The W.A.S.P. Factory

Taking my eyes off the page, I pluck my house key from my pocket and scratch another notch into the desk. I then stare across the room for a while at a wall calendar taped up between two floor-to-ceiling windows, searching for a clue as to which of those squares this morning falls on. Somewhere around the middle of that grid. That much I can say. I poke my head into the next cubicle and ask Hollis: what day is it?

He says he doesn’t know either.

I plop back down into my swivel chair.

The screensaver pops up and I quickly move my mouse so the button-up conehead stalking between the cubicles – what the professional world calls “Managing” – thinks I’m working.

Hearing Ian Curtis’ voice, I start to hum that song that goes

(day in, day out, day in, day out, day in, day out…)

Then I turn back to my spiral notebook:

Cunnilingus Joe                         

Tearin’ ass down your wife’s road         

Eat out more Often      

Buy things you don’t need                       

Impress people you don’t like                     

All is full of love

Friendly Glasgow smile

Chelsea grinning ear to ear

Face-lift happiness

I get a small thrill

Clicking the thumbs-down button

On the goddam ad

Ahem. A conehead – or, to use Ken Kesey’s parlance, one of the “Combine” – appears on my monitor screen. The reflection hovers over my screensaver.

He asks me if I know what today is.

No. Do you?

He splutters. I stand and size him up.

Now he’s thinking: Who the fuck does this pencil-pushing prick think he is?

He wants to get all up in my hostile little FACE, and, truth be told, I want him to.

But he knows I can Fight Club myself real quick, and everyone here will testify he’s the one who did it.

He putters off down the carpeted floor and I slide back down.  

I retreat into myself. I am the Zen little center of your universe. Bubbling brooks. Mountain air. False pregnancy scare. New car smell. No. My joint is the thought of slipping in my earbuds and stalking from cubicle to cubicle with a Carbine, picking off coworkers while “Capitalism Stole My Virginity” drowns out their screams. 

I lean back in my swivel and rubberneck the cute brunette across the way, counting out on my fingers:

Your dad stabbed your mom?

That’s dope, I got issues too

Pick you up Friday?

I tap a blue ballpoint on the edge of the desk and stare at the monitor. It does that thing again. Without touching a single key, a word document pops up:

Feed me a stray cat.

Really, Samsung? We’re doing the whole American Psycho thing? 

I lean over the keyboard:

Fuck you. You’re not a cash machine.

The Bushido code sez to live as if you were already dead. I don’t think this is what Yamamoto meant.

That? That’s your big motivational go-get’em, Alec Baldwin Glengarry Glenn Ross speech for the day?

Your life is just spam in someone else’s inbox.

An office memo interrupts our flirtation.

In the conference room, we outline a strategy on how to downplay employee suicide rates, suburban honkies growing into future semi-auto carrying Klebold and Harris wannabe’s, and spoiled teen brats getting knocked up, and over-inflate immigration numbers, the number of scared honkies who share the exact same views as our target demographic, and number of blacks moving outta the ghettos.

What do you expect when you work for a think tank called The W.A.S.P. Factory?

Know what my favorite statistic is? Here’s my favorite statistic:

Ghengis Khan killed so many people, it was environmentally friendly.

Some eggheads estimate that roughly 40 Million people – about one-tenth of the world’s population at the time – were slaughtered in the name of Khan, and that this helped save 700 million tons of carbon from polluting the atmosphere. If it weren’t for the Mongols, there would’ve been a hell of a lot more people, and we’d be much further along in being totally fucked by now.  

After the meeting I get back to the cubicle and kill the afternoon playing JFK Reloaded and blasting “Hey Man, Nice Shot” until my eardrums blow out. 

I catch Nico, the brunette I mentioned earlier, on the way out and, holding a mini portable speaker over my head – yes, I’m doing the whole Say Anything, watch and learn – I crank up “Sex and Candy” and ask her out. I think she said yes just to get out of the situation.

I take her to a grindhouse. We watch a double-screening of W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism and Liquid Sky. She snores through most of it. I dose in and out.

I give her a good riding and she doesn’t even say “I haven’t been fucked like that since middle school!”. Hell, I didn’t even get a “I want to have your abortion.”

“Dude, you’re stinking up the joint.”

“Smoke break.”

“You don’t smoke.”

“What do you call this?”

“In your cubicle?”

I cut him some slack and move into the stairwell, burning through half a pack. Later, the half-burned cigs I stubbed out on the concrete step, the filters with about 2 centimeters still to go, are gone. Figure the janitor came and had a field day.

