Fiction Story #7 ("Patience")

1/7/11

Patience

So the story begins and I’m already behind – seems that’s to be the story of my life. Is this a self-fulfilling prophecy where I think I’m behind and end up acting as if I’m behind so I start falling behind? Or is this some sort of “The Secret” bullshit where I get what I wish for so I better be careful or my subconscious will actualize itself?

More likely it’s just in my head. And yet, I can’t quite shake the feeling that I should be doing something… else. As if I’m not quite fulfilling my potential – to take a Grade School approach.

It’s like an itch in the back of my mind that I can’t quite reach. Sitting here at my cubicle, time-stamping forms and double-checking receipts so that the Regional Manager can save seventeen cents a shipment – or maybe it’s something more primal than that. Something in my ancestry left over from the Neanderthal that screams THIS IS NOT HOW I WAS SUPPOSED TO LIVE OUT MY DAYS. Here on display. In captivity. No cage except this pathetic paycheck. My 401K. Be thankful to have a job. Commuting my bus so I can afford this glorified concrete box in New York City. A million animals all on display for the other animals.

Some people say they didn’t know what they were doing when confronted with the horrors and consequences of what they did. Not me. I knew exactly what I had in mind. It’s kind of hard to buy a submachine gun when you just want it for “home protection”. No five day waiting period when you buy it for cash from the drug dealer that sells poison out of the alleyway behind your building. No fooling yourself, either.

I never said I didn’t know what I was doing. Never claimed ignorance as an excuse. The only thing I could never comprehend was NOT why I did it, why I shot everyone in my whole fucking office, but why I waited so long.