Everyone Finishes a Novel and Thanks the Participants

Everyone thought she or he had finished the blog novel, but apparently another chapter remained. Everyone was uncertain what to do with it. After all, everyone was dead, at least as she or he had last left off.

That is when everyone’s former coworker J. D. leaned against the doorframe to everyone’s office, everyone’s dog on a leash in her or his hand, everyone her- or himself literally tied to her or his desk.

Everyone had not seen J. D. since J. D.’s expulsion from a window on another side of the floor, save inside other people. “J. D., you’re alive,” everyone expostulated.

“Every bit as much as you,” J. D. said. “Thanks, everyone, for writing the book and reading.”

“You read my book?” everyone asked, both surprised and ecstatic.

“In a manner of speaking,” J. D. said, “yes. That is, I wrote it.”

Everyone was confused. Everyone’s friend the Internet had talked about how readers were writers, but everyone rarely listened when the Internet went off on theoretical tangents. Everyone had wanted to find her or his identity, and instead the Internet had speculated on how everyone could be multiple people at once. The Internet had been little help throughout the course of writing the novel.

“You wrote it?” everyone asked J. D.

“With others,” J. D. said. “Thanks.”

Everyone asked J. D. who she or he was thanking.

“The other readers, of course,” J. D. said. “This is the end of the novel, so it’s traditional that we acknowledge the participants at this point.”

“I thought we were dead,” everyone observed.

“Not as long as we are in this book,” said J. D. “As long as we are here, the story continues for as long as anyone wants to read it.”

“But Sam, the nurse, the germs, the window,” everyone protested, listing off recent events and characters.

“All part of the book,” J. D. said.

“Hello,” said Sam, coming into the frame. “How was I?” Sam asked. Sam was out of the scrubs everyone had last seen her or him in and was now wearing the plaid jacket that everyone had seen in the bushes at the base of their office building nearly a year ago.

“A bit inconsistent,” J. D. said, “but don’t worry. You’ll grow on people in subsequent readings.”

“You hope,” said Harvey, vacuum cleaner in hand. Harvey was a part-time janitor.

Everyone examined the straps across her or his body that kept everyone wedded to the desk. “You mean, I--” Everyone tore them off and stood. “I can go anywhere.”

“Within the trajectory of the book, yes,” said J. D.

Just then, everyone saw the meaning of life. The meaning of life was walking down the hall behind J. D. and Sam and Harvey at the door, cap in hand, sunglasses over eyes. Then everyone’s spouse passed. They were together.

“Was that?” everyone asked.

J. D. and Sam and Harvey nodded.

Everyone ran into the hall, but the meaning of life had already disappeared. Everyone ran after them.

And then, everyone saw it. It was the beginning of the novel. It was leaning against the window frame looking out, the window whose glass was missing. The beginning of the novel was smoking, the entire city before it. Everyone slowed, crouched. She or he wasn’t going to let the beginning of the novel get away. Everyone got down on her or his hands and knees, crawled. The beginning of the novel turned toward the hall, saw everyone. Everyone jumped.

Everyone Tells a Story

Everyone could no longer count the times that someone had jumped from a window or been sucked up by a vacuum cleaner or visited the John Quincy Adams animatron at the Dasney Amusement Park Mall. Increasingly, with each chapter of the novel, everyone felt as if she or he were writing the same story over and over again. Everyone was tired. Everyone asked the Internet what the best way was to stay motivated when writing.

The Internet groaned. The Internet would answer the question, and then everyone would object and do as she or he wanted. The Internet felt as if its presence in everyone’s life was pointless, and it heavily considered shutting off. Still, the Internet had an uncontrollable impulse to showcase its knowledge. The Internet had an ego, after all, and if the Internet didn’t answer, it would never be able to tell everyone, “I told you so.”

“Don’t make your outline too exhaustive,” the Internet advised. “Know where you’re going in a general sense, but allow the vicissitudes of the moment to show you how. Don’t be too wedded to your planned ending. A story will sustain itself, and if you’re bored, it’s best to break. Lay the story down and pick it up somewhere else. Discover things you don’t know yet that will re-enliven the section where you left off.”

Everyone nodded, though the advice wasn’t helping. “What if at each section you end up in the same place?” everyone asked.

