Fifty-Year-Old Apples

Suited up in their usual spiel of black and white, carrying these trays and cups to and from, they encircle us. We are ensnared in a prison of a most eccentric design. The hours and minutes may pass freely, that granted, the scenery outside changing and the roads convulsing... Pushing its citizens out of view, anywhere and anytime. Yet these waiters and chefs remain, serving and observing habits as to increase their service quality (customers never move, but are stationary objects; and from the views of chefs behind metal structures they resemble bills).

And all at once the sun will digress beneath clouds, the horizon, and time. Only then may these services be interrupted. The waiters and chefs will shed these dressings and disappear, if only in wait for the sun and its reappearance. All at once; at one point in time.

I've been resting my elbows on this table for the better part of three hours. They'll come and question my motivations, all the while nodding at the numerous signs immaculately placed around the establishment "No Loitering". I've sinned merely by sitting here, and while they won't deign to say it, they'll entrap my debit card in yet another transaction. Coffee and toast, tea and cheese.

Yet time refuses to acknowledge a man taking no notice of it (and in this way it is nothing more than the machinations of a child). Nothing has perturbed my time here in any meaningful way, nothing.

But the expansion and collapse of each universe residing in the smallest of bubbles in the corner of foam in my coffee... I've only dreamt of such calamity. And it's nothing, nothing meaningful to me.

There's a couple, only a few tables away. They've been waiting for a chance to pull a waiter aside for whatever reason, and seem impatient. Their eyes wander, focus and swivel around. They are inhuman in their behavior, and reside in another building from me and the people around us.

In some divine act of higher power, a waiter maneuvers to their spot. I close my notebook and watch. It had taken mere seconds from the time this man reached their table for the male in the couple to rear up. I'm encapsulated, when suddenly all views are blocked, a waiter of my own appearing before me.

She informs me that my business is much appreciated, but I've sat here long enough. She seems to eye me as an object of her work, a mere variable she must maneuver for better performance.

And I want to know her name, I want to know her laugh...Does she know that only fifty years ago our apples had drastically less sugar and invariably more nutrients than today; and half of a fast-food chains' flavor comes from its preservatives... I had best let myself be maneuvered.

She doesn't realize I had been gathering my notebook and pens in an attempt to dislodge her, and continues eyeing the entrance. There, more customers wait for service toying with noticeable melancholy. She follows me to the door, and it seems her building is getting full. I know it best to keep walking, I do.

Yet I cannot help myself, I must look back and know the fate of that couple. Over the shoulders of a group taking seat near my standing I can spot the outlines of them. And they appear to still be in heated debate, as the seated men and woman around them watch.

Whatever had occurred to upset the man so can only be guessed at from this point. It seems to be over the respect shown to his lady, possibly over a bowl of soup the man appears to be gesturing to. What we wouldn't do to protect our perceived misfortune! And...

And there's wars fought for oil, dolls made of plastic that will soon end up poisoning our water, cities where the smog is deadly from emissions alone, and acid rain falls from time to time...

Out on the sidewalk, I manage to stretch my legs and look at the sky. There in the middle is a group of birds going to another unknown destination. Without cares, without jobs, and without ecstasy. What meaning can this all hold, I wonder?

And I realize the sun is still out; I have to make a visit. Avoidance out of the most peculiar fear, and anxieties I couldn't begin to describe, lead me to question my motives. Have I been holding off on this task merely out of fear?

Or is it that my hopes of walking in and having his smirk greet me become more realistic the longer I wait? To see all that had been said proved wrong, and shake his hand once more. Is that the greatest deserver of fear? To have been cheated this time spent most disturbed, shaken to the core of my existence by falsities? Would I have it in my being to forgive reality this torment afterwards? To think of any moment in time when it would be only right to shiver in recollection; being told my cat had died, being fired, being left for another man, and running out of cheap whiskey...

How was I to believe in any news so raunchy after? And only God knows how true these happenings are alone, to question at all only idiocy. Where would this newfound disbelief lead?

To wait longer would be to serve this delusion, and possibly allow it more footing in my mind. And I want more than anything to allow it... If only by trading my eyes for a friend. But I've began walking already, notebook in hand. I cannot avoid it any longer.

