A new currency.

[LMNO]

Ugh.  This day is the worst.  My computer started bleeding, and when I called the Help Desk, all I could hear was a low keening sound, and the static over the line was spelling out blasphemies using the original Enochian Keys.  Plus, the coffee machine stopped working.  I'm seriously considering calling the temp agency and requesting another assignment.

[Eater of Clowns]

The radio station piped in just above audibility through the intercom repeats the same songs at the same times every day. It takes a week for us to notice the exactitude and another before we start memorizing them. But even when we can just barely make out the words above the office hum we can't quite get the songs down right. They are familiar, they are the same songs, but if we try to mutter along with the words or tap out the rhythm it changes, just a little. And I'm not sure, I'm not sure but I think the same word in every one of them, spaced throughout the day at even intervals. Bliss...bliss...bliss...bliss

[minuspace]

The suspicion is getting stronger.  Putting aside yesterday's pantomime of authority, it seems that recent operational changes are less due to transitions in upper management and more directly related to what's happening right here.  The hazmat perimeter is moving forward and closing on our building.  Small mole rats have started nesting in what's left of Paul's cranium and I'm sick of telling Dave not to eat what he repeatedly thinks are cheesy noodles being voluntarily dispensed by his other colleagues' skulls. Facebook has become invaluable to sorting all this out. 

[LMNO]

God has put an out-of-office notice on his email.  His return is indeterminate.

[Eater of Clowns]

Sometimes new faces appear along the vast rows of us and we moths flutter to their light and the next day the light is gone and we settle to our cold dark spots on the line, things that could fly and know beauty but with natures too panicked and habitual to do more than sit and wait for the next brief perfect flame, the addiction so complete that rarely a thought is paid to how those spaces are emptied in order to be filled.

[Eater of Clowns]

In the conference room down the hall there's a daily meeting of people none of us recognize. They're dressed in suits cut to precision and shuffle their way around the long table drawn and hungry. The meetings go for an hour before they leave again, ambling lazily around the rest of us, buttons of their shirts undone to allow them to drape around swollen bellies. Their eyes are glazed over and sometimes a sheen of drool or grease glistens but nobody ever brings any food into it and when they leave the room it's spotless.

[LMNO]

We are lost. Moorless, without hope, adrift in a sea of request vouchers.

There are things in the hallway. Things with teeth. Chattering. Chatter.

The water cooler becomes a refuge. Dandruff and stubble becomes a calendar.

How long?

How long?

A solitary phone peals its shrill tone, plaintive, demanding.

It's a trap. I can hear the teeth.

[Pæs]

I asked Dave today, I said "Dave, I'm having a little trouble understanding the hierarchy of this organisation."

I said, "Dave, I was wondering whether you could help me out. I report to you, as does the rest of this team, but who do you report to?"

Something about the way he said it, you know. About the way he replied. "The Consumers".

Capital C, like. I'm having trouble putting faith in an innocent interpretation of that.

[minuspace]

Poor Dave.  I think he was the first to realize where the call was really coming from.  It all went from being a fun circus of creepy little mamels to a murderous horde brain of weevils, very quickly. I got mine hooked-up to a pre-amp, delay unit, overdrive distortion, and YouTube.  Yummy.
[Ed. Weevils, prepositions]

[minuspace]

It was easy it seemed so easy. The guy spoke English, great English. I felt like I hadn't spoken in ...

This is what death is. One day I stopped controlling myself directly and became the puppet of a previous me that hung against two eye windows who had himself one day lost control to a previous him hanging from a portrait without eyes.

...

One day death will come to have eyes of his own.  Then release him on his own recognizance.  That would be splendidly provident for ALL necronomicoin options on futures.  Physicists predict the resultant negative entropy density to be non negligible or negotiable, like rising interest rates.

[LMNO]

Interesting. Lucifer Xs posts actually make sense in this context.

[Eater of Clowns]

Days later we were at the Bogota Beer Company. My pre-travel self would have scoffed at visiting the most Americanized cervezaria in Colombia. My pre-travel self was not battered by long roads and bad bacteria and a sense of boiling unreality stressing the veneer of the world.

I sat at a little table on the patio by the public square, sharing it with my father and step-mother. I was quiet with the learned surety that my words were meaningless. It would take most of the pitcher we were splitting before I realized that my companions could actually understand me. Absently I flicked a Necronomicoin around my fingertips, playing at it in the light that wouldn't touch it.

"They're English speakers at the next table," I said. "They're from Minnesota, Florida, and Georgia, respectively. The girl from Minnesota is self-conscious about displaying a Midwestern accent, but it's the one from Tallahassee that has the most pronounced accent. They're going to ask me to take their photo in a few minutes when their last friend arrives. I usually have a +1 policy where if I take a photo of them, they have to take one with me. I can't tell if this comes off as fun or douche but I think it's a great time," I pause. No feedback from either of them.

