Saturday, January 08, 2011

4.2 Health & Safety Pins

Luboff and Doves ~ Max Sauco

There is no room for hope in a room full of useless paper. Atom sat at the desk and looked at the wall of piled pages in front of him. He turned to look at the wall to his left and the wall to his right; both entirely obscured by piled pages. He picked a page at random: absurd questions arranged in a grid whose opposite end contained little squares with X’s arranged in random patterns, he picked another: the same; and another.
Agne had left him in search of his paperwork, ‘she may be some time’ he thought.
“I won’t be a jiffy,” she’s said, “help yourself to coffee.”
He tried the door. It opened out into the pale green corridor through which he and Agne had entered the building.
The corridor (it seemed to Atom) echoed with footsteps that had just passed out of earshot, an impression that did not go away even though Atom remained so, (head sticking out of the doorway at 90 degrees) for a long time.
“Fuck”
He stepped out into the corridor, mis-stepping clumsily over the piles of paper which caused his muddy new shoe to slap the stone floor into an echo much larger that the one he’d been listening for.
He headed for the entrance as quickly (and as casually) as he could muster under the echoing circumstances.
The receptionist behind the plastic desk whistled a tune with no purpose as she filed her nails; Atom’s exit from the building caused the parting in the receptionist’s wig to change from the right to left side of her head.
“Please remember to hold onto the handrails when using the stairs” she called after the retreating back of Atom’s brown suit.




6 comments:

Yodood said...

this time you picked a picture that truly deserves to complement your foreboding laden prose. What a great painting and passage.

Garth said...

Yodood: Yes! his photo/paintings are remarkable - it's the underlying malevolence that strikes me ;)

JeffScape said...

There is room for hope in a room full of useless paper.

It's called "zippo."

Huh... that's kinda ironic.

Garth said...

Jeff: now that sounds like a good idea

Harlequin said...

great image and some wild and wonderful twisty prose.
somehow the mousetraps and the piles of paper felt connected to me....

Garth said...

Harlequin: yes - the picture is mind-blowingly good :)

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