A Chapter of Something

(A chapter from an as yet unfinished longer piece.  Thought I'd post this chapter while I struggle away with the rest of it as it seems to stand alone quite well.)

The office was missing one person.  It was not at capacity and Mark Webber knew it without looking up from his desk.  He had been situated at this desk for eight years now and in this office for ten.  It had watched him grow by six stone over that time, been filled with the shedding hair of his now sparsely populated crown and had been profusely ingrained with his less than pleasant aroma.  He ruled this place and did so with a relish that harked back to a time where a person could be hated and yet still cling on to absolute power.  His curled up, fat lobed ears could make out that there was one less pair of hands chipping away at a keyboard this morning.  He focused his mind as he swigged at his tepid, horrendously sweet coffee uncaring of the dribble that ran down his mug onto his once white, now beige shirt.  There in his mind he could hear the ticker-ticker-ticker of Unproductive Jane, the trick-tick-tick of Mousey Haired Kathryn.  He strained further, pushing aside the two he had now aurally spotted.  Chacka-chacka-chacka, thumped Man Handed Harriet’s heavy man hands and now all that was left was the slow, so painfully slow, tup-tup-tup of Nearly Dead Vera.  He gave them all new names once a week, it was the only way he could bring himself to tolerate such useless, ungrateful miscreants.  The truth of it was that these diligent, hard working people that had kept this sluggish office behemoth in post for this long.  Were it not for their unwavering productivity in the face of the adversity of sharing a room with the repugnant Mr Webber the upper echelons of the council would have discovered his universal failures as a manager and human being and ousted him to a life of benefits and daytime television.

The missing sound was clear to him now.  ‘Where is Thist?  I can’t hear his insufferable tapping at that filthy workstation of his.’ he gargled at the uninterested room of people around him.

There was a short silence as the team looked at each other and then at Arthur’s desk before Vera succinctly answered, ‘He’s not here.’

Webber, held back the bile that had tried to rush up through his gullet and spew its venomous response on the room.  He hated the way she did that, spouted out the sarcastic, obvious answer.  More so he hated how she did it honestly, without purpose, without actual sarcasm.  Stating the Obvious Vera was going to be next on his exit list once he had dealt with Arthur the Flake.  While Webber fumbled through his tray of address cards the rest of the room shot eyes and expressions at each other with the speed and precision of a Morse Code signaller.  The office environment that these people had cohabited for the last few years had been such that non-verbal communication had not only become a necessity but had been mastered to such a level that everyone, barring Webber and Arthur, could essentially hold entire conversations within seconds, without uttering a word.  Vera glanced, ‘I hope he’s ok,’ to Kathryn, who while receiving that had nodded to Harriet, ‘Hasn’t looked well for a while if you ask me.’  Harriet responded instantly with, ‘Doesn’t sound good, Arthur never has time off.  Ever.’  Jane’s ‘It would be a shame, if there is anything wrong,’ was seen by all and was quickly followed by, ‘shhh, fatty’s about to phone him now.’

He picked up the phone and Webber dialled Arthur’s number while he sat aimlessly twisting his chair back and forth.  Everyone else did what they could to keep the pretence that they were working enough so their listening in would go unnoticed.

‘Thist, It’s Mark Webber, where in blazes are you?  It’s gone nine.’

‘What do you mean in bed?  What’s wrong?’                   

‘Nothing you can put a finger on, what kind of an excuse is that?’

‘Look here, I don’t expect my employees to speak to me like that I...’

‘You might be employed by the council, but I am your line manager and I...’

‘This is not the attitude to take if you want keep your job Thist. Thist?  Thist?’

The room bubbled with excitement at the one sided portion of the call that had been heard.  Mark Webber’s inside tugged and heaved with revulsion at the way in which he had been made to look.  He quite rightly pained at what was to be the first part of his eventual downfall.  It was the shaft of light descending from the clouds that burned away all the illusions he had that he was in control of this office.  In the days after this his authority slipped enough that the others in the office started to take the upper hand in any objections he raised to them.  Hunting in a pack that could taste the blood of their prey they would tear at him piece by piece until his carcass was picked clean of all the flesh and meat and was nothing but bones lying uncovered, bleached white by the sun.  And in this brief silence after the call to Arthur Thist the quietest of voices from the recesses within him let him know that this would happen.  He knew his extinction was inevitable.  He took the slightest taste of sweat from his top lip as Vera broke the silence, ‘So, Arthur not coming in then?’