“Everyone only has one story,” the Internet observed and laughed in a conceited manner. “That’s all most authors have--three or four if they’re lucky.” The Internet displayed a photograph of Edgar Allan Poe and under it a list of three basic outlines and the stories that fit within them. “This is how our friend Harvey created a website that, with a few A-B-C selections, lets readers write their own Poe story. In the end, after all, it’s the reader who writes the tale, so why, Harvey asked, not just skip the author?”

Everyone stared at the Poe photograph. The man seemed beset by the difficulty of writing new fiction also, the dark shadows under each eye, as if death was awaiting to take him before he’d had a chance to get even the beginning right. That is what everyone really needed, of course--a beginning. If only everyone could find the right beginning, she or he knew, everything else would fall in place, including the desire to continue.

“It doesn’t matter!” the Internet screamed when everyone asked again how to start. Every time, everyone returned to this basic question, and every time everyone ignored what the Internet had advised. “Readers will begin where they begin and finish where they finish. Few read a book all the way through or in chapter order, especially online. They pick it up, read about a party for people who matter on page 131. They skip to a chapter on metafiction and from there to another where a parade of dog walkers prevents the protagonist from meeting her or his idealized self or some dreamed-of romantic interest. Then the reader gets so flustered that she or he throws the book across the room and never returns, and for all intents and purposes, that is the book to her or him, what she or he actually read. Another reader starts at the place where the writer begins, then skips to the credits at the end, then plunges into a chapter about the performance of a medieval play and, gleaning all that she or he wishes to know, shuts the book with the intention of one day returning to the find the medieval play chapter is now unfindable, and instead, the book seems to be about social media marketing practices.”
“So you’re saying,” everyone asked, now suddenly excited, “that I need not just one beginning but one hundred.”

“Or a thousand,” the Internet said, “whatever the number of pages in your book, and an equal number of endings. Tag it, index it, if you wish, guide your reader into various possible readings you might prefer she or he try, but in the end, the reader is in charge, and you, as author, are subject to her or his whims.”

“That’s preposterous,” everyone said. Everyone stormed to the window next to her or his desk. Outside the family dog was barking. The kids must have let it out. Every night, it was the same.

Every day, everyone felt, she or he wrote the same story: wake up, work, sleep. Perhaps, the Internet was right. We all only had one story, and for most, that story had 70 x 365 beginnings and endings, give or take a few--or just one of each, depending on how one read.

Everyone Yearns for What Is Missing

Everyone asked his or her children where their sibling Jan was. The children were gathered around a vacuum cleaner on the twelfth floor of the office building where everyone worked.

The children were Jody, a sanctimonious thirteen-year-old with a penchant for fart jokes who had recently become a famous child actor; Star, the one-time ten-year-old with a heart of gold before he or she ripped it out; and Journey, an eight- or nine-year-old chocolate thief who had absconded from juvenile detention while awaiting trial. Jan was a six-year-old and very much like everyone’s spouse in that he or she was missing.

The children looked toward the windows when everyone asked. Two of them were open. The children had been commanded not to go near them.

Everyone ran to the open window on the left and looked down. Below was a plaid jacket lying atop the bushes along the side of the all-glass building. The jacket looked too large to be Jan’s, but everyone wasn’t sure. The spouse had bought the children many things everyone didn’t recognize.

“What was Jan wearing?” everyone asked.

The children shook their heads in ignorance.

Everyone looked down again at the jacket. Everyone would have preferred to be examining the vacuum cleaner, but it was already full, what with a hand--an adult hand--extruding from the bottom.

“We’ll have to go down now,” everyone said, “all of us. I can’t trust you.”

Jody wheeled the vacuum cleaner before him or her “in case it was needed,” he or she said, as the children followed everyone to the exit.

“Our children,” everyone heard his or her coworker Sam say from his or her office.

Everyone veered away, chose a different route. Everyone had not expected Sam in the office over the weekend. Everyone did not want the children to see Sam. Sam had a crush on everyone and often made untoward advances. Everyone wanted his or her departed spouse back and did not want complicating factors. Star would be heartless in a divorce hearing.

Everyone opened the door to the hall where the elevators resided.

“Hello there,” everyone heard Sam call. Everyone let the children go into the hall before him or her, then looked back. Sam stood in the doorway to his or her office decked in a bathrobe that was open, beneath which only Sam’s underwear showed. Everyone closed the hall door, pressed the down button on the elevator bank.

“Who was that?” Journey asked.

“The office paramour,” Star said. Jody nodded.

Everyone gave Star a disapproving look.

“What?” Jody scolded. “You think we don’t know?”

