failure pt 8&9

Mrs. James sat in her chair next to her old beagle. She was a widow with enough money to live on but not enough to travel so she spent most of her time alone. She’d grown to care for the strange man next door who reminded her of the son she couldn’t see. She noticed how he would forget to feed himself, often forget to comb his hair, and on the days he wasn’t job hunting, if Soc and Wings weren’t keeping him busy he wouldn’t even put pants on when going to get the mail. She chuckled at the last run in she had with him when he was up getting the mail in his boxers. He turned bright red realizing he’d forgotten pants.

“Mrs. James, I can make dinner for myself, you don’t have to worry so much,” Rat said watching the old woman as she carefully stood to head to the stove. She just smiled at him and walked past him.

“Don’t be silly, you’re not going to cook for yourself. The only home cooked you get besides my food is Wings,” she started cooking and he wanted to jump to his own defense but she was right.

He watched he before settling down into her couch. He agreed to have dinner with her and that’s exactly what he would do.

“Good, I’m glad it’s settled. I know you have plans with Wings and Soc when they get back from their trip but before and any other time, don’t be afraid to come over,” she mixed noodles into boiling water and began to work her magic on them. He loved when she made pasta. Any kind of pasta that Mrs. James made was fantastic. She said her grandmother taught her how to make the sauce right. Rat was happy to sit on the comfortable piece of furniture and loved the smell of her cooking. This was the closest thing to happiness he’d come across since the last time his family had been altogether.

He thought back to when he and his wife first found out they were having a son. They both found themselves in a state of shock. Everyone said they would be having a girl and they believed them but the doctor came back saying it was a boy and their whole world changed. A little girl meant standardized testing for all kinds of things. The city wanted to make sure no women carried the genes they were trying to weed out of the population. Having a boy meant there wouldn’t be any of the standardized tests and they would have the freedom and the income to support their family comfortably in their apartment. His wife looked him in the eyes and a weight she’d been carrying lifted. There was no money issues to deal with, there was no monthly testing to schedule around. A son granted them freedom.

Mrs. James brought Rat out of his daze. He imagined his small sons face. The bright white smile, the big brown eyes and soft brown skin, his dark curly hair bouncing with every step he took and stood up in all directions. He looked so much like his mother yet had a hint of Rat. She sat a plate down in front of him and returned to her chair not bringing Rats attention to the food. He soon found it on his own, still remembering the family he lost.

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    Soc stood with her brother waiting on Rat. Today he had a job interview and they were excited to know if he got the job or not. They leaned over the roof and watched to road in front of the apartment building.

    “Soc, don’t ask him, just let it go,” Wings was referring to the framed picture hanging on Rat’s wall.

    “Wings, I just want to know why he spaces out, and why he avoids them like the plague. I need to know what's wrong with him.” Wings sighed. His sister was impossible sometimes. When she wanted to know something she was relentless even if it meant bringing up something someone didn’t want brought up.

    “You could be hurting him, would you really like that?” Wings wasn’t usually one to get in the way of his sister but he could tell this was a sensitive subject for Rat.

    “Holding it in is hurting him just as much as telling me would. He needs to let it out somewhere or else he’s going to explode.” Wings sighed again, heavier this time. Soc was a child. She was used to people telling her what she wanted to know and doing what she told them to do. Rat not telling her was baiting her. He knew the minute she learned it was just a boring family photo she would lose all interest and not deal with the mess she created.

    “Soc, remember, other people have reasons to keep secrets just like we do. Let him be,” Soc said nothing but knew she couldn’t drop this. She needed to know and what’s more she knew he needed to tell someone and let out all the bad he kept stored up.

Failure part 7

Days after the trip through town Rat was sitting on the roof with Billy watching people come home from work. Wings and Soc were out on a job and everyone else was busy so the two of them sat watching. It would be dark soon, they knew the Tainted who battled at night would be out robbing high end people who braved the streets and fighting the silent gang wars that were going on. Rat had always been careful to be inside before dark but Billy had once lived in the dark and fought the war.

