Gainful employment didn't improve my mood. Not like I really expected it to, not completely. I at least thought it would put a dent in it. I figured if I did something which forced me out of my apartment and to be around people that maybe I could break out of my depression.
Turned out that there is no more depressing place than working in the mail room of a giant corporation. I didn't even know what the company did as a whole. When Wade asked me what we produced I was at a loss. It was explained to me about a half-dozen times during my week of training and it still didn't stick. They would point to the mission statement, which was on posters all around the office, like that was supposed to be the end-all and be-all. All it was to me was a confusing paragraph filled with meaningless buzz-words and corporate jargon.
It didn't really matter.
My job wasn’t to understand it, my job was to spend six hours a day opening envelopes and sorting the letters. The last two hours of my shift I spent pushing a cart around the cubicle farm, putting those letters on the desks of people who wouldn't even look up from their computer monitors to acknowledge me.
That was my new station in life: lower than a cubicle drone who did a repetitive, confusing job.
I should've let Jeff kill me. Heaven or hell. Didn't matter where I went, it had to be better than this.
The first month was agonizing. It felt like a year. Since I was a new hire they wanted to make sure I completely understood the job. I understood the job completely: it was opening mail. All I didn't understand was what the company did. They insisted I stay focused on my task which was why they wouldn't let me wear headphones and listen to music like everyone else. So there I stood: at a desk, shucking letters in near silence. There was almost no conversation because everyone had their headphones on. If I got lucky I got seated next to Todd who listened to metal music so loud that I could even hear the lyrics. Didn't matter that they were just nonsensical screaming.
If my goal was to meet new people to help me out of this shell then this was definitely not the place.
So instead of drifting aimlessly around my apartment I now drifted semi-aimlessly around my office. The one good thing about delivering the mail, a job my co-workers detested since it involved walking, was that the office was right in the middle of Paradiso. Our offices were a good three floors near the top of a high-rise. As long as I was careful not to ram my cart into a co-worker I could spend most of my delivery time staring at the window, enjoying the view of the city.
Of course, my head was almost always turned towards the East, where the prison was. It wasn't like some Disney movie where we could be connected by staring at the same moon. It just felt like I had to. On a good day it actually felt like I could see the prison. Even though I'd never seen the inside of a jail cell I couldn't get the fake image out of my mind. I imagined some bare cell with steel plates riveted to the walls. Her meals coming on a tray slid through a slot at the bottom of the door. Her only human interaction at any given time was a pair of eyes staring at her from another slot higher up in the door.
I found that if I thought too much about her situation, how much steel and concrete separated us, it put me into a funk which was very hard to shake. It made my days sorting mail stretch into eternity. By the end of the work week I always felt drained. My weekends were filled with restless sleep which didn't restore me. All it did was recharge my cells just enough to slog through another five days of tedium. Because of this I walked through my days like some sort of zombie. I was brain dead.
It didn't help that everybody who worked there seemed to be sick all the time. Even after all we learned during the pandemic I never, not once, saw anyone cover their mouth when they sneezed. There was a persistent cold going around the office. That high up in the building the windows didn't open so whatever virus that was there couldn't ever leave. It just stayed, mutated, and re-infected. Most people I talked to either had a clogged nose or a scratchy voice. It was really amazing. I used to work at a bank. All day I handled dirty money, if you tested it then it would come back positive for cocaine. All those years of banking and I only got sick once or twice. A week after being in that office and I had a nagging cold which never fully realized and never really went away.
All in all the place made me miserable, both physically and psychologically. When I was at the bank I at least got to deal with mostly different people each day. Here, it was the same people at the same desks all the time. And they were making me sick. And I hated them for it.
More and more my fantasies turned towards jumping out the window. As I thought about it the fantasy became more complex, like I was actually planning on doing it. At first it was a simple "I'll jump through the window" except that wouldn't work. The glass would hold fast and I'd bounce off of it like a bird. No, I would have to use my mail cart. It was built with nice, sharp corners and was heavy enough to break the glass, but still light enough that I could pick it up and hurl it. I figured it would either break the glass outright or crack it enough that I would then be able to jump through it.
That sad part is that even if I jumped I didn't think I would actually die. Some hero would probably be flying by and rescue me before I splattered all over the pavement. He would get commended for his actions and I would get fired. After that I would be out of a job. Nobody else was going to take a chance on the suicidal guy.
I wasn't serious about killing myself. If I were then I'd use a gun in the privacy of my apartment where nobody could possibly save me. Since I didn't own a gun, couldn't afford one, and had zero intention of buying one then I knew I wasn't serious. Fantasizing about jumping out of the window was only something to pass the time at work. Even after I was allowed to wear headphones I still thought about it. When I was off work, back at my apartment playing videogames with Wade, I never thought about suicide. My miserable job faded away to a dull ache in my skull. It only cropped up when I checked my watch on Sunday and immediately calculated how many hours until I had to be back at work.
The cherry on top of this whole terrible situation was that my co-workers, when we actually talked and they weren't coughing on me, were nice people. They fit in the place, they enjoyed their work. It seemed like I was the only person who had a hard time adjusting to the environment. I kept it to myself. I wasn't going to complain about my work, not even a grumble. I would never make it at my job if I got a reputation for being a whiner so early.
Working there was not a long-term plan. I was never going to get my retirement watch after forty years. This was only something to do for a while, a year at most, to pay some bills. It was solely to make it look like I was returning some normalcy to my life. I was also doing it for my dad. It would embarrass him if he asked his friend to hire me as a favor and then I bailed after only a month. My dad's friend, Paul, who pulled the strings necessary to get my résumé noticed would pop by and check up on me. He always asked me how I was getting along. I would put on my best fake smile and cheerily respond, "Great!"
None of the villains I knew had secret identities. They lived one life. Blood Shadow didn't go to a day job. His job was killing people. That was it. Dana could never pretend to be someone other than her. She'd never be able to convince anyone that it was some other random eight-foot tall giantess who robbed that armored truck, that it definitely wasn't Dana, the eight-foot tall registered nurse. Sarah trying to blend in with normal workers was a laughable thought.
Beth came the closest to having a secret identity. That was more for business purposes. Also a somewhat stupid attempt to hide from Wyatt. Her ranch largely ran itself, she had a couple of ranch hands who could take of the horses as well as she could. She was never required to be there ever. She had an accountant cut the checks and a lawyer to handle all the contracts for boarding horses. They did good work, crooked as hell since they both knew they were laundering money from her various criminal activities, but they weren't crooked enough to betray her. I didn't think. After Dana told me about her troubles getting into the accounts I wasn't so sure any more. There was something hinky going on. I wondered how much they were bleeding out of her while she was in jail. Just how soon would they split once the cash flow dried up?
All these people and I was the one hiding how I truly felt, what I really was. Beth, Dana, Blood Shadow, and even Sarah got to be who they were almost every minute of every day. I had to pretend, put on a happy face and push around a stupid mail cart. On the outside I was a complacent worker bee, inside I was Depressio: Master of Impotent rage.
Chapter 22