Outside, the children scurried down the sidewalk, Jody pushing the vacuum on its hind wheels. Journey rushed into the thicket. The plaid jacket sunk into the bush’s leaves.

Star, kicking at the branches, made his or her way into the bushes as well.

Everyone asked them to stop, to come out. And then everyone asked if they saw Jan.

The children laughed.

Jody abandoned the vacuum, took off all but his or her underwear, and dove into the thicket as well, as if it were swimming pool.

A light came on above. It was from the twelfth story, one of the open windows.

Everyone looked up. A body stood in silhouette looking down at everyone. Everyone couldn’t tell if it was Sam or Jan.

“Don’t jump,” everyone cried. “Please don’t jump.”

The silhouette jumped.

Everyone Has a Friend Who Knows Someone Important

“You want the meaning of life?” Harvey asked. “I know the meaning of life. I’m your boss. You should have asked. We’re like that.” Harvey held his index and middle fingers up together. Tiny pieces of plastic fell from Harvey’s hand. “I need a bath,” Harvey said. “Imagine me, a custodial engineer, looking like this.”

Everyone wasn’t listening. Everyone was thinking about what Harvey had said about the meaning of life. Everyone couldn’t believe she or he had spent half a year writing a blog to find the meaning of life when Harvey had known the meaning of life all along.

“Where is the meaning of life?” everyone asked.

Harvey patted down his shirt and pants. Dust rose into the air. “I really need a bath,” Harvey reiterated.

Everyone had no time for baths. “How do you know the meaning of life?” everyone asked. “What does it look like?”

Everyone thought she or he sort of knew the answer to the last question, though at times, everyone questioned whether she or he had found the true meaning of life or simply a poser.

The meaning of life had a blog. On it were hundreds of photographs of trim, smiling people with tans standing on a motorboat with Popsi Colas in their hands. The meaning of life stood next to each of these people, wearing shades and a baseball cap. But everyone could not get a good look at the face--not at the eyes nor at the hair. Still, everyone noted, by the white teeth and the lack of wrinkles, that the meaning of life seemed exceptionally young for being so famous and rich.

Harvey unbuttoned his shirt, shook out a vacuum cleaner’s worth of dirt, laid it on everyone’s dining room table. Harvey’s chest hair was stickered with white droplets shaped like kilobytes--lice eggs, skin, three-week-old linguini sauce, puke. Harvey pulled on the longest with the fingertips of his thumb and index finger, squeegeeing off the mess. “It’s a dirty business,” Harvey said.

“Never mind that,” everyone said.

Everyone grabbed the hose of the vacuum cleaner sitting beside her or his desk, turned it on, began sucking at Harvey’s chest.

Harvey stared at the nozzle on his torso, grabbed it, then ran the hose left to right, up to down, the upper half of his body. “There’s nothing quite like seeing something come clean to give me a sense of accomplishment,” Harvey said.

Dirt continued to cake off Harvey’s skin.

“But,” everyone said, over the din of the vacuum cleaner.

“The meaning of life,” Harvey said, assenting now to everyone’s earlier question, as the hose continued down his body, “is all about cleanliness, accomplishment, doing what you love with your whole heart. That’s why I started this business.”

“So you could meet the meaning of life?” everyone asked.

Harvey nodded, moved the nozzle to his back. “Before,” Harvey said, “I simply existed, cataloging experiences--and really more other people’s experiences than my own. I wasn’t living. I was letting others live for me--I was living their lives.”

Harvey turned off the vacuum, looked at his pants, shook his head. “I really need a bath,” he said.

“But my spouse,” everyone asked now, desperate, “do you think? Do you think that if I found the meaning of life, I could find my spouse?”

Harvey stared at everyone. “Works for some people,” he said. “But like I said, I think you really have to find meaning yourself. No one in the end can help you. I mean, the meaning of life doesn’t hang out with just one person.”

“I’ve seen the photos,” everyone acknowledged.

“Never seen one myself,” Harvey said. “I find the meaning of life every time I polish a desktop or clean off a mirror. I work hard, and there, meaning is, every time, staring right back at me.”

Everyone Fails to Avoid Distractions

Everyone took the Internet’s advice and began thinking about SEO words and phrases everyone could use on his or her blog. Everyone was looking for the meaning of life, so everyone needed words and phrases that would interest the meaning of life.

