Everest

He had reached the top. The climb was finally over. He was at the summit that overlooked all others, hidden high in the clouds over his world of a domain. He looked around his new office. The walls gleamed at him, not a speck or dent in sight. His new desk stood patiently in wait, handpicked from the antique store down the block. He’d gotten rid of the one Mike used to use, the creaky old thing with a broken leg. He had never understood why the old man had such an attachment to it, he had never bothered to ask. He let himself think about his old boss, he would miss the poor man, they had been together a long time, after all. But there was no time to dwell on Mike, not with a gleaming new office in front of him waiting to be filled, not when the sun smiled down on him in that beautiful golden glow, as if God himself was looking down from the heavens, personally gracing his success. The grief from Mike’s death would pass, but this beautiful new opportunity would not.

Everything was in order, just like he wanted it, just as he had hardly dared to dream ever since he had started to climb the god forsaken corporate ladder all those years ago. It seemed so distant now, his days as a trainee, barely able to write a cheque without the assistance of a superior. Many of those superiors were retired now, or dead, or somewhere in between. If only they could see what he had become. A boy who they’d laughed at, belittled, now the CEO of the biggest fuel company in the world. He smiled. The months and years he had spent, sick and sleepless in that tiny apartment up shore from the university had all paid off. He took a deep breath. Even the air smelt better in the new office, the carpet cleaner, like a newly furbished hotel. The curtains were drawn back, white, and crisp and perfectly symmetrical. Victorian style, he appreciated the effort. The door opened and closed without a sound, as if buttered smooth. In fact, he would not have noticed the woman had it not been for the sound of her footsteps.

“Is everything in order, Mr Duff?” His assistant’s voice echoed from behind.

Mr Duff smiled, keeping his eyes closed to savour the moment a little longer, “Yes. It is perfect.”

“Where shall we begin?” She asked. The sound of her footsteps became sharper as she approached him. No doubt, she was wearing those pointy red stilettos that he so adamantly hated.

He frowned, wishing she’d turn back the way she came from. She was disrupting his moment and that was unacceptable. In fact, he wanted to stay in this moment forever.

But business comes first, that’s what he’d always said. Even when sickness took the color from his face, or when death appeared at his door in notes and coffins. In his twenty years at the corporation, he had never taken a sick day, never a vacation. It had been one of the traits that made him so suitable for CEO, and no doubt one of the reasons he had gotten the job.

But I’m here now, whispered a voice in the back of his mind, and there’s nowhere higher to go. Business could wait, if only for a little while.

“Go pick up some coffee.” He turned to his assistant, “I can’t be expected to work half asleep, can I?”

His smile spread at her shock. He had never asked her to bring him coffee before.

“Of course, Mr Duff.” She took a small, uncertain bow as she left. That, she had never done before, either. He made a mental note to tell her to make a habit of both in the future.

He liked this feeling. The feeling of total, utter control. Over himself, of course. But mostly over everyone else. It was just as he’d dreamed. He could feel the power in his hands, in his body, his heart. He could feel it in his every stride as he paced the length of his office. Once. Twice. He could feel it in his posture as his back straightened with each step. He had always been meant for this job. He knew it as he looked out from his window onto the streets far below, where hundreds of cars crawled after one another like strings of helpless ants. It was truly all he had ever imagined.

Once he had paced the office a dozen times, each time focusing on something new; the shelves, the television, the minifridge, the pigeons outside. He settled into his new chair and pulled the first financial statement over from the small, neat stack at the corner of his desk. It was time to begin.

Months went by, then years. A blur of board meetings, operational changes, plans and backup plans. New plans, new goals, new objectives. It seemed that he was the only constant in the tinted grey building, as new faces came and went faster than ever. The assistants flew by. There was Aimee, Clarisse, Blanche, Celine. Faces he couldn’t put a name to. Names he would only remember if he bothered to look through the mound of employment contracts that found its way into the filing cabinet.

