9 Letter Magic Words

Countless cups of tea line her desk as she taps taps taps on her computer playing her important part in the all-too-significant 12 feet by 9 feet office . Not cubicle but the Office which accommodates three other not-so-significant and much unoccupied office boys and a secretary with a jaundiced liver. A word passes, a lewd song that will play in countless taxis and rickshaws moves in and out of her head as her fingers go tap-tap-tap against aging keys of a veryoldmodel computer. The whole world outside is a block of coloured vehicles and the little people, all on their way to somewhere important. A drunk weaves through them, swivelling on his haunches like Bizarre Bee before he trips and falls underneath the shade of a car. The sky with the she and the all-too-significant-too-small-to-be-true office wavers as he watches, his amber eyes lighting up with hope of…something. Something that no one else could see. A dribble of saliva runs down the corner of his sensuous, charred black lips, cleaning a tiny part of his face as he goes off to sleep with the sun forking the back of his neck and his defenceless, dimpled buttocks.

She passes him on her way home, eyes fixed on the large birth-mark imprinted on his dimpled buttock, as she walks right behind a mumbling hobo. He hunches and watches the world from behind angry red glasses perched on his nose like some picture of a Beatles dude, sheforgetswhich. He looks behind and curses the world with lewd words, loud and dubious. For a moment, his face clears and his eyes lose their angry glow. The lines crumpling his sun-kissed forehead are obliterated by the evening sun leaving a clear, round face with the corners of his lips upturned as if positioned in a smile. He giggles and repeats the word again and again before he falls into splits. She giggles with him and before she knows they are both screeching and howling. Everything is set straight and everything falls in its right place, slowly and evenly into the back of her head where everything is set at slow.