"Cliff!" A middle-aged and handsome man hissed at a young adult hunched over a single monitor.
The person addressed as Cliff turned around without a pause. His listless eyes had slight bags underneath that signified that he had perhaps been working off the clock.
"Yes. Sir?" Replied Cliff in a deadpan voice.
He sneered before saying, "Did you finish that document yet? I remember telling you it was time-sensitive."
Closing his eyes and smiling, accompanied by his response. "I've been working on it sir, I'll send it to you shortly," says Cliff.
"I gave that to you at 10 a.m. and it's already 12..." He started saying with his neck strained and fists slightly shaking.
"You won't be having a lunch until that document is in my email... Get it done, quick!" He stormed off quite loudly.
Cliff glanced over his shoulder as inconspicuously as possible before realizing his boss was out of sight.
'Whenever Jimmy fucking calls off Landon floods me with both of our work and expects the same results.' Cliff silently grumbled to himself.
'That, accompanied by the fact that Landon is just sitting on his ass doing little more than gossiping on the phone, make me feel like I'm taking crazy pills!'
'Alright Cliff, calm down. They are bound to the same fate that I am at the end of the day. All of our inevitabilities and choices have caused and effected us to have been plopped down where we are. Relatively speaking we will all die around the same time as well. I'm tied to these people and this time period, as well as they are to me. Like it or not,' Cliff thought to himself.
Cliff went throughout the rest of his workday as well as he went throughout any other day. He got berated some more and handed more work by Landon, daydreamed about whatever came to mind, and finally, at 7:30 pm he ate the sandwich he brought for lunch. It was a peanut butter and banana sandwich with lettuce.
'Pretty early lunch today, huh?' Cliff thought to himself while internally cry-laughing. 'My stomach has been rumbling all day. I bet if I had a "system" like in a young adult novel my metabolism would slow down or something and I wouldn't feel hungry all the time,' Cliff continued to daydream while eating his pseudo-dinner.
'I probably can't leave at 8 today. I wonder when Landon will ask me for something else?' Cliff thought as he imagined Landon coming out of the office "as if" on queue, but his door stayed shut.
'Hm, strange. Usually the boss can tell when I start thinking about leaving... should I just go? I was supposed to leave a couple of hours ago but was forced to stay,' Cliff was pondering to himself with an array of emotions on his face before realizing he had arrived in front of Landon's office door.
'Damn. Guess I should check on him since I'm already here.' Cliff was internally sighing for the umpteenth time today. 'It's hard to believe that a pushover like me made it all the way to 27 years old,' he thought as he knocked on the office door.
There was no response.
'Lucky!' Fireworks went off in Cliffs head in celebration. Cliff's boss fell asleep at his desk later in the evening very rarely, but when he did Cliff made sure to capitalize by leaving right away. He knew that Landon would be extra mad tomorrow morning, but when wasn't his boss directing his anger towards Cliff?
Cliff had no feelings toward Landon whatsoever. Of course he would occasionally get pissed about his mistreatment, but he's had worse jobs and the money he was getting here was necessary. He had tried to leave the small company one time prior and had somehow gotten a small raise out of the whole ordeal. It seemed Landon either wanted or needed Cliff to stay for some reason. Cliff had guessed that reason was because Landon was lazy. Cliff was no workaholic by any stretch of the imagination, but when he started to focus on one task he was able to turn off his brain and mindlessly tap away on the keyboard for hours on end without having to eat or use the restroom. It wasn't a job requirement, but it is what's kept him his desk-job for the last two and a half years.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Cliff was never much of a drinker during his young adult life, but the last couple of years and his current, and multiple, bar tabs have started to say otherwise. He picked up drinking after his partner he was living with, and genuinely loved, told him that the life they were living wasn't what she had envisioned and hoped it to be at that point, and left the day after without ever returning. This frustrated Cliff endlessly. Not because the person he loved had left him, although that was a major part of it, but because he felt the same way about himself. He hated himself for living the way he was living. There were obviously upsides, but they were so minuscule compared to the valleys, that they almost weren't mentioning. He didn't find enough time in his 60-hour work week for romance or a hobby, so he partook to drinking.
