Mr. Chester

John Smith was hard at work, typing at 50 keys per minute, taking a break once every couple of minutes to stretch himself and get back to typing, work wasn’t easy.

Sometimes, he would groan in frustration and spam the backspace button, retyping something he had gotten wrong.

Working from home had sounded pretty fun at first, because John had somehow ended up at the conclusion that he wouldn’t have to deal with his co-workers, but he was gravely mistaken.

Every day at 9 am, he had to attend a meeting online, with his superior and his co-workers. Talking with them gave John a headache, but work was work, he had to maintain his livelihood.

*tap tap tap* the sound of keys being pressed filled the empty room he was in. Hours of this monotonous routine passed by when John finally got up from his desk to go the restroom and get a quick snack from the fridge.

John lived alone, so the only sounds in his single apartment were his echoes. It didn’t bother John much, or at least, that’s what he told himself. But, sometimes, he longed for a companion, someone he could turn to and find comfort in. This wasn’t to say he had no friends, he did, he had some few friends. But John felt alone most of the time.

“I should have become a writer instead,” John told himself after closing the bathroom door, “Then at least I would be doing something I like.”

He brushed his overgrown hair out of his eyes and slumped as he walked to the kitchen. The hallway was dark, but he didn’t bother to turn on the lights this way he could save on the electricity bill. And besides, the only one there was John, he knew his way around his home pretty well.

As he trudged through the dark hallway, he had the misfortune of stepping on something hard and dense.

“Ouch!” John exclaimed as he leaned against the wall and rubbed his foot. After a few seconds, he crouched down and felt along the floor for the object he had stepped on. Suddenly his hand grasped the cold, rocky item. He held it close to his face, but the light that came from the window at the end of the hallway was too dim.

“When did this get here…” John muttered as he continued to the kitchen, holding the rock in front of his face as he did so. As soon as he got to the kitchen, he flicked the light switch and stared at the rock. It Was a rock around the size of a tennis ball, oddly shaped, and with some uneven edges. It was a common, brown rock but John was able to tell it apart from other rocks he had encountered in his life.

“Mr. Chester,” John said with a twinge of nostalgia. The rock had a poorly drawn smiley face on it with black marker, the work of a young child. The Rock looked up at him, and though John felt like he was going crazy, he could have sworn the rock looked sad.

“Ah, Mr. Chester, sorry you have to see me like this, it’s been pretty tough these past couple of weeks,” John told the silent but firm rock. Mr. Chester seemed to give John a knowing smile. So John continued.

“I haven’t seen you in years, did you fall from your place?” John asked remembering he had placed his old things in boxes in the hallway closet. The boxes would usually be at his parent’s house, but they had decided to move some months ago and he was holding on to some things for them. The rock must have traveled in the box and fallen out at some point when he opened the closet. Since the hallway was always dark, it was no wonder John had missed it.

“Well, I’ll have to put you back in then,” John said forgetting the snack he was supposed to get from the fridge. He went back to the dark hallway.

Before he got to the closet door, he heard his phone ringing from the room he had been working at. He forgot about putting the rock back and rushed to take the call. It was his superior on the phone, discussing more details about what John’s current work. John placed the rock he had been holding next to his computer and started pacing around the room as he talked on the phone.

When all was said and done, he went back to his desk, going through the files he was working on, fixing mistakes, and changing small details.

Hours passed like that, soon night fell, and John was still preoccupied with work

He looked at the time in the bottom of the computer screen, 2 am. He rubbed his eyes, and he heard his stomach rumble, he had forgotten to eat again.

“I’ll eat later,” he muttered to himself as he went back to work, but a presence nibbled at him. He looked at the rock that was facing him.

“I’m sorry, but I have to finish this,” John told the rock. The rock smiled sadly at him.

“Look, I can’t do anything about this, this is very important,” John continued, trying to reason with the rock. And as always, all that the rock gave him was a sad smile.

“Oh lord, look at me now, talking to a rock,” John exclaimed throwing his hands up in frustration.

“Oh, sorry, talking to Mr. Chester,” John said sarcastically. He stood up from his chair and took the rock.

“I’ll just put you back into your box,” John told it. He stepped into the hallway, the night making it even harder to see anything.

“Here’s the switch,” John muttered as he felt the switch on the wall. He lit up the hall and went to the hallway closet.

“Don’t look at me like that, I feel like I’m going insane, talking to you and whatever,” John said reaching up to take the box that was on a high shelf. He stretched his arms out and managed to get a hold of the box, pulling it out slowly. But as he did so, he lost grip of the rock and quickly freed his other hand to catch it before it fell on his foot. But by doing this, he let the box that he was taking out fall to the floor, scattering various items on the hallway floor.

John sighed and crouched on the floor, trying to get all the papers and things back into the box. He stopped when he came upon a dirty, bent cardboard box, Mr. Chester’s old home.

John carefully straightened it out and turned it around to see the drawings he had made on the box for his beloved pet Rock.

The reason that John had a pet as rock was that his father was allergic to cats and dogs and his mother did not trust him enough with animals. So, one evening John decided to find a pet of his own. During that time, John’s cousins came to visit, and they showed him their own pet Rock, complete with a bowl and leash.

From there, he had been on the lookout and finally found a rock that would become his first and only pet, Mr. Chester. He had found it when walking home from the park with his family one Sunday evening. It had been sitting on the side of the sidewalk and the moment he saw it, he picked it up. Holding it carefully in his small hands, John returned home with the rock, now named Mr. Chester, and proceeded to wash it and make it a makeshift home.

Since then until John left for college, the rock had sat at his desk, inside his cardboard box, always encouraging John with a smile.

John smiled gently at the memories and continued to put the items back and when he was done, he placed Mr. Chester down on the side and put the box back in its place. He didn’t have the heart to put Mr. Chester back there, where John knew he would be lonely. So instead, he decided to keep him at his desk. Of course, before that, because of Mr. Chester’s worrisome countenance, John finally made himself eat food and rest for the night. John went to sleep that night, knowing that even if life got hard for him, he would at least have his one faithful companion, smiling at him encouragingly again.