To describe Calvin’s behavior as erratic would have been an understatement. He knew something was different the moment he woke up, sat up in bed, and felt as if he had been healed of all his lingering ailments. He found his backpack which had already been packed for work that day. He pulled out his laptop, sent a quick email to his boss, and closed the computer with a satisfying snap.

Calvin wondered at the odd feeling he had as he realized that he had never sent an email before without reading through it at least once. Then again, he had also never sent an email in which he quit his job, and assured his boss that he would not be coming in again.

It felt like he was floating through his practiced morning routine with an easiness that made it feel new. The rigidity of his schedule had dissolved away. He could take his time, prolonging whatever added to his enjoyment. Instead of eating his usual hard-boiled eggs, prepared and refrigerated ahead of time, he sauteed peppers and onions, beat the eggs together, and made himself an omelet.

He was finishing his meal when his eyes fell upon the laptop. It felt comforting that there was no wave of panic as he witnessed the lingering mark of his old employment. It was still early. Thinking back on the message he sent, he realized why it was important to read through his emails. It was a company laptop, and they would be expecting him to bring it back in. The fact that he had already written to tell them that he would not be coming in again suddenly rang hollow.

He looked down at the laptop with a mounting feeling of disgust. That feeling he had when he was first presented with it was gone. There was no joy looking at it. It had changed before his eyes, now appearing to him as an insidious trick by the company to force more work into his time away from the office. In that moment, he had forgotten how often he voluntarily worked late. Despite that, this current realization made him shiver.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

It could be dealt with later. He got up, and with glee, took the suit that he had intended to wear that day, and let it crumple at his feet. That same feeling he had when he looked at his laptop seemed to be soothed by seeing the suit crumpled on the ground, hoping that creases would set in, creases that he would never iron out.

He put on an old pair of jeans, and a lumpy sweater. It was strange, not dressing for a specific location. Perhaps it was stranger that he had never left his apartment without a specific destination in mind. That was what he did today, his backpack emptied of the usual business accoutrement. Packing up had felt like he had entered a fever dream. There were no calculations, no checking for the weather, not even an attempt at a gameplan.

In the bag were several pairs of underwear, a toothbrush, a worn notebook, a few pens, a handful of granola bars, and the largest water bottle he could find. Under his arm, he held the problematic laptop.

In the back of his head, he had figured that he would swing by the office and leave it at reception. That was until he passed the rusted dumpster on the way to his car. To anyone that was looking out their window at that moment, Calvin would have looked like a violent man.

It wasn’t the fact that he was disposing of something so valuable by throwing it into a dumpster, but in the way did it. When he walked away from the dumpster, his hands now empty, he could hardly grasp what he had done.

It had felt good though, splitting the thing in half over the edge of the dumpster. Slamming it down again and again, broken keys and glass leaking onto the ground. Each time he brought it down, he pictured a blank page being fed into a shredder. By the time he was done, he had split the laptop in two, and he was beaming as he threw the laptop away for good.