“What’s it like?” Rat asked. Billy glanced over at the man next to him then back to the pothole covered street below.

“What?” he asked knowing what Rat was asking but unsure of how to answer.

“Night, what’s it like to be out in the night?” He hadn’t been out in the dark since he’d been in college and had no plans  to venture out in it.

“Scary, exciting, the most freeing yet terrifying part of my life so far. I know I seem like an all around good guy but at night, then in that time I was a different person. I didn’t do it cause someone made me either,” he looked remembering the nights he went out, the guards he shot, the Tainted he killed to save himself. “The only thing about it is, if you look like you got something someone wants you’re bound to either get bothered by the guards or killed by the Tainted who live there.”

Rat thought about that for a moment. He hadn’t thought about the Tainted that lived during the day. The ones that seem respectable on the surface but in reality were just as Tainted or more so than the people who ran around killing people and robbing people at night. These were the truly Tainted. The corrupt business owners, the gangsters that ran large operations behind the guise of a normal business. The loan sharks that would then send their men at night to kill or take the money a person couldn’t pay back. Rat had seen a couple of his old neighbors get visits from them in the middle of the night. He said nothing knowing the guard wouldn’t bother protecting him and just use his tip to stir up trouble and get him killed. There was a lot of problems in the city but the people at night were only a small portion of the real sickness.

Billy checked his watch and stood up.

“Well Rat it’s time I head off to work. You don’t get in any trouble while I’m gone,” Billy felt responsible for him just like everyone else in the building. Rat smiled and nodded and Billy ran off to work leaving Rat alone with his thoughts.

failure pt 5&6

Rat stood waiting on the girl and her brother to finish getting ready. Today they were going out for something fun and the poor man had been bullied into tagging along. He pulled on a t-shirt that Wings gave him and one of his three pairs of jeans that he’d acquired at a thrift store. He pulled on his old boots that he used to wear out with his family and decided to comb his hair.

Looking in the mirror he could see how much he’d thinned out since losing his son. But the weight was slowly starting to come back thanks to Wings and Mrs. James. He walked out of his bathroom and threw the shirt he’d worn to bed in the dirty clothes. He wasn’t really confident in showing off his torso and the scar he’d gained in college made it all the more uncomfortable. He hated telling the story.

Walking by the family photo he stopped and stared at his beautiful family.

“I miss you,” he muttered touching the chipped glass. A knock at the door startled him causing him to knock the picture off the wall. He caught it and held on tightly. Soc threw open the door and walked in followed by Wings.

“Hey Ratty, who’s in the pictur-” Soc began to ask but Rat cut her off.

“Do you two have a nail that isn’t bent? The ones in my walls keep letting the frame fall,” Rat didn’t want to answer her. This wasn’t the first time asking but it was hopefully enough to figure out he didn’t want to talk about it.

Wings eyed him for a moment then shook his head yes.

“Of course we do, when we get back you can borrow a hammer and take one of our nails and handle that. Can’t even begin to imagine where you’re gonna hang it though,” Wings chuckled looking at the empty apartment. Rat set the frame down on the counter determined to keep it from breaking.

“Thanks, anyway where are we going?” He wasn’t usually this chatty but it left no room for the questions he didn’t want to answer.

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Walking through the city Wings, Soc, and Rat found themselves distracted by the people around them. They were all off on a mission. Some were just running errands that would seem small but had their entire jobs riding on them and others rushed off to clock in on time. Very few people strolled leisurely through the crowded streets, yet here the three of them were. They caught the eye of a couple guards who were suspicious and started to follow them.

“Billy’s a real cool guy,” Soc said. She looked casually at the guards, realizing they were following but choosing to say nothing about it.

“Yeah, I’m glad he’s a neighbor, else Rat here’d be going broke on his addiction,” Wings chuckled noticing but deciding it didn’t matter. The three of them weren’t doing anything wrong.

Rat was clueless to the guards following, “I don’t smoke that much, honestly you make me sound like a chimney, I only smoke when I get stressed,” he nudged Wings. Soc and Wings laughed and he rolled his eyes.

