Rhythmic Symphony » Exskuses

Exskuses

By Justin Kesselring

A note from the author

The following story is true, or at least it’s true that I dreamt it three separate times on three separate nights. After the third time I decided that perhaps there was something important here, that maybe it was a story worth telling.

I have added things here and the there so as to give some meat to the story and satisfy linear minds. But I have taken nothing away from how it was presented to me in my dream state. It should also be noted that since I took nothing away from the dream there are certain parts that may not be suitable for children or for those who live rose colored lives. With that said, I hope “Exskuses” will only bring pleasant dreams.

Glass exploded up from the floor as the cool, pink liquid fizzed its way into a bubbling mass.

“Frick! Frickety frick frick frick!”

I clung to my no-cussing policy like a rat clinging to a sinking piece of refuse. I knew the logic. Some tried to attach morals to the use of cuss words, but that was just a stupid attempt to hide the obvious. Cussing, or not cussing, was a matter of politeness. Of manners. Like which fork to use in which situation, and when it’s okay to rip one. Still, I chose once to not use “those” words, and unlike my contemporaries, I stick to my guns.

I ran to the stockroom at the back of the store, returning from its labyrinths with a clear plastic jug. Its contents snowed down as I agitated the container with machine like fluidness. What the heck was this stuff anyway? It alighted upon the now expansive puddle and immediately exploded in size as it soaked up the sugary beverage with unnatural ferocity.

Robotic apocalypse my ass! I thought to myself, then cringed as I mentally kicked myself for thinking a cuss word.

We don’t need robots to kill us all. We’ve made snowy sponge stuff to do it instead.

I stood there quietly, the deadened sound of escaping co2 rushing to freedom the only sign that my eardrums were working. The store was dark. That was why I had bumped in to this stupid shelf, knocking the expensive liter bottle of imported soda to its death. Or at least that’s what I would tell my manager when she arrived the next morning. It was dark, and it was late; probably 2 or 3 a.m. by my guess. I found myself apologizing more and more these days. It was obnoxious. No, that’s the wrong word. Excruciating is more suitable. I would apologize, explain, defend myself at every turn. Just like when I turned the corner into this shelf; I screwed up again.

I walked back to the stockroom, watching the corners of shelves more carefully now, as if every one of them plotted with outstretched fingers to make a fool of me for their amusement. It was strange walking the store when the lights were turned out and everyone was gone. It felt wrong. As if I didn’t belong there. But still, I couldn’t leave yet; not until I found that sku number. That inconspicuous gaggle of digits that lined up neatly beneath their mother hen, the barcode. Every product had one. Every respectable product at least, every product that belonged.

I stumbled my way through the towers of boxed merchandise, searching for the elusive dust pan.

“There you are, ya little… prick.”

I found it cowering meekly by the trash compactor and headed back to the sticky mess that awaited me. Sighing heavily, I scooped the spent froth into the parched jaws of the little pan, then dumped it into the expectant waste basket.

With the mess extinguished I stood silent at the back of the store, body tired and mind spent. I wanted to go home, to sink into the froth of my bed and sleep forever. I could, but I won’t. It would require another torturing of apologies and explanations. No. I will find that sku number, even if it takes me all night.

II.

I awoke to those funny sounds. The ones people make when they want their feelings to be known, but can’t be bothered to use actual words. My eyes crept open like shy, blundering clams, trying weakly to bring the blurs into focus. Realization and awareness settled corrosively onto my brain.

“Rise and shine, sleeping beauty,” a scratchy, chicken like voice squawked.

“Working hard, or barely working? I’d say barely alive!” laughed a second male voice.

I hated those stupid work place sayings. Every time someone vomited one out in my presence I just wanted to slap them to death.

Sunlight, laced with the caustic, striped light of fluorescent bulbs, wrenched me back to life. I had taken a rest on an overstuffed sofa that cost more than I would make in 3 months. It appeared the rest had given way to sleep.

Shi… I thought, but mentally punched myself before I could finish the thought.

My manager, a short, burly woman in her twenties, stared down at me with out a trace of laughter in her coal black eyes. A smile slashed its way through her face much the way you would slit a man’s throat to end his life.

“Jason…” she said calmly and with the murder of a freight train.

“I… um, I’m sorry. I just sat down for a break and… uh…” The words choked and pummeled me as they came out.

She breathed out through her nose with the back breaking sigh of a tired and frustrated mother ready to give up. Her expression softened as she regarded me. It was not comforting. Heartbreaking, yes. Miserable, yes. Comforting, most definitely not.

“Tell me, at least, that you found your sku. That you found where you belong,” she said with a voice somewhere between scolding and tired defeat.

I tried to formulate something intelligent. Make words and place them in front of me without reservation, but all that came out was, “I’m sorry.” And as soon as they escaped my mouth, I was. She made a few quick notations on her battered clip board, her pen scratching out monotone thoughts like a knife, then directed the two goof-offs to an elderly couple who needed to be enlightened about the crispety-crunchity delight of new strawberry crunch-ums.