The meaning of life liked Popsi Cola, so something involving refreshment was in order. “The taste that refreshes,” everyone wrote in his or her blog. “The taste that refreshes,” everyone wrote again, “Popsi.”

“Leisure, success, and happiness,” everyone wrote. The meaning of life liked leisure, success, and happiness. “Fit and tan people smiling,” everyone wrote, thinking of the photographs on the meaning of life’s blog, “holding Popsi Cola, the taste the refreshes.”

“While on motorboats,” everyone added, for it was obvious from the photographs that the meaning of life liked those too.

And so that the Internet could properly file the information, everyone added, “Plaid jackets,” and linked the phrase to a photo of the meaning of life, poolside, with a plaid jacket draping off the lounge chair on which the meaning of life lay.

The meaning of life also liked business and sales, so everyone thought about what business and sales words might appeal to the meaning of life. There was a patio deck beside and beneath the meaning of life in the pool photo. It consisted of pinkish pea-graveled cement. Perhaps, something about patio sales was in order.

Everyone should have ignored the thumping. Everyone was writing a blog entry.

Everyone had specifically opted to write not during lunch but at home, at night, after the kids were in bed and the dog done barking outside, so that he or she could focus. Everyone needed to find the right links and tags to add to his or her key words and phrases. Everyone needed to optimize the blog so that the meaning of life would find it and be motivated to comment, because the meaning of life so much enjoyed, for example, Popsi Cola, the taste that refreshes, and would want to know more. “What do you think of Popsi Cola, the taste that refreshes?” everyone would have asked, had he or she continued to write. “Is there any soda that compares?”

Instead, everyone turned.

The vacuum cleaner was behind everyone.

The vacuum cleaner should have been in the laundry room, not in the dining room where everyone’s desk was. Then everyone remembered: everyone had left the vacuum in the hall, where everyone had had to vacuum up dog puke. The dog had not gone to bark outside. It had puked and gone to everyone’s room to pretend death.

Everyone stood and went to the vacuum.

“In here, lunkhead,” the vacuum called.

Everyone looked around the room--at the small dining room table of mammoth thickness and six equally pompous charts, the bowl of oranges atop the table, the cheap chandelier from which what looked like clear plastic knives dangled. There were no closets in which to hide, and the room, expunged of the usual hobgoblin of papers and dirty dishes, offered no decent crevices.

“In here, lunkhead,” the vacuum called again. And then it shook, almost jumped.

Everyone looked down. A hand was protruding from the vacuum’s mouth.

Everyone tipped the vacuum over, shook the hand, pulled on it.

“Ow,” the vacuum said. “I’m not going to get out like this.”

Everyone danced a bit, uncertain what to do.

“Don’t just stand there,” the vacuum said.

Everyone ran to the garage, sorted through his or her tools--wrenches, screwdrivers, hammers, lug nuts--grabbed the whole box, returned to the dining room, and began dismantling the vacuum.

The vacuum sighed impatiently.

“You know how many weeks I’ve been in here?” the vacuum asked.

Everyone strained to pull the bag loose. It was jammed. Opening it was like opening a window on a glass skyscraper. Everyone had to use the full force of his or her arms, and still opening it took an inordinate amount of time, as if everyone were playing a game of hide-and-go-seek with an abstraction.

Harvey pushed the bag up with his hands, unveiling himself. Harvey was everyone’s boss at the janitorial job everyone had had cleaning random office buildings.

Everyone stared. Harvey was covered in dust--and he smelled. Dog puke caked the shins of his pants.

Harvey sucked in the warm air of the room.

“Finally,” Harvey said. “You finally listen.”

“How’d you get in there?” everyone asked.

“How do you think?” Harvey grumbled.

Harvey sat down at the computer, let out a breath. “I got to write some e-mails,” he said, “let people know where I am.”

“Of course,” everyone said. Everyone still wasn’t sure how Harvey had managed to get in the vacuum, but he or she didn’t want to risk angering Harvey by asking again. “You want something to drink?” everyone asked. “You must be thirsty.”

Harvey read what was on the screen. “What is this crap?” he asked.

Everyone Faces a Dilemma

The body was face-down atop the bushes. Everyone walked toward it with certainty, as if he or she were recovering a vacuum cleaner hose needed to complete a custodial job. Everyone was amazed no one else had come for the body. Others had seen it fall--coworkers everyone knew and probably some passersby. The building from which the body had fallen was downtown. Hours had passed. There had been restaurant eaters and bar hoppers and moviegoers and bookstore fiends to contend with. A body shouldn’t have been able to lay atop the bushes so blithely without someone becoming upset.