The guards followed them in the direction of Billy’s convenience store. One eyed the three realizing they were nothing but jobless bums who were no threat to anyone while the other was offset by the group. All the other jobless people search tirelessly for work while these three casually accepted it and were content with it. He figured their ease came from some reassurance that they would be fine. He narrowed down they were out to rob something or someone. The big guy looked like he had it in him to really hurt someone while the little guy looked like the brain of the whole situation. He’d seen plenty of screen shows where the groups used girls to lure men in and two guys would jump him.

A small convenience store on the corner of Chester and High came into view and the guard prepared for the worst. Robbing a convenience store in broad daylight wasn’t the strangest thing he’d seen and if he figured it right, it was the smartest time of the day to do it since most of the guard didn’t work until night fall.

The group passed through the door and walked straight to the counter. The guard decided they were very direct but it didn’t change his view of the three until they walked up and started laughing with the tall bald clerk. The other guard sighed bored and turned to walk away but his partner stared on for a moment bored since being sentenced to Untainted hours of the day. He missed watching the violence and getting a chance to be part of the action but knew the more trusting man next to him was not made for the night shifts anymore.

Inside Rat bought a pack of cigarettes.

“Rat ma man you’re gonna kill yourself with these,” Billy laughed. He was always teasing Rat about his unhealthy habit but Rat didn’t mind.

“Well I have to die somehow,” Rat muttered. Soc smacked him on the arm and Wings chuckled.

“Rat, why don’t you come over later, I got somethin for ya,” Billy asked. Rat looked at the intimidating yet friendly man for a moment then smiled. He’d never seen the inside of Billy’s apartment before.

“Okay, yeah that sounds good, you don’t have to give me anything though,” Rat was overwhelmed by the support his neighbors gave him. He thought back to his old apartment and realized none of the neighbors even said hi to one another in that building yet here they went out of the way for each other. Rat smiled sadly thinking about how his wife would have loved Mrs. James and how her and Ms. Martinez would no doubt get into arguments about cleaning and whose parents were more strict.

Wings watched the thin man go into a daze. He noticed that from time to time Rat would almost step out of reality for a couple minutes but didn’t want to say anything. Soc nudged him but Wings said nothing, not sure if Rat even realized he did this.

Billy cleared his throat and behind them a customer stood tapping his foot impatiently. Wings grabbed Rat’s arm and pulled him out of the way and away from the day dream he was stuck in.

Soc eyed the now awakened man more determined to get the truth out of him.   

Failure pt 4

The building was buzzing. Little by little, they learned about the new tenant; his strangely nervous personality and his habits.  Mostly they learned from the bubbly Soc, the man being a quiet, timid person. Mrs. James, the lady next door on the right side dropped food off at his door every night. She was happy to be taking care of the man she saw as too thin, too uncertain, and certainly too unhappy.

Ms. Martinez, the lady to the left of his apartment made sure to get his mail every day. While the man would go out job hunting she would charm the mailman into giving her his mail too and she would slide it under the door.

Billy, the man who lived on the first floor next to the laundry room, showed him to the roof and offered a lawn chair for Rat to sit in and relax when he wasn’t out job hunting. He noticed the man would sneak out once a night to smoke and seemed to always be running low on his cigarettes.

Wings and Soc made sure to slip dinner invitations under his door while he was away and would always update Mrs. James but she still left food, caring little when he would eat it, just that it would be available whenever he was hungry.

The five of them met in the laundry room to discuss what to do with the new tenant. He was still quiet and still hard to approach but there was no malice in him.

“I noticed him stumbling with his keys the other day. When he saw me staring he started searching faster and ended up dropping his keys,” Billy said laughing as he talked to Mrs. James. She touched the man’s large light brown arm.