He used most of the money he would earn in a day at the bar when he went to buy drinks, and then a couple extra. His tolerance was getting pretty high after all of the drinking so he had to have a couple more every other time to feel a bit intoxicated. This would happen whenever Cliff got the time off work.
Eventually, the bars would close for the night. Cliff didn't usually stay until they closed but it seems he lost track of time tonight and had to be ushered out by the bartender, which only gave a small wave of her hand while cleaning a glass. He had already had a few interactions with most of the bartenders in this town and he knew that some of them were suckers for people down on their luck, and Cliff fit their bill almost perfectly. They wouldn't give him free alcohol, but they also wouldn't kick him out based on his tab. That couldn't be said about every bartender that had the "pleasure" of interacting with Cliff though. He felt bad for playing into their sympathy but he also felt he had nothing to really lose by doing this. Besides, where else would he be able to get a drink?
Cliff eventually stumbled back to the front of the three story apartment complex. "Ahh, home sweet home," he said out loud as he started up the stairs. 'I wonder if I fell backwards and hit my head, if I would get transmigrated into another world with beautiful girls and endless opportunities...' Cliff silently laughed to himself. Even though he was pretty "done in" as the people at the bar had stated, he still knew his delusions from reality pretty clearly. 'As if some omnipotence would actually give me strength when I need it, beneficial quests when I have nothing to do, and priceless items for almost nothing.' Cliff would've started to lament over these thoughts but he had had them so frequently that it didn't phase his mood all that much at this point.
As he walked up to his door he sighed quietly. 'Man, I'm nearly 27 now and I still have these pointlessly juvenile thoughts... I guess I'll write in my journal to blow off some steam before I lay down,' thought Cliff as he shut his door, forgetting to lock the deadbolt. He walked into his one room flat and threw everything he was carrying, and everything in his pockets, on the couch next to his bed.
Keeping a journal is an outdated concept in this day and age, and not something Cliff would do normally, but it was something that his former lover had recommended for him to start doing while they were together that he kept up to this day. 'Damn, I'm almost out of pages on the second book already.' It was something that genuinely seemed to soothe his inner turmoil and he liked seeing the progress as the pages filled up.
Cliff wrote about his day. He wrote about how Jimmy and Landon pissed him off, although he didn't show it on his face at the time. He wrote about his frequent thoughts about leaving this world and the self conscious implications of those thoughts. He wrote that he probably didn't care about a fantasy world all that much and that he really longed just to leave his current reality, to start fresh. He wrote about his discontentment of his parents for moving south and abandoning him before he was 20. He wrote about how he wishes he had a person to complain to instead of a journal.
Eventually, Cliff started to feel like he was spiraling in a bad direction so he wrote some final thoughts about how he's thankful. Thankful for the people at the bar for being friendly. Thankful that he had a job that could sustain his living costs and... unruly pass time. Thankful that he had anyone at all to enable him to open his mind to the world around him through a wider lens.
Leaving his journal entry a little bittersweet for the day, he closed the book and placed it in his desk cabinet.
Cliff looked at the time and realized that it was nearly 2 am. He had about four to five hours before he had to wake up in the morning and he was starting to sober up. He decided he would get some water and head to sleep.
He ran a plastic cup under the sink and drank a full cup before refilling it again.
As Cliff was walking back to his bed his mind couldn't help but race. He couldn't help but think about everything that had happened today, this week, this year, the last five years. He tried to chase those thoughts away but whenever his guard was down they would come back. He lied down for quite a while before he could feel he was about to fall asleep.
As Cliff's eyes began to close he started to think about what tomorrow will bring, before he suddenly jumped and felt like he was flipped upside-down.
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Hey, sorry about my grammar mistakes. I apologize if some sentences seem to run on or if the perspective seems inconsistent. I've never written anything like this and I barely passed high-school. There. There's my excuses. Anyways, thanks for reading to this point and I hope you enjoy this story in the future nonetheless :d
P.S. When I say Cliff feels like he was "flipped upside-down," in the last part I imagine when you're about to fall asleep and then it feels like you're on a roller coaster for no reason. That was how I was trying to explain it in as few words as possible at least.
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