The Tunnel, Part 1

I'm not entirely sure how to introduce this story. This is the first part of a story which as of yet remains unfinished. I hope to upload more of the story soon. Also you should expect to the see the second chapter of "He Found Himself Alone" soon, though don't know exactly when. Okay now that I've made promises I think it's time for me to just let the story do its work so I should just let you guys read away, enjoy.
Man I really didn't think of a good way to introduce this story. Too bad.

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I want to kill myself.
Okay, that's a tad melodramatic. Just a tad. I do in fact like life and do enjoy being alive. But yeah, I still want to kill myself. You would to if you were in my shoes. Okay, maybe not my shoes, I wear size sixteen. That might be a problem for you. But anyways, you'd want to be dead too if you were me.
Why, you ask? Well currently there is a small stocky elderly man in front of me. Now don't get me wrong, I like the elderly, enough... But this man is not the kind of elderly people like. As of this moment he has not asked me if I want hard candy, nor has he pinched my cheeks, nor has he attempted to set me up with his granddaughter, who would have a much happier life if she could just meet nice boys like me. No, this old man is shouting. Why? I'm not entirely sure. He started off about his savings account and then kinda just rambled off. I stopped really listening a while ago, but I'm pretty sure he's ranting about the damn commies. So when I say I want to kill myself I really mean that I want to kill him. But I can't say that, or even think that. It's not professional.
Let me make this clear, I like my job, a lot. I get to meet new, interesting people all the time. I also meet people like this ornery old man, but I deal with them. Though at this very moment I do want to kill myself (I stress again that I don't want to kill him, that's unprofessional). Frankly the shouting is expected. I'm a bank teller, and thus money is involved. And as we all know wherever money is involved people are bound to shout, a lot. Even if they are really old. Or young. Or alive in general. I guess what I'm saying is that money makes people yell. Part of the job, I tell myself.
I also love my job because I get to play with money. This might sound petty to you, but just holding thousands of dollars in your hands is a power rush. It's absolutely wonderful. It's electric. It's nearly orgasmic. To me that's reason enough to put up with the shouting.
The old man has stopped shouting, though I'm pretty sure its because he's out of breath. I mumble off something about talking to the manager. I'm out of there before he can say another word. This newfound freedom can only mean one thing. Cigarette break.
The break room is a bleak and depressing place. But I can smoke in it, and its inside, and it’s really cold outside. I think you understand why I put up with the bleakness.
There is one other major reason I put up with the bleakness. COFFEE. I’ll argue with anyone who says it’s not a drug. Coffee is a drug, a beautiful, loving, caring, absolutely addicting drug. I love coffee; I get up in the morning in order to ingest coffee. It’s a crippling addiction and I fall apart after four hours without coffee, but I’m okay with that, life isn’t really worth living without coffee. I even broke up with a girl once because she made shitty coffee. All right, all right, she broke up with me. But her main reason for leaving me was something along the lines of her not really appreciating that I believed that instant coffee was for whores. She probably wouldn’t have been as enraged if I hadn’t said it to her mom. In any case I believe that I have substantially proved that coffee was at the heart of this break up. And it’s more than clear now how much I absolutely love coffee.
Luckily the coffee here is fantastic, which I believe is entirely for my benefit. I pour myself a cup. I breathe in the seductive scent of the coffee. I bring the cup to my lips. Oh shit, I dropped my pen. Ever damn day I drop my pen. My lucky pen. The one pen I’ve had since college, the one pen that I wrote ever exam I ever had with. And at this very moment it’s on the counter by the coffee machine, rolling towards the two-inch gap between the counter and the wall. I grasp for it and miss it. I can’t actually be sure, since I lack x-ray vision, but I’m pretty sure my pen has hit the floor with a soft thud. I groan. The counter, thankfully, doesn’t look to heavily. I tentatively push it with my foot, it moves, but not much. I bend over to push it to the side, my mind focused on the coffee that I left steaming on the table. I’m thinking of its smell, its deliciously sensual aroma. I’m thinking about how goddamn great it’s going to be once I get my beloved pen back. The counter is now substantially out of the way. I divert my eyes away from my coffee. What I see is completely unexpected.
First of all the coffee machine is not plugged into anything. This isn’t that unbelievable, it could have unplugged when I moved the counter. There isn’t a plug though. And the coffee machine is still on. And my coffee is clearly steaming on the table. Weird. I turn back to the wall where the plug should be. I blink. I blink again. I blink one more time for good measure. This can’t be right. Nah I’m imagining things. I close my eyes a fourth time, and keep them shut. I’m pretty sure enough time has past, the hallucination must be over, it can’t not be.
I open my eyes. Crap, still there. The wall, which the counter used to hide, has a rather peculiar quality. Mainly it seems to be made of stone, which is a sharp contrast to the drywall, which the rest of the room is made of. I reach out and push it. It moves back.
I bolt upright. I’m standing in shock staring at the stone. Oh god, what to I do? Do I put the counter back, pretend like nothing happened, maybe yell at the old man and go home? Do I leave it for someone else to find? Do I push the stone all the way? None of these seems right, but I think I’ve come up with the right idea.
“Scott!” I yell.
No answer. “Scott!” I yell again. Still nothing. If he isn’t downstairs that can only mean one thing. I bolt out of the break room and head for the stairs.
I feel like I’ve left out a small detail here, mainly whom this Scott I’m yelling for is. Scott is a co-worker. He is also my best friend. Scott is an eccentric and a character, but I absolutely love him. The reason why I figured he would be downstairs is simple, he isn’t a great employee and most of the time you can find him downstairs not doing anything in particular. But he isn’t downstairs, which means he can only be in one other place.
I rush up the stairs and make my way towards the offices. The bank manager’s door is closed. Scott’s in there. I open the door and slide in.
“Scott?” I half-shout. “You in here?”
“Yeah.”
“Where are you?” I ask.
“Find me.” Comes the reply.
“Christ Scott I don’t have time for this. It’s not a big office I’ll find you in no time.” I sound genuinely pissed off.
A large sigh escapes from the closest, I open the door. Looking up at me is what seems to be a rather comfortable and well-rested looking Scott.
“Hey.” He says in that voice of his that could make a mother grizzly bear whose children you just slaughtered calm down. He unleashes that ten million watt smile. I smile back.
“Are you sleeping in there?” I ask. “You’re actually sleeping in Mel’s closet? Aren’t you supposed to manning your cash right now?”
He nods, simultaneously answering all three questions. If you are wondering why Scott still works here it’s not because he’s a good employee or anything. Mainly he still has a job because he’s Scott. No matter what he does he is lovable, absolutely lovable. Scott has never been dumped in his life, nor has anyone ever said no to him. You just can’t, it’s his face, his voice, his smile, his demeanor, everything about him. Scott is Scott and he gets away with everything because he is Scott. The last time someone tried to fire him he walked away with a raise.
“Hey, Seth I have a question.” He says. “While I was in here I thought of something. There are a lot of nice suits in here, which makes sense since Mel is a bank manager. However I haven’t ever seen Mel wear any other suit then that ratty old one. What gives?” He stretches out his hand in order for me to help him up.
I give him a hand. “Well if you ask me I think he wears the old one so that people will relate to him more. That way when he denies an old woman a loan he doesn’t look filthy rich.”
“Doesn’t he own something like four houses?”
“Yeah, but you gotta admit he knows how to play the game.” I reply.
“I have absolutely no idea what game your talking about.” There’s a short pause. “Anyway, you should try sleeping in there, I tell you that you will never have a more comfortable sleep then on two never worn cashmere suits.”
“Will you forget about your damn sleep, there is a reason as to why I woke you up you lazy shmuck.”
“Yeah? And what was that?” He asks.
“Come with. It’s gonna blow your mind.”

