Peter, Mike, John and Diana
(Los Angeles)
The annoying grinding hum of the mail machines overpowered the tired cries of the employees as their lives were methodically sucked into the machines and mailed to some foreign destination. Many of the machines had dreams of becoming something other than envelope stuffers, dreams of being a jet fighter nobly defending a nation from foreign threats or a life saving machine which brought back children from the edge of death or a real cool motorcycle which blew away any pursuing cop but, instead, they were forced to the demeaning task of stuffing envelopes full of annoying bills and junk mail which only irritated the receiver. Dreams are sadly deficient at providing a life so the machines were forced to dwell in this existence, tormenting their swarms of humans attendants to uplift their spirits by breaking down for no reason or trying to stuff one of their hands into an envelope and mail it to North Dakota.
One of their human attendants was named Peter. His father, who was ecstatic to have a male child after the first three were female, named him. His mother just wanted a better form of birth control.
Peter believed that people in cahoots with the dark and cruel forces of evil created the concept of work, not that on a given day he had anything against evil things. And he had theories beyond just work. Machines in, his mind, were designed to remove fun and humor from the otherwise playful and joyous world. Neither of these beliefs aided Peter in creating a meaningful and productive work environment. Peter fixed his attention on the button on his machine, which he had yearned to caress since he was hired. The button had graceful curves and was a beautiful shade of red plastic. On a small sign above the button bright yellow words stated that the button was to only be pressed in the event that a body part had become hopelessly entangled in the machine, especially if the letters were going to North Dakota. Peter glanced around him to see if anyone was looking and seeing no one of peculiar worth he pressed the button eight times saying as he went along, “a shave and hair cut two bits.”
The machine let out a loud grinding sound, and after two minutes of death throes, parts began spewing out of it and spilling onto the floor. “I'll never be a fire engine,” it gasped with its last breath. A siren sounded and a neat red light above Peter's work area flashed like a little sister alerting the world of its older sibling's mistakes.
“Being me is so hard,” Peter grumbled to himself.
Yells of discontent came from Peter supervisor’s office. While pushing the button greatly eased Peter's boredom and satisfied his sense of curiosity it in no manner whatsoever endured him to his employer.
“Yo! Mikey! I did it! I finally pushed the button!” yelled Peter in a futile attempt to get Mike's attention over the deafening roar of the machines. Desiring some form of acknowledgement Peter proceeded to shoot a rubber band towards Mike. The rubber band tagged Mike on the forehead, which did get his attention, and then flew into Mike's machine that got its attention. The machine, who did not appreciate Peter's humor, let out cries of anger and began spitting out envelopes and black smoke.
“What the hell?” muttered Mike as he looked up at the ceiling trying to figure out what had caused the current episode of pain he was now entangled in.
A very upset supervisor then entered the scene. His body was shaking with intense emotion. “You!” he howled, “You complete idiots!”
Mike shouted angrily, “Hey! You can’t talk to us like that! We are employees.”
“Wha?” the supervisors blurted almost unable to speak.
“Jerk,” Peter growled, snapping his fingers in the supervisor's face.
“I don't want to hear another peep out of either of you two. I've lost half my hair since I hired you two! I've developed some painful cyst on my tongue!” screamed the supervisor giving the impression that he was not a fun person to be around, “I've got seven different types of eating disorders! You're killing me! Slowly but surely killing me! I gave you two endless chances. Did I do anything when you screwed up the mailing addresses and sent ten thousand bills to random people across the globe?”
“You'd think at least one would get to the right person,” sighed Mike, “just by mere chance—”
The supervisor screamed at the top of his lungs, “Shut-up! I mean it! Shut-up. And I could have even forgiven you for that incident with the rats! Did you know I still get calls from the human society?! But no, you two kept pushing it! You've destroyed five machines and started four fires and I'll never get that smell out of the bathrooms. And I know it was you two that put that notice in all the bills stating service was being discontinued because of the second coming of Christ! Did you know one person had a heart attack and seven tried to kill themselves?”
“You’d think one of them would have got it right, eh?” asked Peter.
“And I can't prove it was you who kept making crank calls to the FBI from my office but it was you wasn't it? The FBI did not find that amusing. They're still tapping my telephone. But, do you want to know why I didn't fire you two?” the supervisor let off a chain of insane laughter then continued, “I didn't fire you two because I decided to keep you instead just so could make your life hell! Complete hell! Hell! That's right hell! But that didn't work though; I'm not very good at creating hell, not like you! And then you brought in the Union! I didn't even know there was a local envelope stuffers Union 626. But, screw the damn Union. You're both fired! Ha ha! Both of you, fired. Take my job and shove it! Go on, get! Leave me! Ha ha ha! Then I’ll be free! Ha ha!” The supervisor began shaking and laughing uncontrollably.
“Hey? Didn't you know?” stated Peter gently, “We both quit yesterday. Today is our last day. We move north. South bad.”
“It really kind of sad though,” sighed Mike, “because I found this job to be so fulfilling, in a dead-end blue collar way.”
The supervisor lunged towards Mike missing him and slamming into a paper feeder to one of the machines. “Arrrr,” he cried as he was slowly sucked into the machines that was dutifully trying to mail him to South Dakota.
