Tuesday
11:20 AM
With the hot Tijuana sun burning my neck, I squat in the dust and eat my breakfast. Corn flakes and tequila. Tenderly, I roll up my vomit-encrusted sleeve to admire my new tattoo. There on my raw and scabby arm, Lady Luck, entwined by a leering rattle snake, poses with a pair of dice.

I wish!

Gray light oozes through the blinds. Gray walls, gray furniture. Who knew it would come to this? Well, I did. I admit it. But what's the difference? To a LOSER like me, it's all the same. God, what's it been, five, six days since I've posted anything? It feels like a year. A goodyear. The self-recriminations, the shame. Work piles up, untouched, as I wrack my brain.

11:30 AM
I'm startled from my morose self pity to see a pair of sinister eyes peering at me from the corner of the copier machine. A pygmy with a blow gun! Before I can react, the bamboo tube goes to his lips, and with deadly accuracy, a poison dart sinks into my neck just behind my right ear. I writhe on the floor, searing pain coursing through my body. Desperately, I lunge for the phone, struggling with numb fingers to call the help desk . . .

Yeah, right.

I can't stand another day of this! Yet tomorrow, I'll sit here, enveloped in grayness, and I'll say it once again. And again.

Like a piece of rotting fruit,
I await the fall from the branch,
to rupture on the hard earth,
where I am consumed by vermin.

11:37 AM
A cold chill runs up my spine. I attempt to focus on my work, but I'm nagged by a sense of an all seeing eye upon me.

Jenny, the perky temp, stops at my door.

"Hi, Jenny! Yes, you can tell Bob I'll have those layouts for him by Thursday. Yes, Thursday morning. Bye bye!"

11:39 AM
Having completed the corporate security scan of employee 168-67-366, Jen-Jen-9, secret cyborg spy developed by the NSA, returns to its cubicle. Cycling through its program of young American female mannerisms, the cyborg feigns a sip of diet soda. Flipping back its blond fiber-optic hair, it keys in the special code into the work station. Attaching the data link cord from its simulated navel to the USB connection, the flagrant corporate protocol violations by employee 168-67-366 are downloaded to Corporate Human Resources and Security. The reply: Terminate. With malice.

11:42 AM
Shit, If I don't deal with those layouts I'm gonna get fired. Still, all I can think about is posting. I'm an empty vessel. One write-up shy of voting, for crying out loud! If only something, anything, would bubble up!

Oh, Jenny's at my door again. "Yeah, Jenny, what is it?"