here inside i like metal don't you [narrative]
You are 27 years old and the thing is this is never where you thought you'd be when you were a little girl and the twenties were a magical idea far away, this mystical age where you could stay up as late as you wanted and no one could tell you what to do.
But now you're here and 27 means day after day after endless fucking day of taking your place as another cog in the data-entry machine; slim and efficient and busy, you are one of the fastest in your division, poised for promotion and you want to die, a little bit.
You always thought at 27 you'd have everything figured out but nothing ever goes quite that way, does it, not when college just didn't quite work the way it was supposed to and you always thought you'd go back later because right then you couldn't hack it, you really couldn't but later when you were more together everything would make more sense, and half a degree in hospice care has got to be worth something, right?
But every hospital was the same, it was vomit and piss and crazy people clutching at you screaming they're in my head they're in my head and it won't stop --
So you got as far away from that as you fucking could, and in the end a nice, crisp, clean office building seemed like just what you were looking for. In office buildings people are safe and sane in their endless rows of gleaming cubes, safe behind the clickclacktrap of wingtips and high-heels (you used to go home with blisters but now you're a little proud of how your calf muscles look in the one nice suit you saved up for) on shiny floors you can see yourself in.
You never thought really who must keep those floors looking this way but one night you're working late over a box of take-out lo mein (all sodium and shit you should never put in your body, you'll spend an extra hour in the gym for that) and the sound of the wheels startle you and for a second you are afraid for no reason, sheer brain-melting terror, the kind left over from when people lived in caves and washed skins in the river and darkness was the biggest danger of all - but it's just the janitor.
He smiles; he didn't mean to scare you, and he's tall with dark hair and a really nice smile actually, but something about it won't let you relax and the one you give back is tight, polite but uninviting, you've got work to do and he's an interruption (and something else what is it why do you want to scream) and really this time together's been great, but doesn't he have somewhere else to be?
....oh. Oh, sure, and you're laughing, feeling a little stupid (though you can't shake the idea that you should be running) and you let him empty your trashcan, sure, sorry about the mess.
You go back to work while he's doing this, but you can't help seeing out of the corner of your eye how he's moving slowly like it hurts, like you remember your dad doing when the bones in his legs were starting to give up before the surgery he didn't really have the money for, and how the bills ate him alive afterwards (you should really call him) and he reminds you a little of your dad, actually. The runhidenow feeling is gone, just paranoia, just the shell of walking home at night in not the nicest of neighborhoods you can never really shake. Of course, right? That's what they say about urban living.
So you make a little small-talk and it's so cliche, so late night dramedy, telling all your troubles to the janitor who has another 50 cubicles to clean after yours, but he listens, and you feel a little better until you're telling him what you think is the good news, how you're going to be out of this shitty little position soon because of your diligence and your hard work and soon you'll be working for Mr. Sorenson and maybe some day some kind of executive position - Christ, you'd think you'd told him you were going to be slaughtering babies, the way he looks at you.
i could crawl around the floor just like I'm real like you
Fine, so sometimes you're not exactly sure what the company you work for does, something about trading, and maybe sometimes when Mr. Sorenson comes by and smiles at you it's a little like you think a shark might smile at blue veins (you'd taken to wearing turtlenecks until he stopped smiling because you figure you've got to use what you have and those silk blouses were on sale) but you're just so tired of your shitty little apartment in the neighborhood where you have to carry pepper spray and the smiles on the street are the same only dirtier and you just want someone to look at you just once like your dad used to when he told you you could do anything you wanted. You just want that one more time even though you're 27 and you know you're too old for that.
Really, the last thing you need is the approval of some janitor, for god's sake, so even though that look makes the terror come back so far your hands shake on the keyboard (should you call security? after all you are alone and it's so very dark up here even with the flourescent lights that send you home every night with the buzzing, shrieking headache you kill with expensive vodka you shouldn't really be buying) when he says you don't belong here there's just a second where you think he looks so sad you almost want to listen but in the end you just smile that tight smile you're not sure when you learned how to make and go back to your safe, clean letternumbers, to the security of how fast you can do this, without really thinking.
The cart wheels away and you never think about him again, except sometimes when you wake up alone in the dark and you remember there was a time when darkness was the biggest danger of all.
A month goes by and Mr. Sorenson's smiles get bigger and he tells you to call him Lee, and you learn a little more about what the company does and even though it's carefully constructed, painted in euphemisms that don't sound like toxic or carcinogenic you can feel that $300 lunch coming up because oh god how did you get here. You smile and nod and finger the low neckline of your silk blouse and think about how good signing the lease on a new apartment is going to feel, and soon you don't have to feel anything at all.
You're 28 years old and you are poised to be something bigger, something better and so much more rewarding than caring for the dying could ever have been, you think when you soak at night in lavender water so hot your skin is red for hours. You forget the little things they taught you, prayers to ease anxiety over passing (although you do remember how they'd never say death, how it was all ways passing, or going on to the other side, or resting or any of a thousand things you wonder how many people are doing because of what your company is putting in the water) because you don't need any of that anymore.
Except that one day you do. One day you're at your desk and wondering if Lee will come by to take you to lunch (he's been looking at Sara in accounting, you hear the whispers and you want to laugh at the thought of anyone around here being accountable for anything) and for a second all you can think is that there was an earthquake but you're nowhere near anything like an earthquake and then there's no more floor and the air turns to tar churning thick over the screaming you can hear it it won't stop shut up and you reach over to whoever it is, to comfort or strike out or anything so they'll stop --
And that's when you realize you can't reach out because you don't have arms.
That's when you realize the screaming is you.
That's when you realize you're 28 and poised for something bigger but it doesn't matter because someone has to pay for what they've put in the water and you're never going to see 29.
Judy from marketing is sobbing and saying something over and over and over and you realize after a while it's the 23rd Psalm though I walk through the valley of the shadow and she gets stuck on that word, on the shadow, on the dark mist spreading across your eyes and everything and you tell her to shut up, you tell her to shut up with half a tongue and chewing on your own teeth, or what's left of them.
You tell her to shut up, because it's getting dark now and you know, you know you were right, darkness is the biggest danger of all.