I enjoyed working late in the office. It was strangely fascinating, the whole floor would be empty, save for some PCs humming; the house keeping staff sweeping the floor somewhere in a corner. One last employee in the floor beneath leaves behind him, a fine metallic clink of the car keys that he tosses up on the way; the sound playfully ricochets through the stair case and finds me typing all lonely on my keyboard. The solitude that the huge building offered with its robust walls and large empty spaces was flirtatious. I would stay up all night staring into the monitor and the house keeping staff would sometimes turn off all the lights overhead. It was those moments that I was maddeningly obsessed with; I would heroically raise my hands above the cubicle and wave. ‘I, the saviour of the world; I, the primal force; I am still awake’ ah! Those moments, I loved them so much.
Through the course of the night, I would walk into the cafeteria and make some coffee for myself. Every single time I brought the mug closer to my mouth, the corrosive smell of the overheated coffee coupled with the fanatic indulgence I observed while sipping coffee made those moments all the more enduring. I would stare through the glass windows into the lawns, the staff would be on their duty, mowing the lawn, mopping the space outside the office, scrubbing the marble floor of the smoking zones.
It was in that solitude filled aimless nocturnal wanderings that I hurt myself. There was a new coffee vending machine installed in my floor. It was close to midnight when I stepped into the cafeteria. The new machine had touch sensitive push buttons on it; I filled coffee to the brim and held it up with the steam end of the steel pipe immersed in my coffee. I causally pushed the steam button and the newly installed machine gurgled out steam and spat coffee over my left wrist. I instantly dropped the coffee mug and held my wrist under the running tap beside the machine. I quickly went to my desk and rummaged through the drawers for a piece of cloth. By now the burning pain had begun creeping up to my senses, it was becoming unbearable. I rushed downstairs and recounted the gross episode to the receptionist and enquired if they had an ointment. He said he had none, but the man seemed very understanding, for he suggested that I should apply cold cream for the time being. I went back to my desk, pulled out the drawers out of their sockets and emptied the contents onto the floor to no avail.
In my frenzy and utter disregard to privacy of my colleagues, I fidgeted with few drawers around the place, pulled out the ones that were unlocked. Finally there was a cold cream in one of the drawers. I found it two cubicles away from mine. Although not relieved of pain, the cream had a slight soothing effect. I laid back my head against the cubicle’s fixtures and was about to settle into tranquillity when I noticed the object in the drawer I found the cold cream in. I looked about me, double checked if there was any one in the surroundings; my heart was pounding with sickening energy.
Comments