Andrew was having separation anxiety. He couldn’t concentrate. His colleague Sarah spoke – he could hear her words – but they were not being processed by his shit brain. Once again, he had lost the cap to his blue Bic pen, and he had no f*cking idea where it had gone.
“How can a pen cap just disappear?!” he screamed internally.
Despite the fact that he had lost dozens of pen caps in his life at this point – a life that was dragging, by the way – his reaction was always the same: an inability to stay calm. What if he pulled the pen out of his pocket, and it made marks all over his jeans – or worse yet – his shirt? Or what if he put it in his mouth, and it leaked, and the ink coated his tongue? He remembered a kid in elementary school – Bryan – who always had sand in his ears and ink in his mouth, and Andrew always secretly thought he was pathetic…
“So, what do you think?” asked Sarah.
“Huh?”
“About this strategy? Should we run it past Paul??”
“Oh, uhh, let me just have another look at it. And I’ll come back to you with an answer in an hour or so?”
“Ok, great. Thanks.”
Sarah walked away, and Andrew sat in silence, wishing he had been born a different human. What, in his childhood, had caused him to be like this? Probably a lot of things, he thought. Too complicated to get into now. He stared at his pen. The son of a bitch hadn’t even done anything wrong. And yet, it’s level-headedness pissed Andrew off.
Finally, he stood up, and marched over to the bin. He looked at the pen once last time, and mumbled “Fuck you,” before viciously unleashing it into the metal receptacle. A few people in the office, upon hearing the *CLANG* noise, looked over. But Andrew didn’t notice. Relief washed over him.
He walked back to his desk, and pulled out a fresh Bic pen from his backpack – one with a lid – and started to breath comfortably. For the first time all day, he felt safe again.
THE END.
Arnab Chanda 