My Honorable Mention Story: Belonging
This won honorable mention at the Chattanooga Writers Guild contest.
Belonging
On Tuesday Wesley Cook sat in the
dining area of Unity Insurance Company, where he worked as an actuary. It was
his 45-minute lunch break. Wesley was alone, despite the lunch crowds in the
dining area. He used his time, after finishing his sandwich brought from home,
to read two chapters in a mystery novel.
He put his book down and looked up,
refocusing his eyes. “I need to make that eye appointment,” he thought. Across
the expanse of the dining room, he saw many tables surrounded by four persons.
Squinting, he noticed that these figures were unfamiliar to him. After thirteen
years at Unity, he recognized almost every person in the dining room on every
other day of the workweek. He did not know their names, but he recognized faces
and patterns of eating and interacting. He recalled those who normally ate
together. Some of those people were in the room now, but these tables of
strangers caught his eye.
“Are they visitors to the company?”
he thought. “New hires?” Well, maybe. But they weren’t dressed according to the
dress code, and they weren’t wearing identification badges. The newcomers—at
least to him--weren’t really talking to each other either. They didn’t seem to
be conversing. Nor were they eating; no sandwiches or trays of cafeteria food
sat in front of them.
“Humm,” he thought. This was a
mystery, probably more interesting than the book he had been reading. He
checked his watch. Right on schedule. He collected his book and trash and left
for his cubicle where he would continue to study the statistical tables
provided by the company.
***
On Wednesday at 12:02 Wesley
entered the dining room, bought his diet ginger ale from the vending machine,
and found his regular seat. After eating his sandwich, he opened his book and
read the next two chapters of his mystery novel.
Looking up, he rubbed his eyes.
They burned and felt dry. Focusing on the tables
and people across the wide room, he started. The same people were sitting in
the same seats as the day before, in the same clothes. Their expressions were
the same as they were on the day before.
He stared for a full thirty
seconds. Then he grabbed his trash and book and hurried back to his office.
***
On Thursday Wesley wondered if he
needed to eat outside for a change, but it was raining and 40 degrees. Perhaps
he should sit in a different seat. Yes, that was it. While he normally sat on
the west side of the fully windowed, pleasant dining space designed for the 2400
employees of Unity Insurance Company, today he sat on the east side, giving him
a totally different view.
Except that it wasn’t. He saw the
same people from a different angle. In fact, he saw more people whom he didn’t
recognize and who wore the same non-regulation clothing and badgeless shirts or
blouses.
He decided to count. There were
more of these individuals than those who “belonged.” As he counted, he noticed
that the non-belongers were noticeably passive, inert, unaffected. And they never spoke to those whom he recognized as
employees.
When he returned to his office
space, he saw Phil, a co-worker with whom he occasionally conversed.
“Phil, did you notice all those
visitors in the lunchroom today, and yesterday? There were a whole lot of
them.”
“No, Wes.
It didn’t seem any more crowded than usually. In fact, maybe less.”
“Humm. . . I
noticed them. They didn’t look familiar.”
***
When Friday came, Wes wanted to
find a way to avoid to the dining room, but the company didn’t allow employees to
eat at their desks, the weather was still bad, and it took ten minutes to get
anywhere else to eat. He thought about skipping lunch, but his hunger won out.
“I’ll ask someone else about them,” he told himself.
After seating himself, he scanned
the room, which seemed to be even more filled with the non-belongers. Before he
unwrapped his sandwich, he walked over to the table where sat two women whom he
recognized as coworkers. They were arguing over the plot of a television show.
“Excuse me, ma’am, ma’am,” he
interrupted. “I was wondering if you could help me. It seems like a lot of
people have been in the dining room the last four days, and they seem to be
visitors. Do you know anything about them?”
“What do you mean?” one of them
asked. She was heavy set and wore large red glasses. Hair like spikes jutted
from her head.
“Well, like those people over at
that table,” he pointed to four persons seated about twenty feet away.
The spikey-haired woman looked at
her companion, who seemed a bit younger and thinner and had straight,
natural-colored hair. The look made Wes uncomfortable.
After a pause, the first woman,
whose badge bore the name Rosa, said, “I’m sorry, I don’t see anyone sitting
there.” The other woman, apparently a Lisa, looked concerned.
Wes felt his face turn red. “Ok,
thank you.” He left.
***
The rest of
the day Wes could not concentrate. He decided to take a few hours of sick time and
start the weekend early. He also wanted to leave before he saw the Rosa and
Lisa again. As he drove home, he saw a woman sitting at a bus stop wearing an
18th century-style dress. “It’s too late for Halloween,” he thought
first, then wondered if there was a play or one of those festivals going on
somewhere. He saw a man in knee-length pants, like one would see in pictures of
American colonists, in the parking lot, just standing. Wes’s double takes
caused him to almost hit the car in front of him. Waiting at a light, he saw a
man dressed as if he were getting ready to play Shakespeare. Another woman was
wearing an outfit like his grandmother did in the 1950s.
The more he
looked, he saw strangers on street corners, some walking slowly, but avoiding
contact with others. Not all the strangers, he realized, were wearing
old-fashioned clothing. Some were wearing jeans and jackets, appropriate to the
weather. Some were dressed well, in business suits. And there were many of
them.
But he knew all the strangers by
the way they made eye contact with him.
