Dead with His Shoes On



Another day, another clean perfect day, his perfect day had started with another perfect morning. He drove down, in his car, his white car, his spotless white car. Zipping about the empty streets (he always arrived early). He zipped by the streets zapping past all those up early. Work, work, work he thought! "I've got myself some work." He said aloud, than quickly closing his mouth, he didn't want the people the hear, he didn't want them to have to think about things more than they should, lord knows what problems that would lead to. Chaos he thought awful godless chaos. Unorganized thought flying about unchecked; it would lead to some terrible, terrible things. So he closed his mouth and smiled, etched a big wide smile across his face and then ran his hand across. "Not wide enough" he mumbled behind his clenched white (straight!) teeth. He made his smile a little wider, felt it, he could feel the lines pressing down his skin, it was a deep smile alright, the kind of smile that makes other smiles! The kind of smile that keeps on giving and does not scare people! Nobody has any right to be scared anyway, if their busy being scared, then they're simply being busy with no right business. Or being busy busying themselves with a lack of business! If they're being busy than they've got free thoughts in their head's sailing around. Free thoughts, distracting thoughts, distractions which would lead to chaos!

He stroked his face again, yes those lines could be permanent, perfect, he thought. He reached out and tilted the passenger mirror; it gave him a little blast dewy morning sunshine, he nearly drove off the road! He corrected himself spinning the wheel frantically, it squealed out like a baby pig. "Oh-ho-ho" he laughed through his teeth, he'd had the good will not to lose his smile during that brief misadventure. He'd been distracting himself, he thought, not good. Distractions lead to freethinking, freethinking leads to madness! And that was not good, hell! It was bad, a very bad thing indeed.

He twisted the mirror a little, giving himself a chance to examine himself. It didn't really matter if he took his eye off the road for a moment. He wouldn't reach the crossroad for a good thirty seconds, that and there'd be nobody crazy enough to be up at this hour. He wasn't crazy however, he really liked his job. He really liked how, neat it was. This thought made him chuckle, made him grate his teeth, he broke his smile for a moment, he almost slapped himself for that. It had been a nice joke, neat. Because he had a nice tidy job and because it was, well, neat, cool, even.

Speaking of cool, he thought. He turned up the window, it was a nice bright morning, but the sun was cold, how silly of it he thought. A big glowing cold sun, what a waste, now if he were the sun he'd have the right mind to warm himself up when he'd be on display like that, how disorganised he thought. How disorganised, how dirty, how disgusting, rotten, yuck, he thought.

He glanced in the mirror again, yep, that was a good smile. "Tipping both tips of the cheeks" he mumbled behind his teeth. His smile was getting wider, cleaner, great! Nope, nothing dirty here, he looked down to his suit, to cheek it. It was dreadful, awful! There was a spot on his tie! A big brown dirty spot, he thought. Like, like, like a big piece of shit! No, no, no how, how could this have happened? He'd cleaned it, pressed it, he'd gone through it a dozen times! What could have happened here! It was so damned obvious too, the big brown spot there, right off centre amongst the black of tie, there was no way he could make that look intentional. His face started to turn red, he felt his smile peel back, oh no, he could not let that happen. This little smudge was ruining everything. He could feel himself fall apart, piece by piece, each fragment being lost somewhere, not only did it feel like he was losing himself, but he would not even be allowed the dignity of falling apart in a cleanly manner!

He was peeved, absolutely fuming. He had half a mind to turn around, he had half a mind to just give in, park to the side and spend the day screaming to himself until he got the bloody point! He had the other half of his mind telling him he should just give in, throw the wheel to the left and crash into that building in the side and end it now, he deserved it too. He then wondered were there really three halves to things? He thought back, yes, he must be right; it was two thirds, three halves, right? He didn't have time to think of math, he had more important things to ponder on. Besides what was the point of having all those numbers running around, it'd drive a man mad! As mad as he felt, he wanted to hit something, hit himself even! He deserved it, he couldn't believe, he couldn't believe how disorganised he'd been! Yes, he'd been disorganised! If the boss heard about this, he'd be out of the job, then he'd have nothing to organise himself. He'd fall apart; fall apart at the seams, just like so many others he'd seen. Just like Mother, he thought. Falling apart like that, having him clean so much of that mess, literal and otherwise, oh, how dare she do that! That brown spot on the tie, was it a reminder! Well it wasn't a very pretty one. A big spot of… of… shit it looked like.

He slammed the brakes and sat in the middle of the street, timeout he thought. He crossed his arms and fumed, he'd lost his smile now. It was a big ugly frown, an anti smile! He was red too, so red, it didn't even match his lovely grey suit. He couldn't help himself; he grabbed himself by the tie. He started to choke himself; he grabbed it with both his hands and pulled it from the neck, then pulled it back against the neck. He felt the tight pressure begin to choke him. He started to lurch, to struggle, but he like it. With every lurch his heart seemed to smile, he got his smile back again. It hurt, it really hurt, he felt his eyes bulge, he felt a great pressure behind them, he thought they'd burst, they hurt, but he liked it. He liked it, he thought, like some people liked candy, it felt sweet.

He saw his reflection in the mirror, he saw each eye become progressively red, as if tracing the spread of an infection, he then thought of his Mother, and that time, we'd she'd been the most dirty, when she'd really fallen apart, her eye's had been red too. He stopped. He also noticed the brown spot was gone. So he went on his way, when he was nearly there he realised he didn't really like this suit, it was too dark, everybody else had a lighter grey, he'd need to get a new one, he didn't want to distract people. Lord, he thought, if I see disorganised people in the work place, who knows what I'd do!

He started work immediately, it seems his little episode on the way had lost him some precious time, almost everybody was already here. He started straight away. "Fixin' up the internet" he mumbled aloud, he was still smiling, nobody else was, that disappointed him… but he wouldn't give in! He'd make everybody happy, everybody should smile all the time, it's fun and doesn't hurt a bit.

He had to clean up all the funny things that had happened all around the internet. Let us see, he thought. "Delete that, move that, edit that, love this!" he spoke to himself.
Suddenly, one of his associates walked in, the boss wanted to see him, it must have been about a promotion, of course, so he walked straight in.

The boss was a big well maintained man, but his speech was so crude, he thought it needed cleaning. The boss started to speak. "Look, you're outta the job. Just, ya did a great job an' all. But, you're out. The people well, can't stand you, you're creepy, you're a freak, frankly an' a government office doesn't want anything to do with ya. So you're out, you're making 'em all paranoid, they start to think about things then and we can't have that. So you're out."
The man shrunk in the chair, he felt really dirty, he wanted to be cleaned up and thrown away somewhere were nobody would see how dirty he was. "Wh-wh-what should I do then, sir."
"I don't freakin' care; hang yourself by your damn dirty tie if ya want! Geez, you should really clean up too, have ya ever seen how dirty ya are? Damn I mean, I can't believe I didn't fire ya earlier."

He realised he'd not cleaned anything in a while, but he'd felt so clean, free of her, his Mother, he'd felt so clean. He hadn't thought he needed a wash. He guessed he was wrong about the way things really work. He really was dirty; there were big brown spots everywhere. He thought about it, he'd hang himself. He pictured his nice pale clean body, in a nice perfect little box. Everything so tidy and thought out, he really liked the idea.

So he left the room. Took a chair, placed it under the fan and tied a cord in a noose shape. He thought about it all. He'd die with his shoes on, what a wonderful death; it'd show how dedicated he was. So he hung himself.