    “Don’t tease him dear, he’s just nervous,” she said firmly. He snorted and pushed his basket full of shirts into the washing machine. He hadn’t had a full conversation with Rat yet but he was sure the man was someone he could get along with, even if he seemed a little immature. Wings chuckled and gripped his bag full of work supplies. He had a job that night and it would be just Soc and Rat for dinner but he was happily certain nothing would happen. He couldn’t believe the man was the same age as him. While Wings looked in his early twenties, Rat looked closer to thirty yet they’re the same age. Twenty eight, not a family man yet he was a businessman. Wings and Soc were thinking the photo on the wall in his apartment was his adopted mom and sibling but they weren’t sure.

    Soc ran through the room, “he’s coming! He looks so tired. I shouted to him from the roof but he just slumped forward, I bet it was a rough day so let’s all say hi and ask him about his day!” Soc was energetic. She wanted to brighten his day but everyone else kindly agreed to help. They all stood waiting for him to come through the door into the laundry room so he could take the stairs but started doing things to make it look less awkward.

    He walked through the door holding his bag loosely on his shoulder.

    “Hey Rat!” Soc said running up to him. He gave her a half hearted smile thinking about how happy his son used to be when he’d come home.

    “Hello dear, how was your day?” Mrs. James asked. Billy walked up slowly to not startle the man.

    “Hey bro, s’up?” he asked ruffling the man’s nicely combed hair. Wings gave a nod and went towards the door. Rat looked confused. Ms. Martinez, who’d been quietly been doing her laundry until now smiled.

    “Welcome home Rat, I bought you a pack a cigs from Billy’s place, we get a discount. Stop by my place and I’ll give em to you,” Ms. Martinez hadn’t said anything prior to now but the others took comfort in her interaction. Rat nodded shyly and went to the stairs.

Failure pt 3

    Rat dressed in one of his better suits and tried not to be nervous. He couldn’t turn down the girls dinner invitation no matter how nervous he was. He combed his messy hair back into a professional style and considered shaving the sides for a moment but knew now wasn’t the time to try a new hair style. He slipped on his dress shoes and moved towards the door. Upon opening it he saw Soc standing in another big tank top, green this time but what was a skirt was now a pair of knee length shorts and knee high stockings.

    “Hi Rat, I thought I’d come escort you to dinner!” She looped her arm around his and pulled him towards the door that led to the stairway. “I made you some stuff to decorate your door with. Also I didn’t want to say anything last time but I will now, you need some furniture, I can see if Wings has any in storage we can lend you or give you,” she was a talker, that’s for sure. But Rat concluded she was nice and didn’t mean to mock him by calling him Rat. As they climbed up into the upstairs Rat realized there was only one apartment up there. While it was the smallest floor it was the size of a house as compared to the closet sized single room apartments on the floors below.

    “Soc, is Wings that big guy with black hair I see in the morning sometimes?” Rat asked since talking to her getting the invitation he and her have talked at the mailbox a couple times and she’d even brought over cookies.

    “Yeah, that’s my big brother,” Rat gulped. This sweet seeming girl mixed in with the wrong crowd. More than just that, Rat would have to be around the large man and spend a dinner with him. He held his breath in hopes that the giant wasn’t home.

    “Brother! Come meet Rat! He’s the new guy I invited for dinner!” she shouted leading him over to comfy looking furniture. Rat stood.

    The hulking man came around the wall in the kitchen to see the smaller man before him. Rat took this up close chance to realize the man was even scarier than previously thought. He had a sharp dark piercing gaze and thick shoulder length black hair. He was wearing a black tank top and not smiling. His sister ran to him and hugged him. Against his darker complexion she looked like a snow.

    “Have a seat Ratty!” she said laughing. She looked at the stranger from downstairs and could tell he was a good looking man. He was older than her but still she could appreciate from a distance, how nice he looked. She wondered how someone with such looks could be single and not have at least one person trying to get his attention. Rat stiffly sat down on the couch.

    Wings stood watching the man fidget. Soc got carried away and wanted to help everyone which brought in one or two robbers that would try to steal their stuff or hurt them, he decided this would be the last one. His gun sat in the kitchen waiting for the moment this went sour. The man still hadn’t spoken.

