Anthropomorphic

The room was completely dark, as it had been for the entire night. Suddenly, the alarm clock started screaming like a man being devoured by goats. The person shot out of bed as the ceiling light glared at her. The clock read 6:00, until the clock face contorted into the face of a screaming ghoul, at which point the person couldn’t tell what it read.

The entire room shifted like a giant was picking it up, and the person fell into the bathroom. The person got up, dazed and half-asleep, and looked at her hands oafishly. Her left hand grew a cartoon-worthy face with an exaggeratedly upturned nose and said, "Hey, buckaroo, your eyes are in the mirror. You’ve got to get to work."

Deeply alarmed, the person turned on the tap and thrust her hands into the sink, ignoring their muffled screams. As she tried to get her bearings, she reminded herself that this was an important time of the year, and she couldn't take the day off without getting fired. She hurried to get out of the door, ignoring the melting faces on the wall and the claws sprouting from the floor.

The car refused to start at first. It said in a deep childish voice. "Hello, master. Do you want to get into a car crash today?" The person cussed at the car until it started. "Better to die forever than be very afraid," the car muttered sarcastically as they chugged out of the driveway.

The road seemed to be vibrating, and the other cars were turning into destroyed versions of themselves. The person felt tempted to look around, but she stared at the traffic signal instead. All three lights blazed brightly, and she was forced to look forwards to know when to start. Her head imploded and she could only see white, but once that was over, she couldn't tell whether the car in front was moving or not. Before she could be tormented further, that car actually started moving, and the person breathed a temporary sigh of relief.

The freeway presented another challenge. The other cars were teleporting forwards and backwards, and the signs had faces which smiled so widely that the person couldn't tell where she was. She thought about stopping on the side of the freeway at least ten times, but she didn't have the guts to potentially get fired. After the tenth time, twenty minutes passed in five seconds, and the person was flung backwards into her seat.

What's my job? she thought in a daze. I need to do it now that I'm here. She couldn't remember, no matter how hard she tried, so she gave up and stared at her desk until she felt a heavy hand on her shoulder. Was it the boss? No, it was only her friend.

"Are you okay?" the friend asked with a sinister grin.

"No," the person confessed. "I think I might be hallucinating. Things keep happening to me, and I can't tell whether they're real or not. If I had it my way, I wouldn't have even gone to work today. But here I am." The person chuckled. "How has your day been?"

The friend looked surprised. "Well, my day is going perfectly fine. I slept like a baby yesterday, and so I got a ton of work done today. After all, this is an important time for the company, and we all have to do our part."

Something was off about the way the friend was speaking. The friend sounded too much like a corporate drone, and the person thought it was funny. "Why are you talking like that? What really happened? Did that dog keep you up all night?"

The friend laughed. "You really are out of it, aren't you? I'm not your friend, but I think I know who you're talking about. She's actually doing her job, and I suggest you do the same."

Too late, the person realized how similar her friend and the boss's toady looked. Without her input, her hands grabbed her head and yanked it around. The person hissed, "What are you doing?" but the hands wouldn't stop. They coughed out, "You deserve this. You need to do your job. It doesn't matter that you don't know what it is. Just ask someone."

I should never have gone to work, the person thought. Now I'm going to get fired. She felt like running out into traffic, but then her actual friend came to her aid.

"Did you actually think she was me?" the friend whispered, pointing towards the toady.

"Yeah. I hope you can believe me."

"I believe you."

"Thank you so much. Nothing seems to trust me, not even my own car. I - "

"Look," said the friend, "you're kind of shouting."

The person stopped talking.

The friend continued. "You've already been reported to the boss for doing nothing over the past twenty minutes, and I think he's fixing to fire you. Just stay here and wait for someone else to talk to you."

"Thanks."

"I wish I could do more."

The person sat at her desk, ready to wait. But then she heard a low hum and a high hum. She tried to go to sleep, but the hums burrowed through her skull. Her skull began expanding and contracting like a jellyfish or a heart. The walls warped into rows of faces, angrily mouthing words at her. She could still see them when she closed her eyes, and as hard as she tried, she couldn't stand them looking at her like that. So she got up and went to the boss's office.

Everything was at an angle, and the boss's head had three huge holes on it instead of a face. The person slammed her hands down on the desk, ignoring the desk's peeved retort, and said, "I'm sorry, but I don't think I will be able to work today. I'm not sure I'm lucid."

The boss got up and buzzed, "You will not be paid today, because you will go home. Then you will come back here over the next two weeks, but I will only pay you if you do work. By then, your replacement will have arrived, and you will be properly fired. I should never have hired you in the first place, you parasite."

When the person hesitated, the boss shouted "Leave!" and bowled his head at her, knocking her out of the office. The person ran back to her desk, grabbed all her things, and galloped down the stairs.

The person became nauseous after going back home for thirty minutes. She powered on for twenty more, stopping on the curb when she got nauseous, but it slowly became less effective, so she eventually stopped in front of a parking meter and tried desperately to pay it. After trying fifteen times, she gave up and put the money on top of the meter.

"There. Take the money," she grumbled, standing next to the meter. She tried to do nothing for ten agonizing minutes. She was so bored that she started trying to pay the meter again. Unfortunately, it eventually worked, and she had to sit down again. She had a blank notebook, so she decided to write Holes by Louis Sachar from memory. As she remembered the uplifting story, she began to relax, and after a few hours, she felt almost well enough to drive.

Then her friend showed up. "Are you okay?" she asked.

"Yeah. I've been writing Holes by Louis Sachar, trying to get every plot detail down, and it's been really relaxing. I feel okay now."

Her friend seemed confused. "Where were you writing it?"

She was going to point at her notebook, but instead she stated hollowly, "There was no notebook. I hallucinated it all."

Everything was silent for a second. Was all the air being pushed out of the person's lungs? Even as she wobbled into her friend's car, she felt like she was choking. As they drove home together, she wondered aloud, "Why are you doing this for me?"

Her friend responded, "I don't want to lose my job, but I really don't want you to die on the road. So I decided to take a relatively early lunch so I could drive you home."

"I can feed you," the person gratefully squealed, and so her friend got to eat a burrito instead of skipping lunch. They talked to one another, and at some point, the signs stopped smiling. Only once she was home did the person think of her own car, which she found totaled in a ditch on the side of the freeway. "Driver Presumed Dead", the news caption helpfully said, probably because that part of the car had caved in.

She pinched herself and grunted when it hurt. She went outside and kicked a clod of dirt into a wall. She was presumed dead, yet here she was, getting tickled by an ant on her arm. Her shock reached a critical mass and she decided to continue as if it was normal to magically teleport out of one's car, looking for used car sales as she looked for job openings. The next time this happened to her, she didn't go to work. She could have been fired, but she could have died, and not dying was the important thing.