“Jason, we’ve torn this store apart looking for your sku. You’ve torn this store apart looking for your sku,” she announced suddenly, as if the words couldn’t wait another second to be spoken. “It’s not here.” Then she said those words, but when she said them I saw no taint of hurt in her eyes. Only relief. “I’m sorry.”

I’m sorry too… I thought as she walked away, her pumps clapping the floor.

I never meant to be the thorn in your side…

III.

I had kind of always known my sku would not be there. But I had hoped anyway. I hadn’t even come there looking for my sku. I had come there because existence was necessary, and existence without distractions is hell. Perhaps living wasn’t necessary, but I had a persistent suspicion that at the end of the road the road just took a turn and kept on going. Problem was I was too afraid to find out. Anyway, the point is that as many times as I resign myself to what I am, some part of me keeps searching for that place I belong, that puzzle I fit into.

I laughed suddenly at the thought of a puzzle piece shaped like me. In my mind it looked like I had become cartoon road kill. I enjoyed the laugh and drew it out as long as I could.

Walking the warm summer day I held my head high, as if posture alone told those around me I was someone. Maybe it did. I don’t know. But being perceived as being someone while being no one had its allure, and I took it for everything it was worth. I walked and I walked, perusing the businesses, the people, looking for distractions to fill the emptiness of existence.

My mind wandered to my ever elusive sku number, and to the places I had searched for it back before I had given up hope. There were, of course, the countless jobs I had tried. Places where, unsurprisingly, I was told I just wasn’t a “team player” and that I wasn’t the asset they were looking for. Deeper in there was the churches of God and science I had attempted to belong to. They had searched their mustiest libraries and most ancient records, but could find not one mention of my sku. I had looked for my sku in the music, art, and philosophy communities. They talked about my sku, but never found it in their gaudy tomes. Then, even deeper in, were the various clutches of friends I had tried. In their coded ways they share each other’s love and friendship and make a place to belong. They could never even find anything like my sku in their records, for mine possesses strange shapes and letters unknown to them.

In a sudden moment of clarity and bravery I realized there was still one last place to search for my sku number. And without hesitation I stepped gracefully into the road and redecorated the front end of a Mac truck with richest, most beautiful hues of red. The truck’s tires bumped to a halt and pedestrians ran from both sides of the street in horror and morbid wonder. They would search for my sku amidst the fresh asphalt canvass, but their searches would turn up empty. It didn’t matter though. I was already gone.

IV.

I blinked at the sudden brightness and put up a single hand to block the piercing onslaught of light. It didn’t help. As my eyes slowly adjusted I lowered my hand to find I had entered an office. The walls, taupe with white trim, were punctured with several average rectangle windows. The tired, aluminum blinds that clothed them were shut, denying me a view of what lay outside. Various plastic plants dotted the office like the fake, waxen faces of movie stars. The furniture was modern, but obviously undusted and unused. I stepped towards one of the windows and extended my hand to part the blinds.

“Excuse me, can I help you?” a pleasant female voice chirped. The words were almost blurred into one, as if she had said them far too many times before and wished to get them over with as quickly as possible.

I jumped comically at her words, bumping the point of my elbow on a high, stubborn table.

“Ow! Gosh frick!” I hissed out loud, grabbing at my elbow to get a look at the damage.

I looked up at her suddenly then, feeling self-conscious and a little violated. There is a manner that people act in when they are certain no one is around. That privacy shouldn’t be broken.

“I, uh, sorry. I didn’t realize you were there.” I said awkwardly. She looked back at me blankly with her large hazel eyes. I realized she was waiting for more information. All she wanted was to know why I was there so she could take care of it and get on with whatever she was doing. I could understand that. I walked up to her low, bright red desk, rehearsing what I would say with the 2 seconds it took to reach her. It was a fault of mine. A neurotic fault I suppose. Sometimes I think it’s why I have so much trouble speaking things out loud. I think too much. Even as I speak them I consciously turn the words over in my mind and decide if they are the perfect word for the situation. It gets me in trouble most of the time, but I can’t stop doing it anymore than I can stop breathing.

I laughed suddenly then. I had stopped my breathing back at the truck! The whole thing struck me as terribly bemusing and I enjoyed the laugh to its fullest.

The receptionist looked at me as if I were a strange, laughing anomaly in need of solving. I did my best to sober myself, and looked her straight in the eye.

“Is this Heaven?” I said in a manner so natural that I surprised myself.

“Not quite,” she almost sang, “How can I help you?”

She read the confused expression on my face as if she had read it a billion times before and had grown bored with it the first time.

“This is Heaven’s admissions office. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Uh, I think so, maybe. Can you check and see if you have my sku number on file?” I said slowly. A true smile overcame her plastic, rehearsed smile and extended its edges and brightened her eyes. She had solved the problem.

“If you would like to take a seat it will be just one moment” She said as she pulled a small drawer from a cabinet behind her. The drawer was small, but as I peered over the desk I saw its depths to be impossibly vast. Vaster than any vault or library.

Then I waited.