I take a long pull from the pint of Roja. Then a longer one. "The Georgian guy lives in the shadow of his older brother, an officer with the Air Force. He tried to follow the family military tradition but he's no warrior. He doesn't know what he is, or that's what he says. What he does know is that he's a happy office worker, the oblivious uncomplicated kind that everyone else resents and tries to rope into their misery sessions but can't pin down. So he's friendly with them but he leaves the office behind when he's out of work and comes on adventurous little getaways with distant friends to South America or Southeast Asia, places his co-workers wouldn't go near without the magic words All Inclusive Resort before them."

I continued staring off into the street and the square beyond and drinking. Between the little glass partitions and the tiny sculpted hedges a young woman walks by on the street. She's wearing a blue hat with a wide brim that just barely conceals her face and loose golden rings of hair tumble out beneath it, bouncing in the sun. We make eye contact and there's a hint of playful smile before she went on her way.
My mouth was hanging open, so I filled it with more beer.

"Anyway the pilot that's going to come in when they all leave, the Seahawks fan? He's an in control kind of guy, happy with his career, happy with his family and the special certification he earned to fly into Bogota. He thinks he's got marriage all figured out with these 36 hour trips around the globe but that's going to blow up in his face real soon. It's too bad, he's an alright guy, but it's too much on his wife. Being married to a pilot was sexy when it first started but now it's really wearing on her. It doesn't help that he's a handsome man and she's a little concerned about her looks fading. Poor thing." Silence.

I poured myself another glass. My father didn't look like he's drinking it and my stepmother won't touch the stuff. Couldn't let it go warm.

The girl in the blue hat was back. She floated up the two steps onto the patio and breezed past our table. I'm greedy for that hint of smile again but this time there's no eye contact as she says hello to our waitress in Spanish, kissing one another on the cheek, and walks into the bar.

"Cheers," I said, half to myself, and attacked my glass again. I went to refill it with the pitcher. "Dad, need a top off?" Again, no answer.

My father has been frozen still for a half hour. So has my step mother and the table of young Americans next to us. One man across the patio alone with his book appears to be at my own speed, smoking leisurely away and absorbed in his reading. A trio of businessmen at another table are moving in double time.

I excused myself just in case everything readjusted again while I was in the bathroom, rubber band time taught once more before another deliberate pluck sent it awry. The girl in the blue hat was leaned over the bar talking to the bartender. She remained there while I walked back out again.

The pilot was in the spot of the group of four Americans but he was just as stuck as they were, Seahawks hat and pink shirt unmoving. Just as I sat, the girl exited the patio and stood by the stairs. She unfolded a newspaper and began looking across the pages.

"We need to go home. Home to Massachusetts. The air is thinner here but so is everything. I need a thicker reality."

"Huh?" came the reply. Everything was moving normally again.

"Nevermind. Want to order another pitcher?"

"J."

"Yeah?"

"J," he gestured behind me.

The girl in the blue hat was standing at the next table and looking over. She looked at me and asked me something. It was in Spanish. Of course I wouldn't be able to speak to this beautiful woman.

"No hablo espanol," I said. That line I had practiced.

"That's okay. I speak English," she smiled.

I stood up, "I'm J," and I held out my hand.

"Lara," she said, resting her own lightly in mine. "I was trying to get your attention. You seem like an interesting person. Would you like to talk?"

"Of course. Let's speak outside."

[Eater of Clowns]

My father and stepmother disappeared. Lara and I took the table over. I would take a taxi back to the apartment if I needed to. Colombia was green in the lush valleys and the glittering emeralds and in Lara's gaze. We sipped beer slowly and we talked about her home city of Cali and about what brought us both to Bogota. We joked and she threw back her head to laugh and I forgot about the last six awful months and the overwhelming week and all about Necronomicoin.

I forgot about Necronomicoin. I reached into my pocket and touched the one in my pocket. The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

I finished my pint and excused myself, ducking off for the bathroom.

She'd ordered me another glass while I was gone.

"You like the Roja, right," she smiled perfectly.

"Si, mi gusto. Delicioso, gracias," I said reflexively.

She held that smile, looking at me. She glanced at the glass.

"We both know I won't be drinking this, Lara," I said.

"Why not?" she asked, her innocence flawless.

"A charming, gorgeous girl like you? A guy like me? You aren't just flirting with me to practice your English."

"Like I said, I thought you looked like an interesting person," she faltered.

"You're the sort of girl that a guy takes back to the hotel and finds himself waking up the next day in a bathtub full of ice. No memory of the night and a neat little fresh scar on his abdomen. You aren't after kidneys, of course."

She shifted in her seat. "I think maybe I should go," she said.

I reached into my pocket again and pulled out the Necronomicoin. I laid it flat on the table and slid it with my forefinger across the flat surface, pushing it to the center. Lara's eyes stayed on it, transfixed.

"You know what this is," I said.

She nodded.

"You know exactly how much this particular one is worth," I said.

She nodded again.

"I need your help, Lara."

Befriend The Thief.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I expect to see more of this.

As for your question, the initial punch in the gut has faded.  Now it's story.  One is not better than the other, and people who can do both in one tale are fortunate.

So keep going.

[Junkenstein]

Caught up. Vexed that I have nothing yet to contribute. More of this!