Unfinished No. 2

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm two things: prone to procrastination and easily distracted.
So while I sat down to type up a lot of notes for my NaNoWriMo (it's still November, right?) I of course put that off to look at all the .doc files I've filled with words and I came across one I titled
"The awesomocity of wordy-dads and sentences-schmentences."
Brilliant, right?
It was supposed to be about a man, Norman Lucas, who could utter single words and create whatever word he uttered (for example, if he held a glass and said "wine" he'd have a full glass of wine, if he said"explode" something would explode).
Things would happen as a result, mayhem would ensue, and etc. but we never got that far. We pretty much met Norman and introduced our plot device.

While typing up some useless report that nobody would ever read, Norman knocked over his polystyrene foam cup – spilling coffee all over the notes he had meticulously doodled out in the shapes of motorcycles and six-shooters – causing quite a mess. He then uttered the one word that would change his life forever...

“Shit!”

And there it was. He didn't see it at first – it was behind his desk chair – but he smelled it, oh boy did he smell something. Norman spun around to see what was there and probably would have stamped his foot right in it had his co-worker Ian not been bringing a memo,

“Remember Norm, this project is due by the end of the...arghhhhh!!”

“'Arghhhh, what?” Norman was puzzled.

“Di-did you just sh-shit in here?”

“Shit?”

Unbeknownst to either one of them the pile grew slightly larger. Ian pointed down to the floor, making the most bizzare-ly frigntened face Norman had ever seen. He put his feet down to look at the floor, and stepped right in it.

“Shit!” he said, and then there was more shit.

Ian threw the memo right into Norman's face and scurried off, holding his breath, refusing to even look back.

In the time it took him to grab a tissue and began damage control on his nice shoes his boss Mr.Dindermeyerstein shambled up to the entrance to his tiny workspace and in the most boring monotone announced “Mr. Lucas, did you just defecate in your cubicle? I have it on good authority that there are feces in here.”

At this point attention was pointing in his direction. Norman did not have to look to hear heads popping up above the dividers, whack-a-mole style, trying to get a peek at the potential fecal-related firing.

“Well, it's definitely not mine. We could submit it for a DNA test, but I think that would take a couple of weeks, and probably more company money than corporate would allow you to spend on what's probably just a matter for HR.”

“Frankly Mr. Lucas, I've had enough of your shenanigans. I'd like you to go home for the day and thinking about what other people in the office may or may not find 'funny'.”

Not that Norman felt responsible for the offense, but he did find it mildly amusing that there was shit all over the office floor. He grabbed his bag and stood up to leave when Mr.Dindermeyerstein kept talking,

“Oh, and Mr.Lucas please clean up you mess. This is a professional atmosphere and I don't need the smell of fecal waste matter making anyone sick.”

“Heh. Yeah, don't want anybody to vomit, here. So much valuable time to spend here. Invaluable resources. The lifeblood of BlankCo. Systems Inc.. Wouldn't want them to heave, all that actual work might just kill them dead.”

“Dead?” He sneered, condescendingly sarcastic, or sarcastically condescending...maybe both.

So Norman smiled, the most snarky, arrogant smile possible. Pointed at him with both hands, winked and repeated, “Dead.”

Mr. Dindermeyerstein's eyes rolled into the back of his head and he immediately collapsed to the floor.

The entire office silenced to complete quiet as if the thermostat was set to absolute zero. Everyone stared at the body lying on the floor.

Norman wondered, 'Did I do this? Is it the same as the shit thing?'

“Shit” he said, out loud, the gravity of the situation hitting him.

An odor permeated the air. Norman wasn't sure if Mr.Dindermeyerstein's bowels had posthumously released or the continued stench of the individual piles of crap that he had been somehow creating around his cubicle. He decided everyone else should think it's the bowels part so he put on his best shocked and scared voice (not that he wasn't shocked and scared that he seemingly made shit everywhere and also managed to kill his annoying boss with just his mind) and exclaimed “Dindermeyerstein's bowels must have posthumously released.”

“Gross!” Sharon shouted from across the office.

Norman's phone rang and the speakerphone said: “Jesus Norm, word around the office is Dinder just passed out!”

Ian poked his head over the divider, “No way, He's dead. Probably from all the shit around Norm's cube'.“

“There's shit all over his cube? I'm coming right over!!”

Norm glared at Ian. You don't have to tell everybody there's shit in my cube'! Why would you tell them that?!”

“Maybe you shouldn't have shit all over the floor.”

“It's not my shit!! I said they could DNA test it! MY PANTS ARE STILL ON!”