And so, I have reached these buildings of brick and plastic that reach into the sky as if to meet mid-way with the hand of a loving God (Although hosting the very men and women who cut into and upon our flesh in the name of good health. What a scene of morality!). The familiar smell of saline and vomit has creeped into the farthest corners of the parking garage. The greet me once more, arrogant and impudent. They demand of me to visit them as often as I once had...

My eyes wander; they declare they are their own. I've seen empty gymnasiums more interesting than this garage, yet these eyes stay out the corners of my grasping. As I scratch my way through the lobby, they hold even life. Tearing into their surroundings and eating through various scenery, they collect their meaning and bleach all else...

The halls are filled with hand gestures and half smiles, clipboards and half intended flinches, and uncontrollable expressions... The lights above us, throwing rays around haphazardly and only by the power of our provided electricity. They serve their masters, and only through sheer avoidance can we deny their simplicity.

For they are angry with us, how else can we explain the pain we feel while meeting their gaze? Yes, these lights threaten castration upon anyone daring to lift their eyes in hopes of seeing angels floating through.

"Cowards!" they shriek. "For nothing more than mortality has you in vain crying out! Have you forgotten your making so as to assume eternity?" And you, and they, and I, what have we in response?

My eyes finish their rebellion and return to me. Is it because I have arrived at my destination?

The door I stand at is brown and wooden, the walls attached holding wire-meshed windows the length of a hand to elbow. Blue light emitting from a stagnant television drains through them, and almost beckons one to enter. The cold silver of a metal doorknob is not easily grasped. It stings with its separateness, yet holds possibilities and whispers of secrets held on the other side.

I turn the knob and enter. My eyes are my own, and yet they cower to the ground. There're scratch marks on the tiles and slight dust; can they hold an exit? It's possible I'm only human in form, and at heart I resemble a child.

Reaching the bed, and looking upon its inhabitant... I feel as if to commit mutiny on this life and shake him into consciousness.

He's pale and skinny, his wrist tied to a saline drip and several monitors by way of wires and tubes. His hands are wrinkled and covered in blisters from prolonged labor, his eyes closed and seemingly focused on some ethereal plane. He's peaceful in this state. Pulling a chair towards him and sitting down, I grasp his hand.

My pocket holds the key he had given me by his lawyer. I caress it with my other hand and take notice of the individual bumps; the sharpness of its edges. This key is a weight to me, and holds the position of entry to a vault full of money in his library. Maybe I should see the inside of this vault today, in a way of fulfilling debt to him.

I reach into my black notebook, chock full with poetry and the odd observations I keep withheld from voicing. In it I find the note attached to that same key, of which the lawyer had no possible insight. And I go over it once more, holding this man's hand all the while.

"Had I envisioned myself in this predicament at youth, I'd have surely decided to riot. I haven't the capacity to measure where it all turned. I was going for a PHD you know? And now, well. Now I must fight calls of stagnation to get out of bed, calls that emit from me alone. I never thought I could want of stagnation. There was always so much to do, so much to see. This life, it has a way of breaking you. There's no glory to the things we must do. Working in such a place as I have, I'm no more than a cog you know? I haven't the need for thought or decisions; merely to grab and turn, and place and hold, repeat and repeat. What a way they have of finding work for us. I haven't even the need to measure! Any respectable man would cry out. The lack of life in these places... Why, they don't need bodies for this, they need more machines. 'You must keep up pace!' They'll cry out. We're kept on until machines drop in price. Our pace is no determinate of when we may leave, not alone. The machines themselves fail, out of lack of maintenance, and keep us on sometimes twelve hours daily almost at weeks' time. Will we still be seen worthy of existing when we're no longer needed to grab and pull and place? Are we even seen worthy of it now, when our wages are measured only by decrease throughout the years? And it's not this way out of necessity my friend, oh no. We've created this in our lack of responsibility. Where can you point out men who fight for existence as a right in itself? Oh, there's no words for how I have been crushed here..." I grasp his hand a little tighter. "... And I cannot see another man such as myself fall into the same fate. No, I cannot watch you compromise your existence on such trivialities such as theses. Where would we be, if only stopped in silent decorum, decided we hadn't the need for half of our products? Men such as you and I (as far as I believe, that is. Who am I to judge the soul of another?) we belong to the true human cause. I wish for you to see this gift I have bestowed as a way out, at least temporarily. Gain your time back through this; attempt to escape this fate..."