Pastey Soled Lola (five)

"You know Lola, it just isn't right. I mean, you've only worked here for what... A month? and you're already causing trouble... If this is really what you wanna do with your life you're gunna have to shape up. This is a great job opportunity for you. Even though it's not very "hands on" you'll be exposed to so much, and end up learning through osmosis. If you wish to be here for another year or five years, or are even thinking about going to Law School and then coming back for a summer associate position, you better get back on track, pick your feet up, and start acting like a professional." Lola began to shake and it wasn’t because of her morning cup tea or missing breakfast, Lola realized this was a defining moment a moment she had been waiting for, for a year. An opportunity to scream, "Another 5 years? Are you crazy? You'll be lucky if I share myself with you another 5 minutes. I hate this job, and I hate what I do here, I hate who I become here, I hate the smell of dead skin and sweaty swivel chairs, I hate your hair and how I can see you're bald spots under the florescent lights. I don't even wanna be an attorney. There’s just no other jobs in Eugene, believe me I check every day. In fact, in the year I've worked here I've used company time and supplies to send out 37 resumes. 37 resumes for jobs ranging from trash pick-up to teaching, that’s how bad I've wanted to get away, but no one is hiring. Come to think of it, the emails I receive back aren't even from employers. They're from scumbag Nigerians so desperate to make a buck that they're willing to lie, cheat and steal to do so. I feel bad for them, but I can't afford to send them money so instead I open the email attachments they send me and give them access to our companies email folders. I am the reason why our clients emails get buried under adds for watches, penis pills and Russian porn. I am the reason we've gone through 7 IT guys in the last 6 months. It's been my dream to infect my computer to the point where it explodes, leaving me with nothing to do, no purpose to participate in this unprogressive practice. What are we standing up for anyways? Overgrown babies delusions of entitlement to the money their parents made? Why do they deserve it? Why do they deserve anything that their parents or grandparents or siblings made? Our clientele is a bunch of miserably bloated third dimensional assholes, precisely the type of bloated assholes my father warned me about. He floated away because of them, because of how they tainted the world with their rotten third dimension. I'm leaving, I'm leaving right now and I don't even care how long the phone at my desk rings or how tall the tee pee will grow or how inconvenient it is for everyone else here, because I've had it. I'm done."  Lola snapped out of her daydream and Mr. Sweeney was still standing there, waiting for her response. "I'm sorry Mr. Sweeney", Lola said, and walked back to her cube.

Lola's rage began to boil. She could feel her insides jumping up and down, clawing away at her flesh trying to escape and chase down Mr. Sweeney to say what Lola could not. She looked at the clock; it was 5:03pm. Lola began to panic. It was Friday and this horrible feeling that burned her face and made her teeth sensitive was going to linger throughout the weekend. She hadn't had time to let it go. She was about to leave work and everything she hated was still stuck to her damn pastey soles. She threw herself back in her chair looked at the ceiling. She couldn't believe she had allowed it to get to this point. She had allowed herself to break down for nothing but a couple thousand dollars a month. "It's time", Lola thought "it's was time to get out of here, to prove that I can get by without money. It's time to abandon this dark and lonely embodiment of the third dimension" Lola left that night with no intension of coming back. She walked home, ripping her feet from the concrete with each step, and entered into her dark apartment, which remained so for the rest of the weekend.

No one saw Lola on Monday. Her tea mug sat stained from Friday morning's leftovers, her sheets lay spread out on the floor, dried paste stuck to the hems, and Mr. Arnoldi fed her muffin to the birds. Her desk remained vacant and the phone rang as people who had forgotten about Friday's events by Friday night, slouched further down into settlement. Lola didn’t show up for work the entire week. Another Friday had come and gone again, and still Lola was missing, absent from everyday life. On the second Monday Lola didn't show up for work, the office administrator began to worry. She called her phone, but Lola didn't answer. She knocked on her door, but it was apparent no one was home. The office administrator followed procedure and filed a missing persons report.