So this began life as an e-mail to someone I have just met, as a matter of fact... Imagine THEIR surprise when they open the seemingly innocuous e-mail, expecting to find, "Hello!  How are you?  How was your evening?"  and uncover THIS monstrosity of macabre imagination!

Enjoy!

Reverie.

I'm sitting at my desk, a little bleary-eyed... the memory of the screwdrivers I drank last night is competing with the vague memory of belting out "Five Days in May" by Blue Rodeo to a bar packed with maybe ten people, for sole possession of my sub-conscious... my phone is ringing off the hook, and it's starting to slowly drive me crazy.  I'm thinking about how much "stress leave" I could get if I freaked out and tore it out of the wall and threw it across the office... relishing the shocked and horrified looks on the faces of my co-workers... bellowing in triumph as it tumbles end-over-end to smash against the wall, spraying digits and loops of electronic guts everywhere... a faint echo of the phone's last, desperate ring would hang in the air, the only thing breaking the sudden silence that would descend over the be-cubicled nightmare that is my office.  I figure it would take three or four of my co-workers to wrestle me to the ground by the time I got to the third phone and they realized what was happening...  it's a good fantasy... ;)

...the sounds of "Walking After You" by The Foo Fighters is coming from my computer speakers as my gaze moves slowly to the world outside my office window.  The sunlight is almost painful in it's intensity, glinting and sparkling off of the cars in the parking lot... slowly baking in the afternoon sun.  I can see lazy heat-waves rising from the roofs... and small buds of green starting to push their way boldly out of the branches, to drink the warm April air.  The buds stare bravely into a sky that is utterly without clouds, only a very thin layer of wispy cloud, lightening the startling blue shade of the sky.

My office window faces North, and what must be a major air-traffic lane for Pearson airport sends about ten or fifteen giant, lumbering airliners past my wistful gaze every day.  I often catch myself drifting as I wonder just where those people are coming from... Where have they been?  What have they seen?  What event or urge propelled them to an airport somewhere and had them purchase a ticket to come all the way to Toronto?  Or are they just stopping by on the way somewhere TRULY exotic... like Vancouver?  Is it a wedding?  A birthday?  Is someone clutching their last possessions on earth in a cheap carry-on in their lap, hoping to find a better life here?  The promise of freedom and opportunity making their heart race against their chest as they consider the future?  Or simply a vacation?  How barren and cold our home must feel to some... How crowded and loud and sinister to others...

My reverie is torn asunder by the insistent, but politely muted, ringing of the hated instrument of my barbaric fantasy... and my dreams fly from me, as gulls from a gleeful child on a white sandy beach...

Heh.  Tell me what you think of my little stream-of-consciousness story... I guess I was in the mood to write something!  :)  Does that ever happen to you?  You're sitting there minding your own business, (or someone else's business, as the case may be, since I don't HAVE a business), when all of the sudden words start piling up in your head, demanding to be written... practically forcing themselves into my fingers and onto the screen.

I feel so used.  So cheap and violated.  ;)