    “It was nice of-” he spoke softly before getting cut off by the annoyed hulk of a man.

    “Why are you so quiet? You move in here and don’t introduce yourself to the neighbors, then my sister goes outta her way to invite you over for dinner and you barely said a damn thing since you got here,” Wings snapped. He stepped back towards the kitchen. The man sunk into the couch he was sitting on. He’d never been very good at socializing but he figured this wasn’t the proper way to introduce yourself. He started to panic a bit but kept all his nervous fidgeting to his hands, where he played with the fraying parts of the seam on his pants.

    “I’m sorry, I-I didn’t mean to offend you. I j-just got fired from my job, I’m just... just trying to get back on my feet,” Wings started laughing at the frantic man, he was funny in his nervousness, “I want to get away from this city, away from everything. I’ll leave if you like, I told her this was too much. I’m... I’m sorry.”

    Wings laughed hard, this man was nothing but an unlucky Untainted living in this apartment complex until he got back on his feet. Not like Wings and Soc. They used this as a cover to hide what they really were. This man wasn’t a thief, wasn’t even a good liar no doubt.

    “I like you Rat, you’re honest, I’m Wings, Spaghetti’s on the menu for dinner,” Wings liked him because of his honesty.

    Rat sat running his hand through his hair pushing the grey hair back, he was nervous but doubted the huge man wanted to hurt him.

    Wings walked back into the kitchen and tucked his gun away in his room glad he didn’t have to use it. He stirred the noodles and his homemade sauce. Mrs. James said the man hadn’t brought in anything but take out once every two or three days since arriving and a homemade meal would probably be better than anything he’d had in awhile.

    Once dinner was done Wings fixed each of them a plate of food and sat it all on the table in the kitchen. They were going to have a nice meal, he even threw in some homemade garlic toast and got out a bottle or red wine. The man was going to appreciate dinner and hopefully learn to fit in here at the complex.

    “Come on, dinner,” Wings said. Soc grabbed Rat’s hand and pulled him along after her. He walked through the doorway into the kitchen and sat down at the empty chair next to Soc. She smiled.

    “Looks like my brother really likes you,” she said, taking a bite out of the garlic toast, “he got out the wine for you!” She laughed and ate some of the spaghetti on her garlic toast. Wings sat not looking at the man who he’d spent some time and thought on.

    “I’m glad to hear that,” Rat relaxed in his chair and sipped his wine. He sampled the drink and realized that he would have to be careful or he’d drink the whole bottle.

    Rat thought back to the first time he’d met his wife, she was celebrating the holidays the way any college girl would coming from the strictly religious home. He was chugging liquor and trying to forget that his parents were coming up to see him for Christmas. As much as he tried he didn’t remember much of the night on his own but she’d told him time and time again he’d asked for her number and even went out of the way to make sure she got back to her dorm unharmed. She said he told her she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen over and over again. Every time she retold that story she would play with her wedding ring that always complimented her dark skin.

    Tears threatened to leak from his eyes and everyone at the table noticed yet said nothing. They all had their fair share of memories that brought them to tears, the siblings ate allowing the strange man a moment to regain himself.

Failure pt. 2

The man with the greying brown hair stood staring at his abused new apartment. Holes lined the walls and nails stuck out of the standard white drywall. On one nail hung the picture of his family and on the counter sat a small microwave. He looked down at the dented worn hardwood floor and to his sleeping bag before sighing and reaching for one of the suits hanging on the cheap wooden bathroom door. While the place was beat up he did appreciate it. This building was on the better side of the bad part of town and he wasn’t sleeping in a tent at the park anymore.

He ran his fingers over the fraying hem of the pants, it had been a month since losing his job. Besides the day he lost his job and the two days he took off to apartment hunt and rent he had been searching for a replacement everyday since. This was the suit he’d worn the day he’d been fired. He felt extra unlucky in it but the others were in desperate need of being cleaned.

