(55 years ago)

news&updates

Jan
5

the efficiency monologues – Josie

Alex was an Efficiency Expert.

Not a sterling first line but it’s short, concise and gives you the information you need to move forward.

I was going to start with “Alex designed, developed and evaluated integrated systems for production processes to increase efficiencies across an organization” but then I thought “How would Alex say that?”Alex was an Efficiency Expert.

For the purposes of this story it doesn’t really matter what he does for a living.

Or does it?

You be the judge (without being judgmental, if that’s possible).

That night he had three dreams scheduled;

  1. The one where he has sex with the neighbor (the wife… for a change).
  2. The one where he wins the lottery.
  3. The one where he designs a better integrated system for a production process and increases efficiency across his organization.

The first two dreams go off without a hitch.

The third however…

began with him rising from his bed and sleepwalking to his own front door. He took a few steps back from his front step and began a monologue;

 

“What happens when you lose your voice.

Instead of talking you choke up. Like you’re going to cry. All the time.

Just to relieve the pressure of all the things you cannot say.

And you can’t even remember why it is that you cannot say them.

You tell yourself they were stupid anyway.

Probably they would have revealed you as the fool you are.

Unfit for human understanding. Unfit for human conversation. Unfit for human anything.

So. Better to be silent. Better to go and stick your head in an oven. Or in a bowl of water. Breathe in water instead of air. Or in a pillow. Fill yourself with something different. `

Gas

Water

Feathers

Anything to fill this awful empty.

Anything.”

 

He then went back inside, climbed the stairs to his bedroom and went back to sleep. He only knew about what he’d done that night because he’d recently installed a new doorbell that records everyone and everything that happens in front of it. He watched himself the next morning.

He’d never seen Kristen Palmer’s play Once Upon a Bride There was a Forest so he had no idea how he could recite something from it word for word.

He had no idea what it could possibly mean.

That’s where you come in.

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