The Last Year of Life

Day 1. Office. 9:35AM
By this time next year I won't exist any more. I started working here a little over three years ago, I was an up-and-comer, not a hot shot, but definitely expected to do some sort of something memorable. I was treated like royalty, they precociously catered to my every beckon, but I did not beckon much. Now, I exist in the hallways as a specter, like the rest of them. I listen to paper copiers churning, stale laughter, and phones buzzing like gnats inside of my ears. No one has mentioned that it is my birthday. I lean back in the old chair. I look outside of the small window of the office that I now share with a quite smelly Mr. Boris Degrand. I see the stately red bricks of the building across the alley. A pigeon is smashed to bits on the road below, ribs splayed like an open clam. A homeless man whom I have nicknamed Ozzie walks by, lips hanging low, staring at the road. I wish he'd turn and wave to me. I wish I could see mammoth cornstalks growing outside of the window, faintly swaying in a delicate wind.