***
Reaching home, Wes locked the door
to his apartment. He lived alone. He spent most of his time alone. It wasn’t
his choice, but over the years he had grown less able to change, or want to
change, that. Certainly at home, behind locked doors, these new people would
not be able to get to him, to enter his apartment.
He was
relieved that no one was in his two bedrooms and one bath, kitchen, and living
room when he reached home. He sat for a minute.
Was he hallucinating? Should he
take a pill? Get a drink? Call someone? Watch TV? Play a game on the Internet?
Would he see these strangers, these non-belongers, on the TV or computer
screen?
The worst
of the drive home was the eye contact. They looked at him as if they knew him
well and knew something he didn’t. The strangers in the dining room hadn’t
looked at him. Not yet. The ones outside the premises of Unity Insurance
Company acknowledged him.
All he knew
was that he was safe right now. If he had to keep the TV and computer off, he
could read. He could keep himself busy with other projects. Maybe he just
needed some rest. Maybe he needed to see a doctor. Maybe he was losing it.
***
But he
couldn’t stay inside indefinitely. On Monday morning he went back to work. On
the way, he saw hundreds of apparent non-belongers, many dressed in out-of-date
or historical clothing. And then he started to notice something else. They were
all about the same age. There were no children or babies or really old people,
at least as far as he could tell. Only adults.
At lunch he
decided he couldn’t stand it any longer. He approached a group of four silent,
non-eating strangers at the table where they had sat, and seemed never to leave,
the week before.
“Who are
you?” He asked. He didn’t introduce himself. They all seemed to know him
anyway.
“I don’t
know,” said the first, a woman with short brown hair and pleasant but distant
features and an expression that reminded Wes of a department store mannequin.
“Neither do I,” said a man, whose crew-cut
hair gave him an athletic look even though Wes had not seem him move.
“Me neither,” said a second man, a
little bit older than the first, with shaggy hair.
“I have a name,” said the second
woman. But she did not offer it. She was blonde and blue-eyed with childlike
features.
Figuring the
second woman had the most to say, Wes went on, “So you have names, sort of. At
least one of you. I’m Wes.” He gave his name this to be polite, not because
they seemed to want it. “But who are
you?”
“We don’t
know,” said the first man. He pointed to the childlike woman. “She does,
because she was given a name.”
“We don’t
really exist. Not in this world, we don’t,” said the first woman. “We should
have. We could have. But we don’t.”
Wes sat down, weak, fearful he
would faint. “Is this a joke? What the crap?” But there were too many of them
in on the joke. “Who are you? Do any of you really exist, or have you ever? Are
you dead? Are you all the same? Why are you adults? Why don’t you know your
names?”
“Some of us
do,” the second woman answered. “I’m Teddi. Short for Theodora. I can probably
can tell you the most. Do you see that woman over there, the one in the fur?”
He followed
her head gesture to a woman in a mink stole, smoking a cigarette in one of
those holders. She wasn’t supposed to be smoking in the dining room, but no one
was telling her to stop.
“That’s
Seranda Blake. She was the character is a series of novels in the 1950s. They
were kind of successful.”
“What about
you?” he asked Teddi.
“I was a
character in children’s stories in the 1970s. My author died young. I made her
happy.”
“So you are
all fictional characters.”
“No. I was
a baby. I died before birth. My parents were in a car accident and we all died.
They never named me.” This from the straight-haired woman.
“Me too. My
mother decided not to have me,” said the shaggy man.
Wes thought
for a minute. “So you are not real. . .”
“I was
real. He was real.” Two of them said.
“Some of us
were children parents really wanted but couldn’t have,” said Teddi, the first
to show a little emotion about their plight.
“But you
were never . . . born. Actual. Here.”
“Maybe not,
but that’s not the same as real.”
“And you,
and that woman over there, were—are—fictional. . .” he said, really just
speaking out loud to make some sense of what was going on. “So that means you
are invisible . . . potential . . . unconnected. . . real but not real. . .
like . . . ”
“You,” said
all of them in one voice.
What he
didn’t know as he parsed out this revelation was that Rosa and Lisa were
watching him hold a conversation with the air. Several others in the dining
room also observed his gestures and heard his words addressed to no one. Rosa
and Lisa called the mental health line for the company and soon the nurse
practitioner for the facility came with two security officers to escort Wes off
the premises into an ambulance.
***
Wes was allowed to go home after
three nights in the hospital, a diagnosis of stress-induced hallucinations, and
a prescription for Clozapine. He was ordered to stay home for two weeks.
At home,
Wes sat on his sofa. Since his small family that remained lived two thousand
miles away, he did not have anyone to call on. Perhaps, if he could get
outside, he could find someone who understood.
He dressed.
The first step would be the coffeehouse down the street from his complex. He
could walk there. As he entered, he welcomed the smell of holiday baked goods
and strong coffee. He looked around. The shop was full. Some of the customers
were engaged with each other or typing on a laptop or scrolling a smartphone.
These persons were too busy. He decided they were real. But others, some
dressed in modern clothes, some in outdated but stylish garments, sat quietly
in a group around a table and turned their faces to him as he approached them.
Their eyes met his.
“Come join us,” they said in
unison.
He approached one woman wearing
what looked like a flapper costume from a silent movie. She reached out and
lightly grabbed his arm.
THE
END
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