Tales Of Melancholy (Dirt Trails)
He leaned back into the big stuffy office chair that towered over him and casted a dark shadow across the desk. He closed his eyes and was cast into the darker shadows of his thoughts. He was on path suddenly. A dirt trail was in front of him and it disappeared around a cliff bend and there seemed to be lots of cacti and other sorts of desert vegetation that went outward for miles and miles. He was alone. The gigantic sun hung overhead and he could longer keep his eyes from shutting because of the glittering reflection of the sand. Then he opened his eyes and he was back again in the stuffy office sitting in the oversized chair. He was bored.
The desk that he was sitting at and that he had been sitting at for 10 to 12 hours everyday for five days a week was the desk he was staring at now. He noticed it being brown and that brown was a color that seemed to be of some importance but in this case he couldn't figure out what. The desk was the only thing he looked at though for he ignored the grey stapler, the brown pencil sharpener, the black notebooks, the copper lamp, and the red frame with the picture of his wife in it. The color of his desk aggravated him. "Who the fuck made this desk?" he thought. What was it for? Just to put all his shit on top of and into. Just a place to prop his feet when he leaned back in the massive black office chair? Black chair with brown desk. Two colors that supressed sadness in which made him forget what it was that he did for a living.
Had it been three hours already? The hours seemed to drag on and on second by second until suddenly there was an oppurtunity for a shift in the schedule, like a shift in the chair, or a turn of the eyeball so he can stare out the one window. He knew this big goddamn chair was used to intimidate others but that was what the company wanted. He knew it was really to intimidate the workers. It made people feel like there very thoughts were being overheard. He didn't want to be near the chair so he got up and walked over to the window. Outside it was raining and it was dark. It seemed as if the world had died. For a brief moment he felt relief to be inside but after many hours here in this office he could sometimes sense the walls closing in on him and for that brief moment his office was the smallest room in the entire city.
He went back to his chair although he still wanted to look out the window. He watched the rain riccochet at a diagonal angle upon the glass. He would see the drops dripping down the window pane furiously racing against one another toward the bottom where they joined together into tiny streams and then sometimes joining into other streams. They would either evaporate at the last second before it swirled on the edge and dripped off or it was get picked up by the wind and sent into the atmosphere. He thought that these water droplets were like people. Some hang on till the very end and some get picked up and thrown into the howling winds. He got up again from the big chair and walked over to the window. He had his face against it now and his left arm was over his head resting. His hand and fingers twirled and outlined the raindrops sliding down following them as they fell. He looked down and could see the streets below and it was all barren like the desert but with grey concrete walls and dividers and black tar streets. He could see himself in his company's building staring at of it. A little tiny man at the window of a grey tower of concrete that continued up in the blackness of the sky above. The sky had been black and grey for the past 15 years. He still didn't really know what it was that he did.
He closed his eyes once again. In the very distance of his mind where there seemed to be nothing, where there was more darkness he came upon a shimmering of light. He awoke to the sight of an oversized sun and it seemed to kill off whatever darkness there once was. He was no longer in the office for he was walking the dirt trail and it felt as if he was walking it a long time.