"World Domination is Beginning"

RECORD ONE - A Realistic Logical Ideologist

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It's quiet.

Where I work, silence is the norm. I don't have co-workers and my boss visits only twice a day. In the morning and at the end of my shift. I don't see him often, and he's a quiet sort of person.

Probably.

He wears thick round glasses, always keeps his dress shirt tucked, and keeps every type of stationery in a fanny pack.

I don't know if he's really a quiet person though. I'm just a part-time worker.

A part-time worker at this very small mortuary. The funeral director and the other mortuary workers who do the real work are usually elsewhere. I just look after the bodies.

It'll probably close down soon. We don't get many new bags. People, I mean. I don't care that much. I just need to find another job. One where I can be by myself.

That's all I need.

I check my phone, seeing that I’ve a few hours left before I can leave.

Recently, I had broken my personal computer, so it was still in the repair shop. No browsing the internet then, my secondary solace.

I get up from my small corner-side desk and begin traipsing around the mortuary, metal surrounding me on both sides.

I grasp my green parka(the only belonging that I had any real connection to) closer. I have to be careful not to be in here too long. Or else I’ll die.

Like the others who lay just next to me. In the cabinets I stare at on a weekly basis. I stall my steps to process this fact in a slower fashion.

One day, that will be me. Not Carter, the twenty-year-old who drove off a bridge on a wild night out, or Jamie, the girl who overdosed on some drug that's scientific name was too long.

Just me, a student from a community college that works part-time at a mortuary. I saw it. A pallid skin bag, blue eyes I was praised for when I was younger unseen, and bright orange hair matted.

From the cold, my tongue begins to stick to the roof of my mouth, clinging as I slowly drag myself out of my imagination, letting out more heat with a breath.

Hopping onto a steel roller, I dig my hands into the pockets of my parka and close my eyes. The world darkens and I’m left to myself, the biting cold the only reminder that I was there, in the dimly lit mortuary.

Ever since I was young, when I closed my eyes, the world would darken, then it would light up. Dancing lanterns fill the sky and I’m sat on asphalt, roadsigns surrounding me with, sometimes familiar and sometimes not, symbols painted or graffiti on.

It was very empty.

That was until I was hired here.

Noises.

—An unmistakable shuffle in the silence. More than the occasional mechanical noise of the minus ten-degree celsius air pumping into the mortuary, it was the noise of a person.

Besides me, there was someone else here.

How did I know that it was a person?

Because they’ve visited me in instances where my line of thought trails off into something similar to what it is now.

A silent slinking, the only audio cues being the soft breathing that we shared.

I wrap my coat around myself further, and they sit down next to me to tug the coat away.

Why? I didn’t know.

“Why?” I decided to ask, since if I didn’t have the answers I should ask for them, right?

A slow sort of drawl, with little to no empathy for myself.  “I’m cold.”

“So am I, you know.”

“...You’re mean.”

I blink once, twice then shrugged out an arm to let them take a good bit of it. “You shouldn’t insult people to try and get your way. That’s not how it’ll work.”

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“I only insult you, though.” They pointed out, taking a good seventy percent of the jacket without a single shred of remorse.

“Charming.” I fold my arms around my now bare arms, leaning back. With that movement, I saw traces of the illusory person that sat just outside of my vision.

A small grunt of annoyance, “Don’t move like that, you’re pulling it.” It being the jacket, of course.

“Yes, yes, I know.” I roll to the side to let them take the entire parka leaving me pressing my back to the freezing steel table, staring into the arrays on the ceiling that gave out little to no lights.

Said view was then obscured by the furred hood of my parka.

I caught a somewhat inaudible mumbling, “Don’t lay like that, you’ll catch a cold, you know?” they paused, having mimicked my slight habit, before continuing, “It won’t be good for the plan, not good at all.”

That brings me up to a sitting position. They were right.

Our plans were simple.

“World Domination, huh?”

Yeah. It was that. The televised entertainment thing. The nonsensical laughter of a mustache-twisting evil lord.

I, and so did they, wanted to take over the world. Dominate every inch of land, sea, and air. As I was lingering in my own thoughts, they dropped a Walkman(even my uncle upgraded to a digital music player) and soon after a tape onto my lap.

Familiar to what this song and dance entailed I slid the worn earphones over my ears and slid in the tape with a satisfying clack.

A moment, then a voice began playing.

“Testing, testing, one, two, three!” Cheerful as can be, the feminine voice tainted by static began, a laugh following her words.

Coughing thereafter, the girl in the recording assumed a ‘masculine’ voice. Well, as masculine as she could get. “If you’re listening to this, then you’ve reached the last bastion of my dream; World Domination.”

”Yep. I want to be the ruler of all Earth.”

A simple dream, that they, she, and I shared.

“My plans, of course, span across even the skyline! But they might be foiled, which is where YOU” I could imagine some pointing gesture here, “come in! If I can’t achieve my dream, then maybe you can, whoever you are.”

That was the plan, yes.

“So... haha, well,” She chuckled, “The first step, to your World Domination is ‘make allies’. Step outside and... talk to people. Make friends, some say!”

“Sometimes— no, rather —most times, you can’t achieve world domination by yourself, which is why you need people to back you up. Those that can be loyal, courageous, and maybe even the stupid ones.”

Stupid, I could relate to. Given the staring I felt.

Disregarding my internal dialogue, the voice continued, “...Gosh, that’s about it, isn’t it? Well, hey, if you can do this, then the rest’ll be a cinch! So go get’em, tiger.”

With that, silence entrapped me. Given I finished listening, I took the headphones off as well, which I slid to the side of me.

“...Making allies, huh?”

I glanced to the side, where they sat and saw nothing- they were quick if anything, given I felt someone behind me, draping my parka across my shoulders.

“Mhm. That’s what you need to do.” They had a lilt in their voice, happy about something.

Pushing my arms into my parka, I suddenly realized how cold I was. I was freezing. With even paler digits, I dug my phone out of my pocket to check the time— ten minutes til the end of my shift.

“I’ve got to get going then,” I muttered under my breath, but apparently they still caught it. A very light sensation wrapping around my waist for a single moment, their voice resounded.

“Bye bye, Sun.”

Sun, right. That was my name.

“Bye bye, Dal.” Dal. Dal was theirs.

With the girl in the tapes, them, and I, surely, World Domination would ‘be a cinch’.

...Ah. I forgot, the bus broke down and my route was in crumbles.

How was I going to get home?

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 Chapter End