beep beep beep!

Grant Wallace Creative Writing 3/25/09

BEEP BEEP BEEP. Click. Shy’s fingers clicked his alarm off seconds after it woke. Shy was already awake, anticipating his alarms alarm with an unsettling anxiety that left moist fingerprints on the “off” switch.

The day had come,
months in preparation, the daily half hour mediation sessions he started and the countless self help books on tape from such cassettes as “Are you really happy with who you are right now?” and the #1 best selling “No one likes you except your parents,” the highly acclaimed work of Patrick Bancroft as he talks you down to your lowest point hoping to give you that confidence to bring yourself back up to “the happiest you’ll ever be.” The tape now has to include a warming after several suicides were reported from people who couldn’t bring their selves back up.
Shy had achieved this happiness.

Shy dress himself in his favorite Worthington, dark blue two button jacket, complete with acetate lining and an inside chest pocket. He had coordinating light striped slacks with a hidden extender waistband that provides a 2" additional stretch on each side. They made him feel important. He enjoyed yawning because he could stretch out his arms and legs making his skin tingle as the expensive linen rubbed against his skin.

He thought of his mother as he looked at her picture standing on his nightstand. She was standing next to him when he was a child, holding his hand and smiling down on him. She told him he was the apple of her eye. He started to miss her less and less as each day grew on but he had more important things on his mind as of late. He decided right then that he would have to do this for his mother. He could not fail, otherwise he would feel like he had disappointed her.

It has to be today.
He made his way to the kitchen to get some dog food set out for Rex, a small doxen whose only resemblance to tyrannosaurus rex was how one of his upper teeth curled over his front gums, and even that was a stretch. Rex wouldn’t be awake for another hour or so as Shy poured him the food into his metallic bowl, but not before taking a quick glare into the shiny bowl, using the reflection to make sure his hair was still parted just right. He then quietly tiptoed through the living room as to not wake up Rex and closed the door in the way a lover might when getting up in the morning, turning the handle as gently as possible, adjusting the door’s speed to hide the creeks when possible. This thought brought a smile to his face.

He pulled his car into his normal parking spot, row E on the tenth floor of the Midway Parking Garage. He parked here every day since he found out she too parked on this floor, always wishfully hoping he could casually bump into her on their way into the office. He had lines preplanned such as “Hey, I’ve seen you around before. Are you friends with Maurie?” He had befriended her earlier in the year with the sole intention of using her for this exact scenario. He had a back up too, in the likely chance his memory failed and his words escaped him, as he would inevitably turn into the equivalent of a bag of freeze-dried onions. He was all too familiar with this feeling.

“Excuse me, I have a slightly weird question to ask but do you know who works in room 209 on the second floor?” To which she would respond, “Oh yeah, that’s my friend Maurie, what do you need to know?” which he would respond with, “Oh, thank you. I just had a few questions to ask her this morning but when I went to her office yesterday, her name plate was missing from door, well, I thought I saw you hang around her before so I wanted to ask.”

The night before, he had stayed approximately 10 minutes late just so he could take it down in the off chance a) he did meet her in the morning and b)credibility incase she decided to check to see if this was true. After a month of doing this, Maurie had to have her name plate remade for her four times.