Office Wasteland
It's Friday. Five minutes past 5:00 pm. The office is empty. Everyone is gone, except for me. It's all part of my new schedule for the next 15 weeks. I must stay an extra hour to make up for leaving at 4 pm on Wednesday, just to make it on time to my ENGL 215 class at Penn State Abington. Yes, this is the office of lost souls.
Is it an office or a corporate wasteland? Every cubicle is empty, but the lights are still on. No sense of life anywhere in the place, save for the rustling sounds of the late night cleaning staff getting an early start. No, this is an apocalypse of desolation. I'm here, but why? I survived the work week's Atomic bomb, five days of nonstop shelling, while others have fallen due to the fallout, wasted like weekend warriors.
I survey the scenery and my surroundings. Endless cubicle walls arranged like a labyrinthine maze, blocking or leading to some unknown goal. Am I a rat then? Is this the race? What a disgrace! A waste of a human soul to be trapped here forever. Working hard just for a bit of cheese, if you please, my boss. What a loss! Of time and effort, now that I see everyone is gone. Gone where? Back to their lives. I am still here at work, the place where my soul goes to die. Not a lie. A hidden truth among empty cubicle walls.
The clock strikes 6. The watchful warden says I've served my time. I walk through the glass doors and into my weekend, a two-day furlough. Then comes Monday again. A new start to the cyclical madness. A sadness that sunders my heart, so blue. A return to the Wasteland. If only Eliot knew.
---Andrew K.
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