The body had on a plaid jacket. Everyone had seen the jacket only a few times before. The jacket had been in everyone’s closet soon after everyone had gotten married. Everyone was uncertain whether the jacket belonged to his or her spouse or whether it was intended as a gift to him- or herself or whether it was in fact reserved for one of their eventual children. The jacket did not seem to fit within the parameters of everyone’s spouse’s usual tastes, and it certainly didn’t fit within the parameters of everyone’s.

And then the jacket disappeared.

That had been so long ago now that everyone was uncertain whether the jacket was real.

When everyone asked his or her spouse about the jacket, as everyone had a few times before the spouse had left everyone, the spouse denied its existence. “Why would I have such a thing?” the spouse had asked. “I hate plaid, and so do you.”

Everyone grabbed the jacket from atop the bushes, and the body slipped down into them. The jacket tore. Everyone had only a handful of it, as if everyone had pulled a handkerchief from the bushes’ pocket.

The bushes were thorny and full of poison. Everyone pondered whether to go in and, if so, how far. Everyone wondered if the body belonged to the person everyone thought it did. Everyone had concerns. Everyone pondered calling the authorities. Everyone wondered whether the authorities would have concerns and whether those concerns would involve everyone.

No one seemed to have noticed the body, and now it had disappeared into the bushes. The authorities might wonder how everyone had known it was there. The authorities might not believe everyone if everyone stated that he or she had seen it fall. So many others had seen it fall. So many others had been around and had passed it by, but no one had mentioned it. No one had called.

Everyone considered the act of calling an ethical dilemma. Everyone hated ethical dilemmas.

Everyone wished that he or she was at a computer so that everyone could contact the Internet regarding what to do.

Everyone did not recognize that the dilemma did not really involve ethics. Everyone’s reason for not calling the authorities was, in fact, cowardice. Everyone did not think about how if he or she could not risk calling about the body, everyone could not risk what was necessary to find the meaning of life, as he or she desired. If everyone had listened to his or her former coworker Harvey, everyone would have known that finding the meaning of life involved giving up one’s life.

Harvey would have told everyone that whether to call was not an ethical dilemma. Harvey knew a lot about ethics because religion and philosophy were what Harvey liked to talk about with the Internet. Harvey often mentioned religion and philosophy to everyone.

Harvey was a custodian. Harvey owned a vacuum cleaner. A vacuum cleaner could gather a body from the bushes. A vacuum cleaner could make a masterpiece of a mess.

Everyone did not have a vacuum cleaner at this moment.

Everyone wiped at his or her brow with the plaid handkerchief. Everyone did not go into the bushes. Everyone was uncertain whether the body was inside them. The handkerchief seemed like something everyone had seen in his or her closet soon after everyone had been married. Everyone’s spouse had denied the thing existed.

Everyone threw the handkerchief into the bushes.

Everyone Cleans the Office

While in the hospital, everyone came to the realization that everyone needed to write more about his or her children. What was the point, after all, of the children existing if everyone wasn’t putting them to use? By that, everyone was not suggesting that the kids should be slave labor. Everyone had no desire to be on the wrong side of the U.S. Civil War.

Rather, everyone was contemplating his or her novel in relation to character development. Everyone had asked the Internet about character, but the Internet had given him or her screens’ worth of fluff about faithfulness and trust and hard work. The real key to character, everyone had come to realize, was action. Characters had to do something.

“Characters have to live in the world,” the Internet said when everyone brought his or her new idea to the Internet’s attention. “Action is key.”

The Internet was not willing to admit it had been wrong. It never was. Everyone hated that about the Internet, which made everyone wonder sometimes why he or she and the Internet remained friends, especially since the Internet had a way of shutting down when everyone needed help.

But the focus in everyone’s blog today was not on the Internet. It was on the children: sanctimonious twelve-year-old Jody, who knew everything (too much time around the Internet, everyone surmised); ten-year-old Star, with his or her heart of gold; eight-year-old chocolate-addicted Journey; and six-year-old Jan, who reminded everyone so much of his or her spouse in that Jan seemed so often to be missing. Everyone was putting each of them to work today, cleaning the twelfth-floor office building where everyone performed his or her main job as an archivist.

Everyone was a little nervous. The building was made of glass, and children and glass did not mix well. Beyond that, one of the glass pieces on the twelfth floor was missing. Everyone warned his or her children to stay away from the windows, most especially the open one.

