Everyone wants you to read the book on which he or she is working, a novel everyone is writing in order to find the meaning of life, with which everyone’s spouse ran off. But everyone has to finish the novel before everyone can know where the novel begins. In the meantime, there are all these distractions, such as the twelfth-floor window at the office building where everyone works out of which people or maybe just one person keeps jumping or falling--everyone isn’t sure--or everyone’s sexy coworker Sam, whom everyone is struggling valiantly against to keep from becoming a paramour. It’s kind of pitiful, actually, the way everyone keeps begging you to read, sending you e-mails, dropping it into conversation (“I have a book, you know?”), posting links to it on social-networking sites. Everyone figures that if he or she begs enough, you will break down and try it. Everyone is like a dog that way, watching you eat your dinner. The way you handle the dog is to push it away from the table, lock it outside the room. Sometimes, of course, you hand the dog a bite, an inch-sized bit of beef, and that is all everyone is asking for--a bite, that you read just the first line of his or her book. The problem is that you know everyone too well. If you read one line, everyone will beg you to read another. Just one more.

To start from the beginning of the novel, go here.

Sunday, April 24, 2016

Everyone Meets the Light

Everyone found no body at the base of the office building where he or she worked. Many weeks before, everyone’s coworker J. D. had fallen or jumped from the twelfth floor, where everyone’s office was. The office was for Dasney Amusement Park Malls. J. D. was the company’s designated rule maker. Some of the rules he or she had created were as follows:  
  • No saving spots in line.
  • No food on rides.
  • No trying on bridal gowns unless you are a woman and an actual upcoming bride.
  • No neighing unless you are a donkey.
  • Only twelve-year-old girls may wear costume jewelry.
  • Only official custodial engineers may use vacuuming equipment.
 If you wanted to create a rule but couldn’t think of one, J. D. was the person to consult.

Everyone did not care for J. D.

After his or her fall, J. D. had come to everyone through everyone’s child Journey, most specifically through Journey’s beseeching eyes, in particular Journey’s left eye.

Although everyone had had no interest in helping J. D., Journey’s eyes compelled everyone to go in search for the full truth regarding what had happened to his or her ex-coworker. Alice and a bevy of other coworkers had promised to do so, but so far as everyone was aware, no one had.

As far as everyone could tell, the sidewalk to which J. D. had fallen contained no trace of the body, not even a bloodstain in the shape of a heart where J. D.’s head would have met the pavement.

Everyone searched the chest-high bushes between the building and the sidewalk. Everyone dodged traffic along the curb, peered upward along the line of the building toward the open window from which J. D. had fallen. Everyone stared at him- or herself in the reflective windows of the all-glass building and felt a little of J. D. inside him- or herself. Everyone felt foolish.

Everyone was annoyed that J. D. had brought everyone to the office in the middle of the night, after the kids were in bed and the dog had been let out to bark. Everyone had a blog post to write, and J. D. was interfering.

Up at the opening from which J. D. had fallen was a light. Everyone had seen the office late at night many times but had never seen this light. The light was similar to one everyone had seen in movies when a person died. Everyone could not see beyond the light. The light was like a door to the sun, or to something divine, or to good food, like in a refrigerator or oven.

Everyone wondered if he or she was going to die.

A body stepped into the light of the window. It was a body like everyone’s. It looked down at everyone. And then it jumped.
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