Overworked

Hey everyone! This was a prompt, kinda? It started out as my view on people who overwork themselves but it took on a life of its own. (But sticks to its roots in its own way) After my initial writing I thought this was hot garbage with no natural conflict or mystery to grab onto the reader but on brief reread the story was a lot better than I remembered(Ya!) Hope you enjoy it!

 

“Hello?” the girl asks her fairy clear voice bouncing off the speakers, “Are you going to let me out?” The girl sits in the center of the box a spotlight shining on her mismatch of childhood beauty. The elegance of a woman mixed with the elongated features of adolescents. Her hair was auburn tied in a drooping tail, her skin pale but reminiscent of the moon. She wore a white toga, sandals strapped to her feet. The girl stands looking past the one way mirror.

“Are you going to let me out?”

The man, a researcher by trade dishevels his nonexistent hair and speaks into the microphone.

“What exactly are you?” His dry voice cracks over the speaker, she moves like an actor in a piece by the Greek masters, her angelic features and pleading voice bringing the last part of the Greek plays to mind.

Deus ex Machina. God in the machine.

The man nearly believed that they were gods, blowing into the stub of a Camel, black soot falling onto his khaki pants. He leans down into the mic and asks again.

“The only one left,” she replies, “It’s time to let me out.”

There wasn’t much of a world left for her to end.

Did I sleep yesterday?

His eyes feel crusted over with exhaustion.

Theirs more important things now, the world is relying on me…when did that ever matter?

The man’s head drops, nodding in the ritual of exhaustion. He drains the last drops of Redbull, eyes swimming in the ripples of exhaustion.

“Are you sick?” the girl asks the light tracking behind her as she steps forward looking through the one way mirror, “Are you well?”

The Researcher laughs. Nearly crumpling to the floor as he leans against the glass his breaths coming in long and heavy. The one that refused to leave. The one that crept to the back of the box as the others were brought out unleashing their terror. The one that stayed behind brought him his last fragments of laughter. The man wobbles as he rests against the glass.

“It’s time for me to leave,” the girl says placing her palm against the glass, “Humanity’s time is now.”

So long as I get paid, the man behind the glass lived by those words. Life didn’t matter, so long as I get paid. He made choices, bad ones, good ones, he always got paid in the end. There was never a reason to worry, he always got paid.

The human race was over, he wasn’t getting paid. It didn’t matter. There was no one to pay him.

The man turns a key, a green light dings in the box.

“There all yours,” the man leans back into the chair, swiveling off into the abyss of a room the ding and buzz of radios surrounding his final thoughts.

The girls feet tap outside the door, he dings it open, embers glowing from a fresh Camel. She walks in, standing above him, her face stern.

“I’ll start with you,” the girl says looking down on him.

This is it. With his eyes closed he can feel gaze. He hopes it’ll be fast.

He remembers his first wife. She’d run her hand through his younger but still thinning hair. She had a way of kicking his keister if he so much as raised a ‘so long as I get paid’ he remembered his first daughter how ‘so long as I get paid’ mattered less after her. Anguish wretches the man to tears. The girl’s moonlit hands brush back his wisps of hair.

“Don’t give up.”

The girl leaves the box.

 

 

 

Hey welcome to the end of the story, was it enjoyable? Think the Researcher was an idiot? Leave your thoughts, options, and emotional outbursts in the comments 🙂 On a side note I accidentally left out the first few sentences my edit run and well… it greatly improved the story(Ya for mistakes the help you in the long run:) )  Anyhow, catch ya later, Ransom.

PS Writing takes time, writing takes sitting down and doing it. Not great either of those things but once you take the first step it gets easier. Best of luck with the start of this new week, Ransom.