This is what happens.
One minute you will be walking down the street, minding your own and whistling a tune or whatever it is you do, when out of the clear blue, bam! a safe falls on your head; possibly it will be smash! and you step off the curb and into the 5:19; possibly it will be a piano instead of a safe.
Or you will go to the doctor, possibly for something routine, and he will frown and bite the tip of his pen while looking at your chart, and he (or she, these being modern times) will say something like, gee, or, oh, or mutter under their breath, possibly they will be words to the effect of, that’s weird, or even, if they lack tact, that doesn’t look too good.
Possibly it will be a rabid dog.
Possibly a squirrel.
Either way, it will happen.
And you will wake up somewhere that looks like an insurance office in Omaha, Nebraska. Even if you’ve never been to Omaha, Nebraska, which in all probability you haven’t, given the places it is possible to go and the strictly finite amount of time in which to go to them, it will still seem like Omaha, Nebraska, for reasons that will be, and will remain, as unknowable to you as the mind of God; possibly the mind of a cat.
And you will wait in a line for what seems like a very long time until you get to the front and a man (or a woman) will look at some papers, and ask you some questions which you won’t remember later, and they will stamp a paper and then you will be somewhere else, you will no longer be in the insurance office in the place that looks like Omaha, Nebraska. Possibly it will look like Connecticut; possibly not.
There will be temporary housing, possibly a condo, or split-level, maybe even something dormitory style. And you will, as you do, settle in as best you can to some sort of routine. You will try to make friends; possibly you will succeed.
And one day there will be a phone call, and you will think it’s sort of odd because until then you won’t have thought that you even owned a phone, but there will be a phone call nonetheless, and they will tell you to report to a building, to some floor in that building, and when you get there, they will give you a slip of paper and they will say, welcome aboard, or possibly welcome to the team, words to that effect, and they will give you a red blazer which will fit better than any blazer you have ever had before, especially this will be the case if you have never owned any blazer to speak of, let alone one which is all snazzy and red.
And then you will have an office and you will settle in to your new duties, possibly as death for a large portion of the Eastern seaboard and for parts of Canada, this particular office you now hold not being super respectful of international borders or treaties or things of this nature.
And you will sit at a desk and there will be nothing on this desk except for two filing trays, one marked in and another which will be marked out, and index cards, possibly there will be millions of index cards, and they will be stacked to the ceiling and falling over and landing in your lunch, possibly your soup, and getting stuck to your person, possibly your hair.
You will sit in this office, day after day, and you will do nothing except look at these index cards and make small notations on the backs of them, notations that say things like, drowns in pool, or heart attack, run over by train or, suicide, overdose, pills, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.
And this will be fine, this will be your existence, such as it is, and your red blazer will fall eventually to tatters and one day when there is just a patch of fabric clinging by two tenacious threads to your blue shirt (possibly it will be white), someone you have never seen will come visit you and they will give you a new blazer, which, if you can believe it, will fit even better than the first one. And this will go on and on…
Possibly you will recognize some of the people from the index cards, possibly you will see them walking around; possibly you will even wave and nod at them and you will think how nice it is that even though the notation you affixed to the back of their card said, mauled by wolverine or, hand caught in lathe, they will still respond to your smile with a smile and your nod with a nod and this will really make your day, sometimes.
And other times this will not make your day and you will think of the screaming and crying and general shouts of distress that accompany the notations you affix to the backs of those index cards, because even though you can’t see them, you can hear them, and it would keep you up nights if you were capable of sleeping, which you are not. So you will lie in your bed that you have for no particular sleep related reason and listen to this baleful chorus that doesn’t seem to get any softer, but rather much much louder, until the point where, by the time you are on your 20,000th or so red blazer, it will be difficult to even hear yourself think, the sounds will be like the crashing of a crimson cymbal into the back of your skull, over and over, and you will have to cup your hands over your ears like a deaf old person in order to hear the loudest of shouts.
And possibly you will start to stare at the wall a lot (or into your soup, the back of your hand), and you will not fill out as many index cards as you used to, possibly you will do this in the hope that it will make the sounds stop, or that you can help these people, that you can save them.
This hope will be in vain.
And possibly (no probably), no definitely, you will be visited one day by another person you have never seen before, and they will say, how are you feeling? or what’s up? you need to chat? Possibly they will remark on the tattered state of your blazer, but they will not give you another one. Possibly you will receive a gold pen, possibly it will be some sort of embossed plaque or mug that says world’s best grandpa.
And possibly you will arrive at your office one day to find someone else sitting behind your desk, filling out your index cards (possibly using your gold pen!) and you will understand and you will then find yourself back in the insurance office in Omaha, Nebraska, and you will fill out more paperwork, and then you will be in permanent housing, possibly someplace that looks like Maryland. And you will sit on your porch at night and look at the sky, possibly the blackness will be overwhelming, and possibly you will hear, certainly not the crickets, nothing except for the millions of crying and screaming and begging to live voices that will not leave you alone, not even for a minute, not even when you are pretending to sleep.
Possibly you will have lemonade.
Possibly you will think, what a full, full life I’ve led.
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