Chapter 6, The Company [Part 1 of 2]
My attacker turned out to be a friend of mine. She had crept up behind my seat on the bus and placed me into a gentle chokehold whispering gruffly into my ear.
“Surprise motherfucker.”
The voice uttering the sweet sentiment I recognized immediately as belonging to Sophia, and my feeling of panic that had taken over as soon as I had felt someone placing their arm around my neck faded. She thankfully released me and moved into the set next to mine.
Sophia and I had met early-on in college in one of our required courses for the computer science degrees we were both pursuing at the time, our friendship coming easily given that we both had a bit of an issue with following instructions as well as a healthy hatred for the institution we were attending. We shared knowledge with each other, large amounts of marijuana, and found that our company of one another was often beneficial for the both of us.
Sophia was a slender wispy girl and through all the years of school committed herself to the waif appearance of ripped jeans, ironic t-shirts, and ear-copped blonde hair with a streak of pink. A look she still fiercely maintained to this day as she sat next to me wearing a black t-shirt with only the word ‘woke’ across the center. She grinned at me as she decided to grill me about the current state of things.
“Where the hell have you been Bunny?”
“Working. Well—I quit my job actually. Today.”
“No shit? Why?”
“Got another. Starts on Monday.”
“Damn. I knew you’ve always wanted a career in toilet sales, I just didn’t think you’d find one so soon.”
“Shut up.”
I smirked at her reference to a shared memory of ours. We had both attended a career fair at the school and thought it would be in good nature to write ‘toilet salesmen’ as our desired field on the questionnaire we turned into the recruiting office at the end of the fair. The humor of the situation had culminated when we had both been contacted by an unwary manager of the local Home Depot looking to hire students for summer work in their plumbing department.
She smiled back as she continued the interrogation. “What is it then?”
“Some company. Ling Logistics. They want me to be a cryptocurrency manager.”
“The fuck is that?”
“Like Bitcoin.”
“Yeah—I know dude. What do you actually do though?”
“Yeah. Not sure yet.”
“Sounds legit.”
“Probably a scam. I’ll find out Monday.”
The bus turned on to Division Street and headed towards the bus stop near the coffee shop that Sophia worked in and she pressed the button to signal the driver to stop.
“Well text me and let me know about it. Well—if you’re not murdered.”
“Okay."
“We’re smoking at the golf course Friday night—you coming?”
“Yeah, still down. Pending my murder.”
Sophia popped in her head phones and gently exited the rear door of the bus in her most waif-like fashion, either waving or flipping me off as she walked up the street as the bus pulled away. It was good to see her but our conversation had left me thinking again about exactly what I was getting myself in to.
That was Friday.
It was Monday morning now—more specifically the second Monday from which I had been instructed by the irritated man on the phone to arrive at my new job. I had walked from my apartment early so that I could get familiar with the route I would be walking which turned out to be much shorter than I estimated. I sat at a bus stop directly across the street from the address on Burnside Road that had been provided to me through email and stared at my new place of employment.
The office building was a dismal looking thing. A small two-story building of pale yellow paint that was probably constructed somewhere around 1980. The small building sat in the corner of a parking lot of cracking asphalt, the white lines of the individual parking spaces barely recognizable from decades of sunlight and tire-wear. A sign above the glass double-door entrance read Ling Logistics and contained a faded image of a green Dragon in an oriental design—a few cars in the parking lot the only signs that the building was still in use.
I looked at my watch and saw that it was only a few minutes before 9 o’clock, realizing that it was time to find out what exactly I had stumbled my way in to. I gave a long sigh, picked up my backpack, and walked toward the entrance.
This was most certainly an employment decision made by a person of a most reliable mental state.
Ether Rabbit is a living story I am authoring exclusively on Steemit. If the story shows support, I will continue it. If support goes away, the story ends. I'll let the community decide.