There was always something wrong with the assistants. Whether it was tardiness, or laziness, or the way they talked, the way they walked. They were not perfect, and imperfection in his perfect little regime was unacceptable. The assistants weren’t the only problem though. The stakeholders were hardly bearable, and the employees squabbled and dropped like flies. Even his closest advisors, old friends and comrades, weren’t performing like they used to. They said all the wrong things, suggested incredulous ideas like environmental responsibility or ethical business behaviour. As if it wouldn’t cost a fortune. As such, they should have thanked him for the very things they so heavily criticized. If he hadn’t hidden the deaths, the receipts, the sob story that circled the mines, the business would hardly be left standing at all. They told him he must respond to change, that he must look to the future, adapt. But there was a way that things worked in the company. A course of action that had proven time and time again to be effective, even through its hardships. The stock prices continued rising, the revenue surged. He could see the future just fine, and it was brighter than ever. He could see it better than any of them. It was the reason he was CEO, after all. He was above them in every way, smarter, stronger, able to make the hard decisions when no one else could. They couldn’t stomach it, and they hated him for it. They said he was blind, though he only laughed at the irony. The same people with rose tinted glasses and a fool’s audacity to challenge the ways that had been established before they were even born were calling him blind. If only they would look in the mirror for just one moment, perhaps then, they would be able to see the pitiful thing that stared plainly back.

It was different than he had imagined. Not as pristine, not as perfect. He’d gotten the success, the glory, the money. Oh, the money. But he wanted nothing more than to squash every blabbering mouth that entered his building. He sometimes wondered how Mike was able to handle it. The constant… noise. The arguments that he had no choice but to forfeit. The momentary loss of power in that very moment.

The humiliation.

The decline.

It was small at first. Nothing more than a momentary blip in the trendlines. The curve that had been slanting upwards halting just that little bit, as if in hesitation. Marginal really. Nothing they couldn’t recover from. Then came the news story. The one that shook the world. Stephen Guardo, Jamie Lee, Hernandes, Smith, Black, Reyes. Dead. Blackwater fuel, the perpetrator. Marcello Duff the face of the horror. The court case was expensive, yes, but it was the public… The public was deadly.

The people clawed at him. A horde of zombies with only one incentive, to kill. They forced themselves on the barred entrance of his gates, outside the big, glaring window of the office he had so dearly loved. Release a statement. They demanded. Admit your wrongdoing. But he could not. This was not supposed to happen, not in his perfect company. It could not have happened, not after he had bought the business success after success. It was only a figment of his subconscious. A senseless nightmare he would untangle himself from, with the coming of the dawn. Something he would laugh about when he finally awoke. But dawn did not come, and he realized he was trapped in this timeless loop of false reality. The sun rose and set just as it would if it were real. The tinted grey of the office building was the same shade as the one before. The walls were the same, and so was the desk.

The curtains, though, were no longer drawn back in that lovely Victorian style. They hung loose over the window, trailing onto the ground, sad and defeated. And they were stained. A series of brown dots laced the pristine white of the fabric, carrying from one side to another. That couldn’t be right, he had them cleaned every fortnight. So, it was to the curtains he hung his sanity. He held onto them. A reminder that this was not real. That this was a nightmare that he would soon awake from.

He did not remember that it had been him who waved the cleaners away, him who had thrown the coffee in anger, staining the fabric. Him who had drawn the curtains in shame, to hide from the amassing crowds outside. They were a united pack of wolves, and he was the sheep. And there was nowhere left to run.

He stayed in his office, now dark without the warmth of the sunlight. Staring at his poor, tragic curtains hanging ruffled and dirty on the floor. He slept in his office, although he could hardly distinguish sleep from waking. The small, neat stack of papers at the corner of his desk spread across the rest of the space. All over the desk and onto the floor. The people that spoke to him found only an empty shell, a ghost of the man that stood before. He ignored them all. They were all apart of the unreality around him. And he would not let them penetrate what was real.

There he patiently waited. He waited for the day he would finally wake to find himself in his own bed. The day that he would be able to wipe the sweat from his brow, this nightmare a distant memory. His assistant Donna, or was it Janice? Would bring the coffee. And his curtains. His beautiful, white curtains would stand tall in all its glory, drawn back in that Victorian style he had so come to love.

It would all be perfect again. Just as he had imagined it decades ago in that tiny apartment upstream from the university. When all he was, was a small, insignificant boy with Everest to climb. He would have his respect again. He would have his success and glory.

All he had to do was wait for dawn.