Friday, July 30, 2010

"This Badge is a Pistol, and I am the Left Hand of God"

Originally Posted: July 7, 2010
---------------------------------------
Escapist Fantasies written from an office chair.  Forewarned is forearmed against the second person.  :)
------------------------------------------------



Your badge swings against your hip with the cadence of your steps.  You’re not sure what it is about high-heeled shoes, but it is almost as if they force you to sway in order to keep balanced – left foot, right hip, right foot, left hip, clack, clack, clack.  Your reflection comes back to you again and again from the too-polished surfaces all over the office.  You see your hair in an endless repeat from the glass that lines the tops of the cubes on the other side of the elevator and you take a moment to straighten the front, smooth the frizz. 

You are an interloper here and you know it, with your too new face and too old shoes.  You wear three rings on your hands and none are on the correct finger.   You are the minority, the alien, and you move through the hush of the office in fear that eventually someone will discover your charade.  You pump music from Outside into your ears and sit like a good girl on the edge of your borrowed office chair, painfully aware that everything you have done to make this space home rests on the whims of the ever-declining budget. 

You bring your lunch and sit at your desk while the office quiets around you, a literal noon-day lull where you can open your clandestine internet browser all the way and not have to pretend that you’re really working.  Your flash drive sticks from the side of your computer like a tiny blue lifeline to the world you hope to find somewhere in the distant future.  But for now, it is one more thing hidden behind the veneer of the corporation, one more thing that gets safely tucked into your purse before you move away from your desk every afternoon.

Your badge stopped working weeks ago, making a quiet, desperate bleating when you tried to swipe it for access.  The first security guard chased you almost to your car before you calmly explained that you had been away and hadn’t had a chance to get your clearance updated.  He frowned and harrumphed and puffed his chest out with false importance and let you leave.  You don’t even bother with the elevator for the next week, taking the stairs, slipping in as others depart, asking the new guards to let you in with a winning smile and hip pop.

They changed the guards to a pair who are immune to any wiles you may have possessed and you are just tired of trying to maneuver through bureaucracy.  You steal a badge.  It isn’t yours but it looks enough like you that there aren’t questions.  The stolen plastic swings from your hip. 

You pretend it is a pistol and you are a mercenary come in to get the job done then ride off into the sunset.  Isn’t that what a contractor is?  Your fantasy dissolves around you, the dust beneath your boots turning back into slightly scuffed carpet, the pride of vanquishing evil just the slight headache that comes from missing your coffee break.  This place is killing you, you think, looking at yourself in the mirror in the fourth floor bathroom.  You do not even see the specters of could-be lurking in your peripheral vision, just the constant drudgery of the office.

Your stolen badge spins in a tight circle from where it rides at your hip and you grin slightly as you take the budget files and move them to your flash drive, slip the bigger invoices into the recycling bin, wreak havoc with pointed mouse clicks and tongue-in-cheek emails.

Your hands are tied to your keyboard but your mind refuses to be tied to this soul-sucking entity.  You swipe your stolen badge across the security pad and walk through the door.  Your bare feet slap against the cool marble, your hips move of their own volition rather than from the pressure of inches against your heels.  

Behind you, the office floor quakes with the force of the discovery.  You let the badge fall to the floor, open another button on your sensible blouse, and peel out of the garage.

4 comments:

  1. I commiserate with bathroom mirror introspection. My browser, however, never takes up the full screen. =P

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good build up of tension in this. I am curious as to why the use of second person? It's not done very often. It works pretty well here, but I think the story could have been done in first or third too. Just curious as to your thinking.
    ~jon

    ReplyDelete
  3. I like this story, although I'm a bit confused at the end as to the MC is wearing high heels or is bare feet. Maybe I'm a bit slow today, heh.

    Welcome to Friday Flash! :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thank you for your comments, everyone. :)

    Jon: The second person is just a style I've been toying with recently. Since I was writing this with a specific reader in mind, it just seemed to lend itself to it.

    Mari: The MC has taken off her heels by the end, like shedding the bindings of the establishment. ;) Thanks for the welcome!

    ReplyDelete