Carl examined the underside of his desk, suddenly and inexplicably taken by the angle of a not-quite-flush staple that he reckoned may have been responsible for that mysterious hole in his pair of trousers, oh what was it, seven years back?

He considered how amazing it was, all the small details that get missed when one tucks their head down and goes through the dreadfully mundane and misleadingly safe contortions of daily living.

Carl was dying.

This sudden fascination with a staple and a long ago hole in a long gone pair of trousers was, for Carl, bizarrely keeping him from finally succumbing to the heart attack that had put him under the desk. A quick slash of moments continued to cut across his perceptions as he lay helpless.

Carl had wasted his life.

By almost any standards he had certainly wasted his life. Carl had been comfortable admitting that to himself for, well, at least seven years now. Hadn’t it finally been that hole in his trousers that had forced him to the confession?

It was certainly a convenient concept to hang a sudden interest in self-reflection on at any rate; Carl lay prone on the carpet that his and only his feet had worn away to little more than discolored nubs and stared at a dully-gleaming staple.

He didn’t even rate a secretary, lost down an empty hall, surrounded by a forest of paper smothered in scribbles of ink. The contents of his department were a mystery to everyone except Carl himself and even he hadn’t given a shit for a solid decade.

When his body was finally discovered two weeks later, the decision was ultimately made to simply shred and recycle the entirety of the records that had been his charge, rather than even digitize the paperwork.

Carl stared at the staple.

The seconds passed.

The minutes passed.

The path of the sun slid its interpretation of a window across the wall and down onto Carl’s feet as the afternoon drifted away.

Carl idly mused on the hollow places his life had wound up in. He thought about the faces of each passenger who had shared his bus-ride home with him seven years ago, after he’d awkwardly boarded with his briefcase at that odd angle to try to cover up the rip.

This was interaction, as close as he would tend to get in any given day. Forced proximity for three quarters of an hour. It had always been excruciating until that night, which had been among the most painful of his life.

Not that there had been a lot of contenders for the title, Carl had made it his business to avoid any and all embarrassments or exposures, in a deeply bewildering world it had just seemed safer.

Seven years ago on the bus, Carl had realized that nobody else really gave that much of a shit about him, and what could have been a liberating moment instead let whatever charge was left leak slowly out of his bones.

Carl had been 46 then, seven years ago on the bus when he watched the eyes of some young thing catch on the tear in his pants, wrinkle up with the start of a smile on her pretty face, only to even out into a complete blank before the snap of contact devoid of emotion let her fall back into her reading as if she’d never been disturbed.

Carl hadn’t bothered to hid the rip when he’d left the bus that night. He’d walked to his apartment slower than usual, and watched the passing faces that had so little interest in him.

He admitted defeat.

Seven years later in his office, Carl finally did what he should have done that night when the eyes of that pretty young thing had danced from a rip in his pants to his face.

Carl smiled, and so doing, died.

Which is how they found him, and drew a very different moral from the circumstances than I ultimately did.

- finite

sometimes the nonsense kicks in and you get to chase it for awhile, this is really heavy-handed, i’m not happy with ‘carl under the desk’ yet, to me, it needs something to give it some sort of shake, but i started it and it tickled something, maybe i’ll edit it up and make it pretty by the time cognoscenti recovers from the upgrade

who am i kidding?
i just write this stuff up and slap it on the internet . . .

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