Dreary Tuesday

guest post by Jorden House-Hay, 11-10-12

Note:  This short story is incomplete.   If you'd like to see more than the 3 chapters below, please leave a comment to that effect.  Jorden says that with sufficient interest by readers he will complete the story.

Chapter 1

It was an on ordinary, dreary Tuesday. It was one of those types of ordinary, dreary Tuesdays where waking up and catching a quick yawning glance out the window accomplishes nothing but a depressed spirit, gray and monotonous like the creeping fog gently, yet purposefully, kissing the glass. The sun was lost among the swirling gray and even the early bird poked its head out of his nest, took a quick accounting of the dreariness, and promptly snuggled back into his warm cradle, reasoning the worm would be there some other day, cheerful expression be damned. Shawn moped out of his bedroom with his mouth stretched in an impressive bellow of an early morning moan, grudgingly feeling his way to the bathroom in the low light to relieve the night’s pressure on his bladder. His alarm had woken him ten minutes ago, screeching in his ear with no consideration for the massive hangover he had as a reminder of the lively night on the town with some old buddies which seemed painfully like mere hours ago. Leaning over the sink, he cupped his hands and let the water pool before bringing them up to his face and attempting to scrub the tiredness out of his eyes and the headache out of his skull. Today was not going to be a good day. He could feel this unfortunate truth hovering over his head like an uninvited poltergeist as he struggled his way through breakfast, groggily pulled on a rather rumpled suit and tie, and walked out his plain front door to the unwelcomed new day, head down and with rude remarks sitting ready on his tongue for any oblivious person who would attempt frivolous small talk on the long train ride into the office. The day passed by much the same as week days tend to do. Small memos here, pain in the ass remarks from his boss there, and plenty of cheerful co-workers to annoy him adeptly in-between. He downed coffee like it was water and his small cubicle was a vast desert, passing the time staring dully and seemingly endlessly into a glowing monitor and punching boring digits into uninspired charts designed for people he would never see, and had little desire to in the first place. He disliked his job. He disliked it, but he needed it to afford his small four bedroom house that he had called home ever since he graduated college just two years back. He had had such great aspirations then. The world was an open and wonderful place, full of opportunity and grandeur for a handsome, eager young man with a fresh degree tucked proudly underneath his arm. Landing the job had been a thrill at first; good pay, solid benefits, and located in his favorite place in the world: New York City. He loved the height of the buildings, the hustle and bustle of the business, the availability of any food the heart desires; he felt like he was where he belonged. And yet it had faded. Optimism turned slowly, but surely, to boredom, and the days seemed to melt into one constant and agonizing blur of never ending routine. This was working life, he accepted, but he had to note that, in his words, working life pretty much sucked. Shawn ruffled his careless light brown hair, leaned back in his chair, and stretched, wincing as his back muscles twitched awkwardly after hours of idle typing. He got up, stretched again, and worked his way in between the rows of gray walls to the water jug sitting next to a window displaying a bird’s eye view of the great city, a treat that the employees enjoyed as many times as they could throughout the tedious business day. He was pleased to find no line, and hence rare privilege of no unwanted company, and sipped out of one of the cone shaped paper cups as he gazed out over the multitude of rooftops, streets, and mysterious alleyways laid out in an intricate metal and concrete labyrinth beneath him. He had a sudden, and quite ridiculous, desire to grow wings, break the glass in a mighty crash that demanded the attention of the entire office, and spring out into the open air, flapping gaily over upturned and gawking faces as he soared to some uncharted paradise where he could relax in peace. He shook himself of this fantasy, and was rather resentful of his imagination’s cruel ability to make reality duller than it already was with fantastic, and impossible, alternative. He finished his drink and was turning back to finish up another long day when something caught his eye and caused him to start. Hovering hundreds of feet above the streets nonchalantly, as if it was a perfectly normal thing to do, was nothing less than a small, yellowish, and clearly inhuman being, checking what seemed to be a watch and scanning the skies with a somehow unmistakable air of impatience.