He heard a woman outside the door speaking Spanish. He could tell by the one sided conversation and the pauses she was on the phone with someone arguing. The man holding the suit shied away from the door. None of the people in the building had tried to talk to him but there was two in particular that made him think they were Tainted. A man who lived upstairs and only came down during the early morning and late at night and a man on the first floor who often left and came around at about the same time as the other guy. The man ventured into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. He was thin, even in his face, he had a sharp looking nose and dull green eyes, his skin was pasty from the constant cloud cover and while he was tall he was thin and lanky without any noticeable muscles. He knew they were there, he used to pick his son up and dance around their old apartment for hours and carry his wife when she was sick during pregnancy.

He was about to open his mouth to speak when a knock at the door hushed him. He waited hoping the knocking would stop but couldn’t help consider the landlord. He looked down at his clothes and sighed, he was in shorts and a tank top but that would have to do.

The knocking continued causing him to quickly cross the room to the door. He leaned against the wooden door and peered out through the cracked peak hole only to see a bright red head of hair and a pale smiling face.

He cracked the door open and stared at the small girl in front of him. She had unnaturally red hair, deep brown eyes and pale white skin. Her hair was styled really short in the front and on top but long off the back and in a pony tail. She was wearing a giant red tank top that looked more like a man’s and a mid thigh length ruffled black skirt with mismatching thigh high socks and no shoes. She pushed the door open wider and took him in for a moment.

“Hi, I’m Soc, nice to meet you!” The girl named Soc had a Middle Eastern accent that was just barely noticeable. The man scoffed. Soc? What kind of name was that? He took in her appearance again before laughing a little more. The little girl could never get a job looking like that, schools wouldn’t even let her go there looking the way she did. Something in her eyes though seemed to make him curious though.

“My big brother and I’ve been meaning to come meet you,” she stared at him, he was handsome, and she could tell if he had some decent food he might even look better. Her eyes stopped on his pointed nose and the flecks of grey in his hair.

The man went to speak but she cut him off before he could even open his mouth.

“You look like a rat I used to have, loved the little beast, that’s what your name can be! Rat! I like it,” the man’s mouth hung open a little. The girl hadn’t bothered to ask his name she simply gave him one of her own. “Look Ratty, I don’t want you to give out your real name to the people here, it’s for your own protection,” she said then she pulled a piece of paper out of the waist of her skirt.

“Dinner invite for Friday, Ratty! I’d come dressed but if those are what you like to wear all the time it’s no problem either,” she giggled.

“I-I couldn’t,” the man stammered. No one had ever been so direct with him. No one had even given him a nickname before, let alone renamed him, no one was quite like the girl in front of him. She reached up with her thin pale arms and pulled his head down to her level. Once he was down there she planted a kiss on his right cheek and skipped off towards the stairs.

He shut the door slowly, not quite sure what just happened. He held the invitation and sat down on his sleeping bag.

That girl couldn’t have been more than twenty and here she was knocking on his door, the poor thing. He couldn’t help but feel like his life was meant to bring other people to their untimely tragic deaths. He sat blaming himself for the loss of his son and wife yet he knew he couldn’t really be blamed. While he could reason with himself and say there was no way he caused either death he still took responsibility for not protecting them from the terrible fates they were given. He looked down at his hands and while he knew it wasn’t even possible he felt like he’d cause the death of anyone who came too close to him.

Today he’d take the day off.

Failure

    The young man sat watching his boss only for moments at a time. The older man watched him constantly under his thick white brow. His employee was a quiet man. Never once before had this man caused a disturbance to the company; he was on time constantly, barely called off a day since starting here, and had a college degree from the private college outside the city limits. He noticed the man taking in his office. A small one compared to the boss above him, but his own none the less. He cleared his throat and fixed his silky black tie. The young man in the dark grey suit sat picking at a frayed hem on his pants now, not focusing on the pictures of the older man’s happy looking family. On his desk sat two framed pictures of his wife and two daughters, and one of the whole family on vacation to Florida.