Steven ran over and almost tripped over Dindermeyerstein's feet poking out of the cubicle, “Shit!” Then he noticed the shit everwhere, “SHIT!! Guys there's shit all over!! Right next to dead Dindermeyerstein!”

They all turned and looked at Norman, as if he were the culprit. “Is he really dead, Norm?” Steven asked.

“Dead.” Norm shook his head and repeated the word, as if he hadn't picked up on it yet.

Without even pointing the message was sent clear over to Steven who fell straight on top of Mr.Dindermeyerstein's body. His breathing stopped, his pulse ceased, blood flow slowed to a halt.

Norm's eyes widened seeing what happened.

“Shit!”

More shit.

“SHIT!”

Even more shit....

Now there was a crowd gathering around the cubicle, everybody was watching the shit pile up and the bodies on the floor.

“They're dead!”

“Dead?”

“Dead!!”

“Both of them dead!”

“How did they die?”

“Who knows? Looks like they just died to death.”

“Wait, who's dead?”

“Dindermeyerstein and Steve.”

“Steve from the mail room?”

“No, Steven, from accounting.”

“Oh, I didn't know him, guess it doesn't matter if he's dead, though.”

“Dead,” Norman nodded, still not grasping his role in the situation.

Jan, who previously wasn't even visible amongst the crowd dropped to the ground in a similar state.

“Shit!” It finally hit him what was happening. The dead bodies, the feces piling up and only growing larger, “Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!”

And as the pile grew even larger, the smell more pungent the bodies more dead-ier, the co-workers all caught on as well. They all stared at Norman.

“Damn man, why'd you do it? Shit all over the floor and kill Dinder, Steve and Jan?!”

The crowds muffled exclamations overlapped each other and formed some confusing mass of angered voices.

Norman panicked. He looked around for an escape route; however, being in a cubicle there was only one exit and it was blocked.

He hopped up on his desk and looked around. It seemed as if the whole office had turned into bloodthirsty zombies or a frankenstein-hunting angry mob stumbling slowly towards him; crowding into his cubicle; pushing each other to be the first to nab him; Fueling each other's anger with shoves and vicious pointing as Norman hopped over a dividing wall. He stood on Jan's desk, Jan's old desk, now and decided to test out his hypothesis:

He bent his knees and leaned slightly back, he chomped down on an imaginary cigar, shaped his two pointer-fingers into six shooters and began to shout,

“Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead!...”

One by one they fell over, slumping on top of one another.

It didn't seem like they were even dying. They didn't get a painful expression on their faces; they didn't look to the skies with an expression of enlightenment; their bowels didn't empty; hours later when then police, the CSI, the forensic clean-up crew come in, the time of death will be difficult to comprehend; chemical decomposition is advanced far further than they should be; the video shows they were alive at 2:02 and dead by 2:01.

“Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead!...”

Norman, at this point couldn't comprehend the depth of what he was doing. His temporary psychotic break fueled his screaming and pointing and though he saw them drop they weren't even people to him. They were building blocks he was simply knocking down. Jim from sales or Chris from accounts payable weren't Jim from sales or Chris from accounts payable – they were angry faces, screaming voices, mudslinging enemies yelling “murder! Murder!” and they had to be silenced.

Norman's eyes met with Ian's, “Ian! Get out of here!” and stopped pointing and shouting. A shroud of calmness covered him as he feared his friend were in danger. Ian had never been anything special, though nothing but nice. He wasn't the gorgeous girl two cubicles down who wouldn't give him the time of day. He wasn't the guy next to him, on either side, who's annoying laugh grated on him but still waved hello every morning. He wasn't the supervisor who picked him first for tasks, yet still demeaned his efforts in front of the office. He wasn't a dick, and that was enough to spare his life.

Ian looked up and saw Norman's look of humanity, and saw it beginning to fade as the remaining employees straggled towards him, tripping over bodies and climbing over piles of corpses. He took the opportunity to do as Norman said and ran out of the building, hopped in his car, and sped off leaving nothing but a burning path of tire treads smoking in his wake.

Norman, though, quickly went back to his gun-slinging and finished off the rest, “Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead!”

With everyone dead, Norman had to make his escape. He grabbed his bag, made one last look around the office, snuck a peek at each surveillance camera and mouthed a word into each one, crossing his fingers, and bolted out.

He ran down the stairs, passing other inhabitants of the building he had never seen before (he generally took the elevator, so the health-conscious individuals in question were foreigners to him), and quickly made way to his motorcycle.


and that was all I got. What happened next? What about Ian? What trouble would Norman get into? What did he mouth into the camera lens??
We'll probably never know.