On "On"

I realize that I haven’t been entirely clear with this blog. I jump around. I give you a story one week, some inane comment the next and then a month or so of neglect. I’ve tried to clear up the purpose of this blog a couple of times and I kinda just don’t want to go through it again. So instead I’m going to explain something fundamental about this blog. The titles. Each title of each blog has a meaning. Most of the time, when it’s a story that I’ve posted the title of the post is the title of the story. The way in which to differentiate between a work of fiction and an actual comment is a simple word in the title of all my comments; on. On is the indicator that what follows is a comment, usually on whatever the second word in the title is. The thing about these types of posts is that most likely they will be more common than stories, since, inevitably, a story takes a certain amount of effort of time, whereas these comments do not take a whole lot of effort or work to write.
I’m not entirely sure where I intended to go with this post. I felt it was necessary to properly explain why some posts have titles that start with “on”. Well this is the reason. I hope that clears some things up. Stay tuned for some more posts and hopefully a story soon. Stay positive.

On Neglect

Some of you may wonder what has happened to me. You may ask questions like; do you not love us anymore? Is all your creativity gone? Have you left us because you’ve decided to become a Somali pirate? Did you die? Well let me assure you, I’m not dead, nor am I a pirate, or uncreative, and yes I still love you. The truth is dull and uninteresting, for you see life is something that takes up quite a bit of our time, and though I truly love to sit here and type I often have very little time to dedicate to typing out my musings.
I actually wanted to start this post quite differently. I sat down here with the intent of writing a rather long and disturbing post on neglect. What I planned on doing was to compare my blog to a child, an infant. Actually compare is not the right word. I was going to use an infant as a metaphor for this blog. The plan was to say something along the lines of if this blog were a child it would now be dead and I would be imprisoned for child neglect or, more likely, homicide by neglect. In fact when the police would have found said child, i.e. the blog, they would have found an infant undergoing decomposition, surrounded in filth, and possibly partially eaten. There would also be lots of disgusting insects. Within days of my arrival in prison I would be shanked and because of my crime the prison doctor would not try very hard and I would die in a prison hospital bed. And the prison Chaplin would just spit on me instead of reading my last rites. Of course this is all a metaphor for my neglect of this here blog. And like I said earlier I decided not to use this metaphor, frankly because I think it makes me look like a horrible person.
So the point of this post was to tell you all that the neglect that this blog, and you, have experienced is now over. From now on I will try my very best to post as much as possible. So expect this blog to update more often. And don’t be entirely surprise if the tone and content of this blog changes. Things have a way of changing and most of the time it’s beyond our control. But that’s for a later post. Just be glad that there will be more posts more often. At the very least the metaphor me won’t get shanked if I do.