Junk Ton

Have you ever noticed how fast language expands? New words pop and swell out everywhere and vocabulary is corrupted and polluted left and right. Texting and twittering continue a downward spiral, but at the same moment television is constantly disseminating local jargon into the wide world. Destroying and expanding.

But none of this is what I sat down to say. I sat down to write a story.

So, a man is working furiously on his Monday load. He is one of those desk job people who spends all his time typing and looking at screens and needs afternoon coffee to keep it together. Well, this corporate person was typing away and decided it was nigh time to speed to the starbucks and get something for his head. He locks his screen and picks up his phone.

He is thin and likes to take the stairs because he has a desk job. There is no concern about getting fat, he hasn't been fat since he was 9 months, but he does worry about all of his joints beginning to atrophy and figures a little running up and down the stairs will do him good. He still has enough kid in him that running almost always makes sense as a means of locomotion. "Why walk, when you can run."

No one is in the lobby so he picks up more speed and is almost sprinting out the exit door. He loves the heat that covers him as he leaves the cold canned air and he is instantly enjoying the break. The sky is blue and streaked with clouds, the kind that look stretched or painted with a stick instead of a brush.

One. Two.

On the second step, he is utterly crushed. Utterly and totally. Someone above him just before he left the building was in the process of re-enacting the warner brothers shtick of pushing a safe off the roof. A junk ton of empty metal.

Everything went empty. Empty and quiet.