The children were to flush toilets in the bathroom until they seemed clean--sixteen, seventeen, eighteen times, whatever it took. They were to dust the computer terminals on Alice’s desk and Harvey’s and J. D.’s. They were to empty the trash in the break rooms and vacuum the common hallways. But they were not to go near the windows, and they were not to go into Sam’s office.

Sam had a crush on everyone, and everyone suspected that photographs of everyone might have become part of Sam’s decor. Not understanding the full context, the children might have taken such images as incriminating evidence against everyone and thus abet everyone’s spouse’s divorce suit against him or her. Everyone did not want to get divorced.

Jody worked hard on the carpet, directing Star’s and Journey’s paths as they stooped over the floor, peeling up bubble gum and dog poop, nail polish and hot glue, staples and sticky notes, with child-sized chisels. Jody was vacuuming, but not much was coming up. The bag was full, and the belt squealed against the rotating cylinder, smoking up the office in the same manner that everyone’s car had smoked when it first burst into flames while everyone was on the way downtown one night to inspect the office’s open twelfth-story window. The flames made the car difficult to drive, even more so than before when there was only the acrid smell of hairballs from the previous owner to contend with. Now smoke constantly poured from the engine into the cab and flames in the back window had to be periodically doused. Everyone couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps the vacuum had caught fire from the car.

But such was not the case. Jody stopped the vacuum when the high pitch of the belt squeal cracked loose a second window at the office. This window was next to the missing one, from which the children had been told to stay away, which they did.

“I think something is wrong,” said know-it-all Jody, bending over the vacuum that he or she now held on its side. “Something is in here.” Jody reached in and pulled back, nothing in hand, horror across his or her face.

Everyone came to look. A hand was sticking out from the bottom--not Jody’s.

“You klutz,” everyone said. “You need to be more careful.”

Everyone pulled at the hand. Just then, everyone heard a crash.

The second window was gone.

Journey and Star and Jody ran to it, looked out over the street.

Where was Jan? everyone wondered.

Everyone Visits the Hospital

Everyone needed $5092. Everyone was in the hospital. Everyone was wishing that back in chapter 2 everyone had not used the $5092 to pay for her or his child Journey’s chocolate fixation. In fact, everyone wished that she or he had never introduced children to the novel. The novel was about finding the meaning of life, but every time everyone needed to write something in relation to that, the children stormed in.

Everyone had contacted the meaning of life via e-mail and via a comment on the meaning of life’s blog, but there had been little progress beyond that, despite the Internet’s help. And now, everyone needed $5092 to pay a hospital bill, or the hospital would not let her or him leave. Everyone needed to contact the Internet, but the hospital would not let everyone do so, unless everyone paid a fee, because the Internet was not a blood relative.

Everyone called her or his oldest child Jody. Jody was twelve years old and had known the Internet the longest of everyone’s children. The Internet knew virtually all of humanity, as it did everyone’s offspring, excepting Jan, who was six. Everyone had not let Jan and the Internet meet. The Internet knew some shady people.

“Jody,” everyone said over the phone, “I need you to tell the Internet that I need $5092.”

Jody refused. She or he was working everyone’s second job for her or him and could not, at this moment, contact everyone’s friend.

Everyone was in the middle of the eighteenth chapter of her or his novel. Everyone could not wait. There were readers to satisfy.

Jody didn’t seem motivated to change her or his current state. One hundred dollars was involved, and being down $5092 and in the hospital, everyone could not pay the hundred dollars to make up for Jody’s lost time.

Everyone was scared the reader would stop here, and this would be the end of the novel, which was not how the Internet and everyone had planned it. Everyone was supposed to find the meaning of life. If the novel ended in the hospital, its beginning would not work.

The Internet had warned everyone about this, that everyone might get to chapter 18 and discover that the events in chapter 2 were all wrong and that everyone might want to change them. Everyone had not listened. The Internet had dithered about posting chapter 2 to everyone’s blog but in the end had acceded to everyone’s command. Everyone wished the Internet had failed to follow directions. Everyone cursed.

Everyone did not know the janitor was in the room. The janitor did not like cursing. The janitor watched religious movies with the Internet. The janitor was an ex-coworker of everyone’s named Harvey.