When I get back to my human cubby hole, I pull out my key and scratch another notch into the desktop. I’ve given up trying to count. Nico hasn’t been in today.

Closest I can figure, it’s somewhere towards the end of the week.  

Nico avoids looking at me.

Conehead’s shiny dome flashes into my eyes across the floor, sun rays reflecting through his office window.

I see his secretary, face is homely but she’s a total hardbody, rush out to get his coffee. I intercept and offer to do the run for her. “What’s he usually take?”

In the stairwell, I refit the lid and entering the floor, hand it off to her. She plops it down on his desk and coming back out, stares at me. I duck into my seat.

She probably thinks I came in it or something. And she’s totally cool with that.

I’m sweating bullets. He ignores it.

Lunch Break. Catcher in the Rye is totally played out. I leave a copy of The Decay of The Angel on my desk. I’m too lazy to compose a personal manifesto, so this’ll do. Mishima completed this novel on the morning of his death. I grab a pencil from the mug next to the monitor and on the title page scrawl

GOODBYE.

The company got a new 3-D Printer we never use. It’s in the copy room. I tap my foot, waiting for each plastic part to print. I assemble the pieces printed individually into a fully functioning .22 ACP. I return to my cubicle and pull the ammo case from a hidden compartment in my desk. I slide them in.

Finally I look over. That bald-headed cunt looks like Boss Tweed and has the personality of Daniel Plainview. The coffee’s cold, but filing away the last paper he finally tosses his head back and chugs it down.

I consider the portable speaker, but decide the screaming would drown it out, so I just go for the earbuds instead.

Elliott Smith starts in on “Son of Sam”. It’s so catchy, I almost just want to stay in my little space and dance.

Lardass tipping outta his swivel and clutching his throat knocks me out of it. He crawls over and bangs on the glass to his office. All those Oxygen Absorber packets that come with packs of beef jerky I emptied into his cup. The .22 cracks through the upper right part of his dome. I drop my arm and come around the corner. Stevens isn’t at his desk. Hollis is. I ignore him.

I wing someone’s nephew. Then I stand there like an idiot with my arms thrown out. Christ. It’s a fucking ghost town.

“Hey, any of y’all ever see that movie Targets? With Boris Karloff?”

Ah, there he is. There’s always someone cowering under their desk.

Sigh.

Relax.

Yukio Mishima said “it is not easy to die beautifully”. For most of you, this is the best it’s ever gonna get.

“How ’bout The Big Red One? With Lee Marvin and Mark Hamill? There’s this part where the Americans go into an asylum that’s been overrun by Krauts, and they’re in the mess hall eating with the retards and the Americans burst in, and the Krauts and Americans are shooting each other to pieces while the retards are just sittin’ there eating, calm as you like, until one of the mental patients snatches up a gun from a dead Kraut and shoots up the joint screaming “I am just like you! I am sane! I am sane!””  

Song ends. I pause. Shuffle. Okay.

Nada Surf kicks in and I’m back to picking them off, singin

(I'm head of the class, I'm popular, I'm a quarter back, I'm popular, My mom says I'm a catch, I'm popular, I'm never last picked, I got a cheerleading chick)

Where the fuck is security?

This isn’t a shooting, it’s an American howdy.

(I’ll never get caught, I’m popular) 

A .22 passes through – I think, Stevenson? – and sends him reeling while shattering the floor-to-ceiling glass behind him. There he goes. Asystole, falling man.

This isn’t a massacre, it’s a love tap from James Holmes.

I have no contingency plan as I plug Mandy or Mildred or Beth – some ugly bitch who thinks everyone is trying to grope her.

Christ. If you got someone to transcribe my thoughts, shit would read like The Turner Diaries – minus the idiotic Mein Kampf worshipping. 

I’m winged. I duck down and the over-glorified rent-a-cops pour out the stairwell and elevators and move in.

Y’know, this is the most fun I’ve ever had?

And, y’know, this isn’t gristly death – this is peace and love from Adam Lanza.

No matter what you do, the average American will be responsible for pumping out 20 tons of carbon per year.

No matter how hard you try, your existence is pollution.

Joseph Stalin saved 350 million tons. Mao even more so.

I do feel bad about Stevenson though – that was just reflex.

This is where we leave it. This is where I nut up, jump out and sprint towards them, gun blazing. Freeze Frame. Like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid we fade to sepia.

I’ll see you in the news.