Monday, November 28, 2011

The Wave

By Jonathan Byrd

The wave comes washing down the street and ruins my lunch. What the fuck is a 20 foot tall wave of sparkling pink lemonade doing coming down the street anyway? Doesn’t the wave know I have to go back to work answering phones? The public must be served, and this damn wave comes along.

From my spot on the company logoed picnic table, I can see people surfing the wave. A few of them are laughing, but most look scared to death. They are probably frightened of what their bosses will do when he/she finds them away from their desks. “Swept away by a sparkling pink lemonade wave,” he’ll say. “I’ve heard that all day. Come up with a better excuse.”

The wave is about a minute away.

I lick the last bit of cupcake frosting from my fingers and think of my wife’s nipples. Not that cupcake frosting or 20 foot tall sparkling pink lemonade waves inspire thoughts of my wife’s nipples. It’s just that we haven’t had sex in three weeks and she was completely naked when she handed me my lunch this morning. It certainly made it hard to come to work today.

I wad up the last of my lunch in the environmentally friendly paper bag my wife insists on. This seems funny now, seeing as how a 20 foot wave of sparkling pink lemonade is tearing up the environment she’s bent on protecting. I turn back to see that the wave has advanced quickly, it has also grown. I’m now looking at a fifty foot wall of sparkling pink lemonade.

The wave is thirty seconds away.

At the crest of the wave, a man in a business suit rides a brief-case surf board. He wobbles as he yells some team building encouragement slogan at the people around him. I can’t hear anything, the roar from the wave is deafening. The brief-case flips from under his feet and goes hurdling through the air. The man goes down into the wave and doesn’t resurface.

I look at the door, it leads back to work: cubicles, phone calls, mind numbing stasis. I look back at the wave and I am confronted by danger, fear, uncertainty, refreshing sparkling pink lemonade. I know I’m going to be swept away by the wave. I guess I have to decide whether I’m going to see it coming or not.

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BIO: Jonathan Byrd says: I began writing strange, dark, and bizarre stories in the 4th grade. That year, I was referred to the school psychologist after writing a story mimicking Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart. Over the years, I have let my “sick mind” (quoted from so many authority figures) have its way with pen and paper. My work has been featured on the Mustache Factor, Bizarro Central, and 69 Flavors of Paranoia.

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