The reason everyone did not see Harvey was that Harvey was inside the vacuum cleaner. The vacuum cleaner was in the corner of the room, next to the visitors’ chair that was perennially empty. It was perennially empty because everyone did not have a car because everyone’s $5092 had been spent paying for everyone’s child Journey’s chocolate fixation and everyone’s children could not drive.

“Get me out of here,” Harvey yelled. Harvey was an unwitting visitor. The vacuum cleaner had traveled a long way to be here, and so had Harvey, but they had not traveled here for cursing.

Everyone thought her or his head was in the novel and that everyone had imagined Harvey’s voice.

“Harvey, is that you?” everyone asked, to be sure the voice wasn’t real.

To everyone’s surprise, Harvey acceded.

“Where are you?” everyone asked.

“In here, you lunkhead,” Harvey said. “In here.”

Everyone could not see Harvey. The room was very dark.

“In here,” Harvey repeated.

Everyone looked under the table beside the bed, under the television, next to the curtains, on top of the chair for the visitors, but no matter how long everyone looked, everyone could not see Harvey, and the room was getting darker. Everyone was going blind.

It was a dreadful end to the novel.

Everyone Moonlights

Everyone had to take a second job. She or he needed to save money for a new car. Everyone had had money--$5092 worth of it -until one of everyone’s children had blown it on chocolate. Now everyone was living on whatever her or his regular employer Dasney doled out to her or him every two weeks, which was why everyone had agreed to this professional opportunity. The professional opportunity had been proffered to everyone through some surveys that everyone’s friend the Internet had given to everyone.

As it turned out, everyone’s coworker Harvey knew the Internet too, which the Internet and everyone discovered through the surveys. Harvey had a sideline job as a business professional. The business Harvey was a professional at was cleaning, and that was what everyone was now a professional at as well. Each weekend, everyone cleaned a new office building. This meant running old towels along the bottom of the window frames and over blinds, dropping wet bundles of string onto lunchroom floors, and vacuuming one’s way through a redundant maze of doors and door stops.

Everyone did not like the job, but everyone liked being paid one hundred dollars cash at the day’s end--tax free--because that was how Harvey rolled. (“Don’t tell the Internet, though,” Harvey warned, knowing their friend’s selective punctiliousness with regard to legalities.)

Everyone was on the sixth office down the sixth hallway of the sixth office building when the vacuum squealed and burned. Everyone was not religious, so everyone did not notice the prophetic congruence of the numbers, nor would everyone have understood their significance, except to know that they were supposed to mean something bad. Such information would have had to come from Harvey, but it could not, because Harvey was missing. That he was missing was a bad thing, but that, too, everyone could not know without Harvey pointing it out to everyone, which Harvey desperately wanted to do, because it hurt.

Everyone smelled and stared and listened to the vacuum. The vacuum was uncomfortable, but everyone did not know why. Everyone tried to turn the vacuum off and restart it so that everyone could take advantage of her or his professional opportunity, but the vacuum would not shut down.

Everyone turned her or his head in every direction, looking for Harvey. Harvey was not in the office.

Everyone walked to the hall, looked up and down it. Harvey was not in the hall. Everyone walked down it, to every place she or he had been.

Everyone could hear the squeal in offices five and four and three and two and one. Everyone could hear the squeal among the cubicles and in the kitchen and the bathroom. Everyone could hear the squeal everywhere.

Everyone began to panic.

The windows were moving inward as if the air outside were a paperweight. Everyone had never been under a paperweight. Everyone was having trouble identifying the safety procedures she or he should initiate.

And then everyone remembered the cord.

Everyone ran back to office six and pulled.

The office was on fire, however, and so was the vacuum. Everyone dashed between the two chairs and the table and the desk to save her- or himself.

Everyone had probably lost today’s one hundred dollars, perhaps the entire professional opportunity, and everyone was sad. Everyone needed the $5092 back for the new car.

Everyone wanted to salvage the situation.

Everyone found a water cooler in the kitchen. Everyone filled a paper cup, then another, and another.

Everyone abandoned the paper cups.

Everyone raised the bottle off its pedestal, lugged it to the office.

The fire did not abate.

Everyone stomped on its edges.

Harvey screamed.

Everyone turned to look at Harvey, but Harvey was not around.

“In here, lunkhead,” Harvey called.

Everyone looked for a closet, a place in which to hide.

“In here,” Harvey repeated.

And then, everyone saw the hand extruding from the bottom of the vacuum, the vacuum rising and falling beneath the burning bag.

“In here,” Harvey yelled. “In here.”