Short Story Series: Vol. 1 Chptr. 1

"In Your Dreams"

I've been sitting at this desk for what feels like an eternity. I know that the clock is going to hit 5 soon and I will be released from this prison. They design these cubicles for minimal mental stimulation. The walls are high enough that even when standing you can't see your neighbors, and are made of a material that is impossible to tape, nail, tack, or staple anything to. The doorways all face the same direction so when you look out them all you see is the back wall of the adjacent row of cubes. The desks have no drawers. There are no phones, only one way information tubes for receiving assignments. There is a monitor, a keyboard, and a mouse. We have no access to anything on the computer except the program necessary to complete our daily tasks. The entire work experience is completely mind numbing. At last I am released, but can not even get excited because home life is more dreary than work. In fact if were were not so soul destroying I would never leave. I arrive home in a daze and my wife is home already. detached as usual. I walk past her cooking dinner in the kitchen and we don't even speak. I head straight to my office and pour myself a glass of scotch. It usually takes three glasses of scotch for my wife to be finished with dinner, and tonight is no different. The monotonous cello music playing is my summons to the table. I arrive every night to the sight of a woman, whose smile I've forgotten the look of consuming more chardonnay than meal. We speak no words as we sit and eat. I nightly rise from the table and leave her and the bottle behind me. Another 3 glasses of scotch and I am ready for bed. I don't even sleep in the same room with her anymore. Instead I walk down the hall and enter the room on the left. Its been 2 years but my 16 year old sons room still looks as though he were in it today. I keep it exactly the way he would. I even leave the fitted sheet ruffled in the corner of the bed that is against the wall the same way he would. His action figures lined up on the shelf, fresh tape on all of his posters. I even circulate the clothes in the pile on the right corner of the closet door. My nightly ritual isn't over until I stare at his picture on the cluttered desktop. I stare as if in an inebriated stupor until the tears well up. It is at this point the overwhelming burden of my mere existence becomes intolerable. I tear my gaze away and curl into a ball of despair. My head hits his old pillow and I am immediately asleep. I wake up almost as soon as my head hits the pillow. I have been having this dream everyday for the past 2 years. I have to see a doctor, as I am starting to become worried for my personal mental health. As I think this thought my wife Rachel calls out to me. "Virgil!" its breakfast time, and the memory of my dream is gone for the day once again