I am unsure how long I really waited. At times it seemed as if it had only been moments, while within a moment I was sure it had been weeks. At some point I got tired of standing and decided to sit.

The small, glass toped table in front of me displayed a colorful offering of magazines. Some president I had never heard of smiled up at me with the smarmy smile of a politician, showing far too much of his teeth and of his true motives.

My! Grandmother, what big teeth you have! I thought to myself.

Another magazine, in letters as fat and black as space, boasted that they had found the worm hole to Heaven in the mouths of the twin babies of Bigfoot. I was half way through the article before I realized that the receptionist had ceased her search and was now on the phone, her face alternating between looks of frustration and utter confusion.

After a few minutes or maybe they were years, she hung up the phone and flopped back into her chair before picking back up the phone again and dialing a series of well rehearsed numbers. Once again she resumed her inaudible jabber and began probing through various drawers and stacks of yellow and pink slips that I had not recalled being there before. I finished the article about the twins and tried to move on to one about how a 20 pound mosquito, with the head of Satan, had prophesied the world was going to end next year, but I realized the receptionist had now hung up the phone. She was staring at me as if I were a stubborn child.

Three robust gentlemen bumbled into the room. Their gray suits seemed to double their size and their feathery wisps of thinning, gray hair, in turn, diminished it. They spoke with the young lady and two of them produced tiny, black cell phones from their pockets and talked importantly on them as they paced and sent the occasional stare my way. The other gentleman began to prode and poke his way through files like a cattle herder. I tried to read my magazine, but I found that it was impossible now. I would read a sentence, then reread it and still find myself uncertain of what I’d just read. Accepting defeat I tossed the magazine back to the table and slumped in the chair that had turned out to mold to back as well as brick wall. Oh well. Posture didn’t matter now, did it? I was dead.

Then the three gentlemen, stood in front of me and above me, their sloping foreheads beaded with sweat. It felt awkward, so I stood up with them.

“Son,” one of them said with a gravely southern drawl, “I’m afraid we can’t find record of your sku anywhere in our files…”

I shook my head and smiled, shuffling my feet and staring past them at nothing in particular.

“So… I guess I’m going to the other place then, huh?”

“Well, no. See, that’s the thing…” the second gentleman said, smiling nervously, almost fearfully I thought.

“We checked there too,” broke in the third gentleman, “They couldn’t find your sku as well. It would seem that you don’t belong anywhere.”

They stared, their eyes blinking nervously at me through the silence.

“It would appear,” began the third gentleman, but the first finished his thought.

“That you don’t exist.”

The receptionist coughed half-heartedly at the far end of the room. The men stared on.

You would think a statement like that would floor a fellow. Take the wind right out of him. But that’s not how it happened. No, I simply nodded, my lips pursed. I think I had always known it in a way. I just hadn’t ever put it out there like that. It was almost liberating, but instead morphed into something stale and obtrusive, like the problem that no one really knows how to solve. So it just keeps getting shoved somewhere out of sight, as if keeping it out of mind long enough will make it just disappear.

“Okay, I’ve, uh, made up my mind then,” I announced abruptly, “I want to pass into non-existence.”

The three men exchanged knowing, tired looks.

“I’m afraid that’s not really an option, son,” the first said carefully, barely audible.

The young lady behind the desk coughed weakly again.

I don’t really remember making the decision, but I do remember walking to the door that stood blandly between two blandly covered windows.

“Wait, where are you going?” the second gentleman garbled.

It had been a long time since I had become truly angry. Sure, I lost my temper as much as the next guy, but I had always thought people who indulged in fits of rage to be weak and childish. Whatever a fit of rage was, I approached it now.

“You people, all of you! Every single frickin one of you has told me every frickin minute of my life that I don’t have a place! That I don’t belong! With your words and your looks and your frickin sku numbers! And despite that I kept wishing! Kept hoping! Kept desperately seeking for my sku! For my place! And when I finally realized it was time to give up, you tell me I can’t do that either! Well I’m done! I’m frickin done with you and your kind!”

And with that I pushed open the door and stepped through into what appeared to be… nothing.

A nothing that surpassed all I had previously know of it. It was not black. It was not white. It was not cold or hot. It was true emptiness, and I passed into it like a distant bird into an empty sky.

“But wait! Where will you go?” I heard a voice strain from behind me.

Exactly I thought. You don’t know, so its time for me to move on.

VI.

I’ve been walking for longer than I thought possible now; longer than a lifetime. Of course, only those who have lived are granted one of those; a lifetime. If I had fathered children their children would have had children by now, but I suppose that too is something granted only to those who have existed. The nothingness continues, or rather doesn’t continue, on in front and behind and all around me. It doesn’t bother me though. I am walking, and it is the distractions that keep hell at bay.

I have begun to forget the things from my previous non-existence, but that does not trouble me either. I only hope that at the end of this road, or lack of road, I will find a different world. Perhaps it will be where I was meant to be in the first place. Perhaps it is there that I will belong. Perhaps there, somewhere in a store or in a church or group of friends… there will have been my sku number all along. Sitting quietly, waiting for me.