Job Hunting

When I woke up, the autoplay had wormed its way to a video analyzing what to concern yourself with as Mercury heads into retrograde. Hard to believe it got all the way there in sixish hours from “Do Mushrooms actually talk to Trees??” The internet tells us so much. So much.

The entire universe was all pointing directly down at me and what I was undertaking today. The solar system hyperfocused on my task, according to this news. A line through the stars and planets shining as a ray down on my head. A cosmic siren. Everything was for today.

Ever since I was little, I’ve known that if I can just get rich, everything else will be OK. Life’s petty little problems and struggles would simply melt away if I can attain a large enough hoard of wealth and gold to sit my scaly haunches atop. Bury my sorrows in jewels and gems.

The earliest lessons I remember were in compound interest. The scaffolding upon which I constructed myself.

What walks around my life, wearing my skin, is an invention of my own. Where most people would have had bits of self bubble up from within, floating toward the surface and becoming a person, I have spent my life reaching out to the world around and slapping pieces of it on my carapace. A papier mache facade, to be what that outside needs me to be. I am of it and for it. And I will take from it.

That visage will be accomplishing its goal after all these years. Or, at least, taking the first step on that final path to the promised land. So many years of pasting bits onto the outside while the chasm within stayed as hollow as ever, a gaping maw ready for the rush of wealth. A life dedicated to becoming a vessel of accumulation. 

I am now mere steps away from the building where my financial future awaits; The Trading Firm, where I can be a vessel through which money and wealth and exorbitance flows, allowing bits of it to cling onto me just as I have with an identity. More layers on the outside.

The deluge awaits.

It was time for the pivotal test of the shell surrounding my empty void. The fulcrum upon which my future tilted was in sight. 

At a certain point, my life had simply become one great acting role. It’s tough to say when it was, or whether it was gradual or the result of some specific occurrence. I had made myself the perfect actor; all I had was my role, and all it was for was right in front of me.

My interview this morning to become a trader at the Trading Firm.

Once my self has crossed into that world, earned a seat in the monument dedicated to taking money and making it into your own, etched my name into the halls through which flowed the purest thing in the universe, it would be worth it. Every ounce of sweat and energy I’d poured into creating this homunculus encasing me would be validated. All the space I left so wisely empty and waiting could be filled to bursting with fantastical wealth that would sustain me through my dying day and beyond. This is it.

Up ‘til now had been a life of rehearsal. Today, the performance. 

The rotating glass door at the front of the lobby served as my stage entrance. Every time my character failed me up until now could be forgiven as a learning experience, and every time after will be softened by the fact I will already have wormed my way in. My false face and lying smile would bring to me what I’ve always desired. The only thing I’ve known to want. All I’ve been taught.

Many yards of shiny marble flooring offered me an opportunity to sink further into my character step by step. My approach to the receptionist acted as cue.

“Good morning!” she was more cheerful than someone ought to be at this hour. “Do you have an appointment with someone in the building?”

“Yes, I’m interviewing today with the Trading Firm,” I respond in a cold, stoic tone that should show how serious I am about accumulation.

“Oh, yes they’re expecting you! The elevators are around the corner and your interview will be on floor 13.”

“Thanks, I’ll head up.”

“OK, good luck!” She had a look of absolute encouragement that accompanied the phrase.

‘Huh,’ I think to myself walking to the bank of elevators. ‘If I’m supposed to be acting, shouldn’t it be “Break a leg?”’

In one dramatic yank, the long wall that protected us from outside looked as if it was pulled out; no explosive force went off on the inside from what I could see. Whatever decided the wall was to be displaced worked from outside the lobby.

The stage was in tatters for the performance of a lifetime. But somehow, my empty frame knew not to panic.

What were once de facto curtains was now a massive hole in the side of the lobby, looking out into what was now a darkened and red landscape outside. So much dust and smoke and choking dirt swirled about it was hard to tell where you ended and the toxic mire in the air began.

An enormous beam of light was pointed right down to the spot outside the hole, extended upward to the heavens and beyond through space. He walked calmly from the light.

All around him was a more chaotic scene than I thought possible. It wasn’t just people running and screaming, although that certainly gave things a tension. It was what they were reacting to that put the whole event over the top.

Hellish cracks split through the sidewalks, sulfur and flames erupting from them and scalding anyone close enough to their blast. The sky had turned a dark grey and blood red, clouds and soot blotting out any of the previously beautiful day that hid behind. Lightning curled up against itself across the grim fresco, violent and inevitable.

The foul emissions from the core of the world were not the only thing breaking through from below. In small splits, always under a bystander, winged beasts colored a sickly brownish red, eviscerating people on their way up. At other spots, loud bangs could be heard from crashes against the bottom of the ground, but not underneath people. It was as if they couldn’t make it up unless it was at the expense of someone who simply happened to be in their way. 

Blood and viscera began to flood the shattered concrete. The demons didn’t stop their annihilation with their entry; they went around to anyone they saw who was weak enough to fall. You’d think they wouldn’t since that would make it harder for their own kind to come up. Truly a mess. 

The man from the light was unfazed by the cacophony. Without a trace of alarm registering from the pandemonium swirling all around him, he had calmly closed the distance between his unholy spotlight and where I stood on the edge of what used to be a lobby. Under my feet lay a number of items from neighborhood schools’ sports victories hung by the local credit union who shared the lobby. Ruined.

His suit was pure white, almost glowing against the absurdly bleak backdrop. The look in his eyes was one of total comfort, welcoming me home after years of growing weary with travel. An open door on the front porch, I could smell the kitchen from just beyond.

“You’ve finally made it, my child,” he said without moving his mouth. I guess I can’t be sure it was him. But it was like a warm blanket to hear those words and look in his eyes. What I had been waiting my whole life for.

He held out his hand. I knew I needed to take it. It’s why I was here.

The moment his flesh, cold and cracked, touched mine, I shared his utter peace. None of the awful misery that had befallen everyone else around could penetrate my shell of absolute calm. As we walked toward the light, I looked around at the violence and destruction that rushed in to fill the void, and the man did not.

We stepped into the beam of light, that shot through the stars in the sky to point right down to me, today. This is it, I thought.

“This is it,” the man said.

As I began my ascension, it was a complete separation from everything outside the light. Anything I might have felt about the people down there being torn apart, vanished as if a breeze coming through was enough to blow it out into so much dust in the air. What happened to them and why, was something for the world before I took the man’s hand. None of it could get through the shell I had spent my life building. Serving its purpose when it was most needed.

Now that I am in the light, I have made it.

In the light. Of the light.

Whereas the din of the hellscape that spread out over the city center below couldn’t get through my carapace, the light had no problems. It was just as well. More of it sinking into my bones, filling my empty cavity with a burning relentlessness, moving out to fill every bit of me. It’s what it was there for. 

I started at the firm two weeks later. I have no personal items at my desk.