping His coffee with a stronghold, asserting His dominance daily, slowly increasing the angle at which His nose was up in the air and how tense His neck muscles were day by day, subtly promoting Himself sociologically. He sat down in the swivel chair, trying to control how much His weight would control how much it moved in either direction. He placed His coffee and subsequently His wrists on the desk and pulled by putting his weight on the palms of His hands and tensed His torso to get the chair closer to the desk. “Mr. -redacted-, I need you to file this.” A masculine figure in a grey suit and a green and yellow striped tie approached Him with a beige folder with tabs of all kinds of hues and tones sticking out in his hand. In the other, he held a large cup of herbal tea, which seemed to have spilled on his left thigh on which it seemed to have left a dark stain. “Receive the file with the hand you just placed the coffee down with, smile at the man and say ‘Will do. Thanks, Marv.” He spoke thus and took the file with his left hand, then proceeded to follow the procedure to file any type of paper, folder, or note which any person could order Him to do.

Towards the middle of the day, He grew fatigued and lazy. He used the sheer force of will to keep His head up high and His eyebrows arched and raised, as opposed to sloped. But, with this effort, His patience for energy ran thin, and as such, the energy He was trying to hold on to. The office He worked in had a coffee machine at which a person could retrieve a cappuccino, latte, americano, or any other coffee-based beverage with more milk and synthetic caramel syrup than coffee at any time of day, completely free of charge. He usually dismissed that type of frivolous nonsense, as He saw the situation from a far more realistic (though some would say pessimistic) point of view than all of his co-workers (or so it should seem based on the number of times a week the two-liter capacity bottle of syrup gets emptied in His part of the building). However, considering the unusual amount of enervation plaguing Him, he decided to contribute to the impending emptiness of the syrup bottle and chose a triple-shot cappuccino on the little digital screen and pumped in seven and a half pumps of caramel syrup, and two pumps of the hazelnut syrup Dave had received from his wife as a gift but, considering his nut allergy he hadn’t told her about, donated to the office. After blowing the steam rising from the mug away from Him, He brought the mug to His lips and opened them slightly to let the liquid into his mouth. Instant contact with sugar pumped blood faster and harder throughout His body, specifically His brain. The sweet, harrowing taste of sugar. He brought the mug back to his desk, now more able to hold his head high than before.

As He was getting ready to leave the office the light outside grew dim, and the cars started pulling in instead of driving out of homes. He gathered his trinkets, placed them all neatly inside His briefcase, and removed Himself from his desk. He walked, tall and proud again, through the sorrow and melancholy office that was the result of working after-hours. His unmatched newfound positive, sugary energy found its way to all his coworkers (the ones that were there at present). They almost immediately after being passed by the brisk scent of his 007 cologne wished Him a good night, and told Him to give their hi’s and hello’s to his wife. He waited to be told what to do. For tens of seconds, He stood on the floor, His back facing William’s desk. “Come on,” He thought to Himself. “Tell me what to do.” Nothing happened. No sort of any voice, male or female, high- or low-pitched, crept into His mind to instruct Him how to respond as there had been before. Growing tired of waiting, He decided to choose His own response. He turned around and said, looking at William’s shoes “I don’t have a wife.” coldly, turned his heel while avoiding eye contact, and stepped into the elevator.

Why was there no voice? Why could he not be told what to do anymore? Why did he suddenly grow so tired earlier? It was impossible to come up with any logical reason as to why this could be happening. Since he started approaching his tens, there was always a disembodied voice he could count on to tell him what to do in every situation, since, when he was on his own and said something he thought was the right thing, would get himself punched in the face, or, in most cases after middle school, the groin. For 27 years he’d always known exactly what to do, and what to say. What now? 

The dark, grim presence of emptiness in his apartment upon the first walk-in greeted him in a more melancholy way now than ever. He turned on the light switch and looked around for minutes on end in his lonely, silent apartment. Right smack-dab in the middle of it was a stained, lifeless yellow sofa just big enough for two, so in reality a large armchair. To this he ventured, dragging his tried feet across the hardwood floor after kicking off his shoes. The rest of the apartment was modern, sophisticated, and debonair. Greyscale was the dominant color scheme throughout, and he had the most modern and refined appliances, lighting, and wide open floor-to-ceiling windows on the entire north side of his apartment. Initially, they were on the west side, but he had them moved because having big windows on either the west or east side of an apartment is an inconvenience to anyone. The apartment could change.

Sitting, alone in an apartment full of anything you could ever dream of. A fully stocked fridge with groceries, pastries, and luxury forearm-hair wax imported from Japan which, without a proper temperature-controlled environment will stiffen and become radioactive. Drawers and cupboards full of vintage china once held by some queen somewhere. Dining chairs that Louis XVI’s severed head could have been placed on for whatever reason why. Paintings that Da Vinci, Botticelli, Van Gogh, Monet, Bloch, or Kahlo would fall to their knees for. Hundreds of sculptures larger than David, or smaller than the Venus of Willendorf. Murals, paintings, tapestries, and engravings cloaking and protecting the life of him on the walls and the ceiling tens of feet above him. The interior architecture so astounding that Notre Dame would be put to shame. A seemingly regular apartment on the outside, but a beautiful tapestry, an endless scroll, a memory lane of all human history on the inside. A pale white fog starting to seep its way through door cracks, kitchen drawers, and vents. 

Sitting in a stained, lifeless yellow sofa just big enough for two after a long day at the office, filled with extraordinary experiences. Surrounded by his “memory lane”, more and more of his memories appear before him after more and more white fog seeps into his apartment. Though the entire experience seemed illogical and impossible, one thing was not. The more fog there is in one place, the more concentrated and thick it will be. The apartment continued to flood with treasures and keepsakes of the earliest homo sapien history and a pipe Ronald Reagan smoked from. As such, the fog continued to flood. He could see less and less of his belongings, then of his own self. He wanted to jump up and run through the guinea pig maze of pillars, gigantic pieces of amethyst, and human figure statues and through to his front door, but felt stuck on his sofa. Not necessarily glued, as some would say. Not paralyzed, or frozen, just unable and in his bones unwilling to leave. The fog now prevented him from seeing his own palms or knees. 

“It’s time, my Son.”