He wore a red hooded sweatshirt made of a cotton-wool poly blend that made the skin on his forearms and around his neck itch. He had an attachment to it, in all its holed and tattered glory, and wore it every single day.
Most of his life was a routine.
He woke up, went to work and ate dinner like most normal people. Dull. He was far from spectacular and spent every waking moment running that thought through his mind. While at work, he would watch the drones (masked as actual people) milling around, shuffling papers and pretending to engage in riveting office gossip about the ins-and-outs of some random executive’s personal life. They rarely spoke to him, and he kept to himself liking nothing more than to do the bare minimum and leave as soon as the alarm on his Timex beeped 5 p.m. He had attempted to be social once a few months ago leading up to the company holiday party thinking it might be nice to meet a few people before the mandatory awkward fest that was to follow a week before Christmas Eve. He had wandered innocently over to the water cooler where a few suits were standing, talking, and filled a paper cone with water. He had only just begun to swivel it around, taking a few cardboard tasting sips and catching part of their conversation about so-and-so’s eleven-year-old who was caught with marijuana when he heard:
“Are the files for the Emerson case all set?”
He immediately tossed the cup, water-filled and dripping, into the nearby bin upon hearing his supervisor’s voice and made his way back to his cubicle with a slight nod in her direction.
(...)
He was soon able to appreciate the simpler things in life. Multi-colored bottle caps, French graphic novels and old puzzles littered the floor of his bedroom and living area as he moved from task to task aimlessly and restlessly. He watched game shows, ate pretzels and made paper hats out of newspapers. He was in the middle of his latest simple fascination, an origami crane, when he decided he had had enough.