Chapter 2
Shawn’s scream was loud enough to be heard all the way past a firmly closed door into his boss’s office, the occupant of which had shut it in order to concentrate on a very important presentation he was scheduled to give that afternoon. Looking up irately from a mess of papers spread haphazardly across his desk, his first thought was that one of the more mischievous interns had played a prank on another unsuspecting employee. He ground his teeth angrily and purposefully pushed himself out of his chair, vowing that the prankster would receive a sharp kick out the door delivered by his rather large boot. A former linebacker in college, Gary was an intimidating man, standing a solid six foot three and backing it up with a hoarse, growling shout of a voice that a drill sergeant would admire. He was not a very popular boss, known for giving out plenty of punishment with little reward, taking a rough football field mentality into the office that gave him the dedication that had promoted him to his position in the first place. He was quick to accuse and reluctant to compromise, but as far as the company heads were concerned he got the job done. He yanked open his office door with harsh words already forming in his mouth and was greeted with the shocking sight of every employee in the densely packed room either swarming around the window next to the water jug or violently attempting to make their way over to it. Under his astonished observation, he watched Helen, the grandma like secretary who brought in homemade cookies and always greeted everyone with a warm smile, clawing viciously with a feral snarl on her frail, wrinkled face, pulling hair and literally snapping at anybody in her way as she fought tooth and nail for a spot at the window. People were throwing fists, paper weights, and even heavy industrial staplers as they gathered like wild beasts at a water hole with limited capacity. In short, it was chaos the likes the office hadn’t seen in all of Gary’s dedicated years of employment. There were several smaller, shorter screams coming from the group that had successful staked viewing ground at the front of the mob, and so much broken babble that people were shouting to make themselves heard. Thoroughly and forcefully bemused, Gary was momentarily stunned into inaction as he stood observing the anarchy that had overcome a very recently quiet and unassuming office. Then, collecting himself, he made his way efficiently to the source of the confusion, shoving and shouldering his massive frame through the excited rabble until he himself was standing in front of the window. Slowly, comically, his jaw dropped. The big, tough, University of Florida linebacker promptly fainted on the spot, taking several unfortunate employees down with him.

Chapter 3

Outside the window, the source of the madness hovered obliviously, unaware of the considerable drama it was causing on this suddenly extremely unordinary Tuesday. Standing (or more accurately floating) at a modest height of just four feet, it had in total eighteen limbs, a small amount for one of his kind, placed in seemingly randomly places all over its body, which strangely appeared to keep no definite shape, but instead morphed and transformed constantly, rotating the limbs along with it. Its face, or at least what looked like its face, like the limbs kept no permanent location but wandered randomly around, its multiple large, darting, jet black eyes and lipless, rectangle shaped mouth eerily disappearing and reappearing as the distraught humans looked on. The spherical object that Shawn had guessed, correctly, a watch, was inexplicably attached to the longest of the eel-like limbs which drifted about in tune to the searching eyes. This creature had traveled far, light years actually, to be here at this precise spot at this precise time, and was therefore properly worried at being kept waiting. Wondering what could be delaying this long planned and tremendously imperative meeting, the strange organism strained its extensive eyesight in all directions, searching adamantly for the scout assigned to the planet 10837461938274, or as its species knew it, Earth. The coordinates for this meeting had been set hundreds of millions of years ago, and thus the foreign vision of an alien life form floating in the middle of a city, in front of a run of the mill human office with a very unsuspecting young being named Shawn being currently being squished against the glass by his crazed co-workers, was entirely a peculiar, unlikely happening in the universe. Though some of the more pompously philosophical, “know it all”, species would denote some sort of fate or their version of a greater power as responsible for this encounter, it was, in fact, just an astounding, random coincidence; these sorts of things are statistically imperative in an infinite space subject to infinite time, of course, and they can be reasoned within that same logic that explains the existence of life in the first place. This creature was privy to this basic understanding, so even if it had known the extent of the events that were about to unfold it would not have been the least bit stymied by questions of how, or why, just simply curious of the impact they would make. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of waiting, another yellowish, equally alarming alien appeared out of thin air, with an earsplitting crack that resounded deeply into the most obscure nooks of the surrounding city blocks. It had not actually teleported, but had been traveling with such incredible speed that it had all the appearance of having done so. Though it could not be discerned by human eyes from its ghastly external expression, an enormous wave of relief swept through the first creature, who we shall name, with no accuracy, and for no other reason than conveniences’ sake, Randy, and the newly arrived Charles, named for the same questionable and lazy reasons. Randy and Charles clasped several creepy tentacles and, for a moment, transformed into the same unidentifiable shape, both emitting sounds at the very brink of human hearing’s absolute threshold, which therefore to the people still fighting over a place at the window came off as extremely high pitched whining noises. Their greeting complete, the two aliens, as suddenly as they had appeared, vanished with the same booming crack that had announced the arrival of Charles, though this time it was accompanied by a blinding flash of light and invisible force that thrust the occupants of the office away from the window and left them confusedly picking themselves up off the floor. As they untangled themselves none of them could recall what had brought them to together in the first place, or why their giant of a boss had to be revived with a splash of water to the face, peculiarly screaming like a young, frightened girl as he came about. Gradually, the employees and their sheepishly red faced boss wandered back to their respective work areas and continued with the day, wondering vaguely at various wounds they had inexplicably acquired; one man in particular was slightly concerned about a set of deep bite marks on his upper arm, and similarly the once more friendly old secretary was left wondering about the unmistakable taste of blood in her mouth. Eventually, however, the whole incident was forgotten entirely, and no one could remember even being at the window at all. Thus the newly instated fact that a certain brown haired, attractive, young man (who currently found himself with slightly greater problems than a hangover and an ordinary, dreary Tuesday) was missing not just from his cubicle, but also the entirety of the North American continent, went without encounter by any of his dazed colleagues, and the day progressed in the little office conveniently without any other extraordinary incident.