(The first was written for the "After the Bomb" module in English Extension I (I actually submitted this one for homework and was criticised by my teacher for taking the piss), and the second was a "Belonging" in Advanced English creative that I never submitted, for obvious reasons.)
Expendable
Expendable
George Lawrence was walking quickly. The early morning air
was thickly foggy and it was drizzling with rain. The footpath in front of him
was wet and a little slippery. The city looked even more grey than usual. He
couldn’t imagine more drab concrete towers than the ones that towered above him
on either side of the road.
It’s like 1984. Haha, coz it is.
He felt stressed. He had woken up
stressed, having been told the news yesterday by his boss that today was to be
the day of sackings, and he only felt more so now. He was definitely a prime
candidate for sacking. Unpopular, quiet, not especially productive – yes he
ticked all the boxes for dismissal.
Fuck.
Maybe this would be the final
time he would ever walk to his office at Williams Wealth – that was a harrowing
thought. As he continued walking swiftly along the footpath, feeling sick to
the stomach, he glanced down at his watch: 20 past 8. He needed to get to work
early otherwise the boss would basically have no problem firing him at all –
he’d have the excuse he needed. He could even imagine what that ugly little man
would say:
You weren’t even punctual on the
day I’d told you people would be fired. That displays an enormous amount of
laziness and, I think, umm, what’s the word?, contempt for this business. I have no choice but to fire you.
George started cantering. He was encumbered
by his briefcase and the inflexibility of his work trousers, but he still was
able to gather a fair bit of speed. The buildings next to him were now just a
blur, while the people walking along the footpath seemed to stop moving,
becoming mere obstacles for him to avoid. For a few seconds, he forgot he was
meant to be stressed. As the wind rushed past his face and through his hair, he
forgot everything: he forgot how drab the city was and what the boss had said;
he forgot work, he forgot where he was going. He was just bounding along the
wet, slippery footpath, bounding through space and time, through an infinite
greyness, forever…
But then he remembered everything
again. He realised he was only a street away from his work. He slowed immediately.
He felt sick to the stomach as he inched along, one step, two steps, three
steps, four steps, five steps, six steps, seven steps, eight steps, nine steps,
ten steps.
No, I can’t just inch along, I have
to hurry up, I need to get to work. I can’t get fired.
He started cantering again. The
canter soon turned into a desperate lurch, one which was expending all his
energy and will-power. He was getting closer and closer to the building in
which he worked. Finally he was there. Breathing heavily, he walked in the open
door of his building, walked over to the lift, and pressed the button. He waited.
Ding!
The doors opened and he walked
in. He pressed level 13. The elevator whirred and he watched the numbers
light-up one by one.
11, 12, 13. Ding!
The doors opened and he walked
out. He turned right down the corridor, walked towards the big door at the end
of the vestibule, and pushed it open. Immediately he was hit by a wave of
indistinct chatter. He gazed over the familiar bureaucratic scene: there were
desks everywhere, most of them occupied, as a multitude of people tapped away
on their typewriters.
Suddenly he noticed the boss,
with his dumpy body and ugly bald head, was walking towards him from the other
side of the room.
Why would he walk right towards
me? Surely that means I’m fired.
The boss reached him, and now
George could see the true horror of his blotchy and jowly face. He hadn’t
noticed before but he had a hideous little mouth, a mouth which was now gaping
open.
“I just wanted to have a little
private chat with you, George, to let you know before I make the big speech to
everyone here at Williams Wealth that I never even, umm what’s the word?, considered you for the cuts I am forced
to make. You are a really valued member of my staff and I really appreciate
your work ethic. Your work – ”
Suddenly the roof caved-in in
front of him with an enormous crash and women screamed. Ceiling plaster was
showering down. George saw that the material from the ceiling was now where a
few desks used to be. People were under it. They were trapped.
Bomb.
Untitled
Susan stabbed a fork into the stub of meat she could see poking out of the murky, seething broth and pulled it towards her. A big hunk of soft, cartilaginous meat, tightly hugging a thick bone. Her fork only had a tenuous grip on it. She tried to quickly bring it towards her plate before it had a chance to fall off the fork, but globs of meat slipped off and flopped onto the table. A mixture of corporeal fluid and broth oozed out of them, seeping into the white tablecloth.
“Blast,” she whispered to
herself.
“Here, let me pick that up for
you,” Andrew’s dad said. He used his chopsticks to pick up the pieces on the
table and put them into her little round bowl.
“I extend my sorrow a propos that
prior error and request clemency,” Susan said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Andrew’s
dad said, smiling.
“Yes, it’s really fine,” his mum
said, smiling also.
Susan looked across the table at
Edmund and he smiled too, but a bit more wryly.
“The comestibles are tremendously
delectable,” Susan said. Susan could see that Andrew’s dad was reaching over to
Andrew to ask for a translation. Andrew whispered it into his father’s ear.
Andrew’s father looked back at
Susan. “Thank you very much, you’re too kind.”
“I find that praise to be very
gratifying indeed. I endeavour always to act with a considerable degree of
magnanimity,” she replied, smiling.
Andrew’s dad smiled at her again.
While he was clearly trying to conceal his confusion and – despite his best
efforts – slight contempt for Susan’s eccentric mode of communication, Susan
could nevertheless discern it. She could see the slight strain in his grin, the
subtle coldness in his eyes. She felt horrible that she had this effect on
people who did not share her upbringing. The problem was that she simply spoke
a different dialect of English from this man, and the simple reason for that
was that she was raised in a different household. She could do nothing about
it, and that was what made it so hard to bear.
Susan decided to tuck in to the meaty
meal beneath her. The rich, spicy smell emanating from it was enticing. She
stabbed a piece of meat and inserted it into her mouth. It dissolved on her
tongue in an instant, and all she was left with was the intense gustatory
sensation, the corporeality, the spices, the richness. That piece of meat was
truly the best tasting food she had ever put in her mouth. It was otherworldly.
Suddenly she was floating in an
ethereal, intangible space, sucrescent spools of light swirling around her,
tipping and tumbling forward, alone, together, with all the orgiastic potential
in the world.
She was back at the small white
table, with the big broth-filled pot in the middle and Andrew’s face opposite
her and his mum to her left and his dad to her left. Back in the dark room with
the lunar, spindly-digited clock suspended high on the wall to her left, and
the cramped, dirty kitchen behind her. Back with her body and its blue jumper
and black jeans and its eyes that were now turning in on themselves, observing
the fleshy insides of her cranium, her brain, purple and heavily veined, bumpy
but soft, somehow gelatinous…
When her eyes rolled back towards
the table, the entire family was gazed intently at her, with expressions of
shock and concern.
“Are you alright?” Andrew’s mum
asked.
“I can affirm this inquiry.”
“She often does this,” Andrew
assured his mum.
Susan felt elated; the
appreciation of the food Andrew’s parents had prepared her, a synecdoche for
their Oriental culture, had enabled her to transcend her socioeconomic, class and
racial differences with Andrew’s family and she now belonged.
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