    The employer felt bad for the man he was about to fire. He’d just lost his wife and son, and you could tell the stress was wearing him down. The young man in the grey suit had a hint of pepper in his chestnut brown hair, already at the young age of twenty eight. The man in the black suit saw no problem in him taking the time off for grievances and putting things in order for his wife, but that could also be why he’s not a big boss. Compassion wasn’t good in a boss. Not in this world; he’d get taken advantage of. That’s why he wasn’t on the board, and just as expendable as the stressed, sad man in front of him.

    “Look here, son,” the man in the black tie said, trying to separate himself from this situation, “I understand what you’re going through is rough,” the man paused. The man in the grey suit ran his hand through his thick, greying hair and picked at the fraying seam. He was trying hard not to look at the man about to fire him. He was stuck in a loop thinking about his wife, his son, his parents, and the ever-worsening living situation he was in. He thought about the two person tent he shared with only his suits and canned food supply. The guards paced the shanty streets keeping thieves from getting into tents and stealing things, while each person in the tents remembered someone lost in the tragic building collapse that killed dozens. He thought about the streets he would be kicked out on if the unemployment department didn’t find his case worth funding. He would have to evict his tent in the next couple days since losing his job and move either into the street or into a cheap apartment on the Tainted side of town.  

      Silence dragged on and the man in the grey suit was beginning to wonder if the man before him had the nerve to fire someone. After a few more moments, the man in the grey suit began to look at the wooden desk, specifically the file on it. It was his employee file, yet it was only marked with a number, no name, and a side note from the supervisor explaining the details of his wife and son’s deaths. The older man thought back to when he’d seen this man come in for the first time: he sat in the chair in a similar fashion, but he looked him straight in the eyes and smiled. The man before him currently looked like he had the life sucked out of him and all that was left was the corpse. He tried to imagine what a loss like the one the quiet man had experienced would be like, but couldn’t. He pulled himself out of thought and looked into the dead, pale green eyes that looked away as soon as eye contact was made.

    “What I’m trying to say is, I don’t have enough faith in you to believe you can complete the job you’re at,” the man in the grey suit let his shoulder visibly sag, the man in the black tie hated his job, he hated having to fire people who were desperate for a job. He knew that if he didn’t fire them, though, it would be him on the other side of the desk.

    “I...I’m fired?” the man said, speaking for the first time. His voice was timid and broken, but his words were clear and cut through the older man, who wanted nothing more than to say it was all a practical joke and send the man back to his desk. He was a diligent worker and deserved more recognition for that.

    “Yes; I am truly sorry,” the man in the black tie said, meaning it. For a few moments, the man in the grey suit sat picking at the hem of his suit and thinking. What did it matter to the man in the seat across from him if he was fired or not? He’d broken protocol and taken days off that weren’t approved by upper management. The rules were went over in training and posted in the break room for everyone to see everyday next to the fridge. What did this man with a perfect family on the nice side of town have to be sorry for, he thought. Was a so pathetic looking that even uncaring people start to wince when looking at me? He wondered. Before he could stop himself, a laugh escaped his lips.

    His boss cocked his head in confusion. He wondered what was so funny, but didn’t want to ask. He got an answer anyway as a hardier laugh escaped the young man's lips.

    “Mr. Bronston, while I believe you have had no say, and you’re really sorry, your apologies don’t do a damned thing for me,” he felt his laugh get softer and fade out. Why should he care about this man's feelings? No one cared about his feelings, no one even cared if he lived, and yet this guy wanted to feel better about firing someone with no legs to stand on by saying he was sorry. He stood quickly and walked out of the office, leaving Mr. Bronston to his thoughts, and crossed into the cubicle sea where his desk was. On his small glass desk sat a picture his son drew for him and a photograph of him and his wife and son. He grabbed the pictures and moved down the thin halls. The people in the cubicles all pretended not to look at him, but they all knew he was fired. No one said anything, no one even had the courage to look him in eyes, yet he knew they were all watching to see what he would do. He did nothing; he simply walked up to the elevator and pressed the metal button and waited, holding the most important things he had in the office close to him. He climbed onto the elevator looking back at the curious group of people and smiled just as the door closed.