Resonant Souls - Part 2: The Song

Resonant Souls

Part 2: The Song

"Freedom!" Peter's mind yelled, and the image of Mel Gibson in his blue and white face-paint charging against the enemy invaded his rejoicing thoughts. Peter clicked 'shutdown', and as he waited patiently for his decade-old work-computer to close every program safely, he put on his almost as worn out, dark brown varsity jacket with pearl white sleeves. It had a couple of small holes in it, and a few scratches and scrapes near the elbows, but Peter didn't want to let go of his favorite piece of clothing. Finally, after the noisy machine had whirred down into a quiet slumber, Peter sprung up from his musty old chair, grabbing his backbag leaning against his desk on the floor and hurried out of his grey cage.

  He felt like a gazelle, hopping around garbage cans and water coolers, desperately fleeing from the lions and hyenas prowling the cubicle hell-shaped savannah he worked in. Peter actually worried about being hunted; his boss, the blood-thirsty pack leader, hadn't been remotely happy about Peter being late again. The boss had mentioned about needing Peter for "addressing yadayada issues that required yadayada clocking in some serious overtime." Peter couldn't remember exactly what the issues were since he hadn't been paying attention. He had used all his energy during the rant into backing away slowly from his boss's office, whilst doing the best Yes-man impersonation he could muster until he managed to slip out of the open door. Peter knew very well that being late twice on the same week was probably a bad way to show off his work ethics, but he didn't really care.

  But Peter wasn't the only one desperately trying to taste freedom, as he soon noticed. While literally running past his neighbors' cubicles, he took a sharp left turn and bumped into, and onto, a co-worker. A redheaded drone, struck out of action, with Peter lying face down on top of her. Too bad she didn't look anything like the redhead from his dream a couple of nights ago. If that were the case, the position might've been enjoyable. But now the situation seemed more likely to be viewed as offensive.

  Peter tried to climb off of her but couldn't, as she was wiggling around under him at the same time. He tried to find an opening on the floor where he could push down with his free hand and spring himself up, like doing a jumping one-handed push-up. However, a slight error in hand placement might lead to an accidental breast grab, and Peter was sure that would cause her to yell "Rape!" But would it look any better for him to be nearly frozen in place, one hand hovering in the air above her chest, just waiting to latch on?

  "Goddammit, Peter! Get off me!" she hissed and violently pushed him off. She picked her glasses and purse up from the floor and stood up, straightening her depressingly grey dress and jacket, while giving Peter a stern look like she was waiting for something. An apology perhaps?

  "You know me?" Peter said, gasping for air as he got up. The way she kicked him off had knocked the air right out of him. He looked around for his bag which had landed a couple of feet away from them, now unfortunately blocked behind his visibly annoyed co-worker.

  "Yes.. we've both worked here for years, we see each other, like, all the time! Don't tell me you don't remember me?" she exclaimed. Peter only standing there, frowning and silently wincing urged her to continue, "The first time we met was at the... orientation! We were, like, the only ones there. Oh, and Matt was there.. and Carol." She seemed a bit insulted by Peter's oblivious, blank stare. If a bit meant a lot.

  All the time? Peter had indeed worked here for a few years now, but he didn't pay attention to anyone around the office, it just wasn't something he considered important to him. The time he spent at working was always foggy at best, so they could've run into each other many times and he just wouldn't remember it or chose to ignore it. Peter knew he was being a jerk for not remembering, or worse, knowing her name. She was still staring at him, trying to figure out if Peter was just messing with her.

  "Oh yeah, sure.. Listen, Megan, I really gotta run, my car's being towed and.." Peter lied pitifully while dancing around her and the uncomfortable question. He bolted past her smoothly, like dodging bullets, careful not to touch her even with his jacket, which was quite a feat in the narrow hallway they were standing in. Peter grabbed his bag up on the fly and her  complaints about her name actually being Michelle slowly faded away behind him as he sprinted towards the stairwell, out of the grey pit of despair they called the office.

  "It was just a name, dammit," Peter muttered out loud as he slid his ID card into the stairwell door's lock, which beeped lazily to grant him passage. He could've used the elevator, but the risk of getting stuck with more people he didn't know, or cared to know, was simply too high. Peter just didn't care to socialize with his peers, maybe because he didn't consider them as such. Their jobs had no future. The office resembled a graveyard, where people hovered around their desks like zombies, slowly decomposing beneath their workload.

  The internet-less working environment seemed like a torture method on its own. The regular worker ants' computers weren't hooked up to the byte world outside, and smart phones did no good since the office located in an old, bunkerish building in the middle of nowhere, which meant no reception and no Wi-Fi.

  So the days were slow, reading datasheets sent in by their clients, chopping them up for analyzing, and figuring out the answers or suggestions to whatever they wanted to learn from the processed data. Some days he got to type in data, which was even more exciting than it sounds. This all went on, day after day after day. The fact that some of his co-workers seemed to be happy to work here baffled him, and was the main reason he didn't care to hang around any of them. He didn't want to catch whatever it was that made them tick and settle for this.

  Why didn't he quit if the job was a dead end then? The pay was good enough for something that didn't require much in terms of original thinking. Peter lived comfortably on his salary, while he didn't need to exert himself too much at work. He told himself he was just waiting for better opportunities to turn up, but made no effort to try and go look for them. He knew very well he'd fallen into a slump somewhere along the line, but getting out of it wasn't an easy task, even if he someday decided to try.

  He finally reached the second to last floor before the exit, and Peter felt how the choking, overbearing atmosphere of the office was steadily losing its grip on him. Just one more electronic lock to get through on his path. The scent of "Freedom!" in the air refreshed him as Peter emerged out of the dank stairwell of the building, which mostly resided underground.

  His old but trusty red van almost seemed to be greeting at him from the parking lot. It was surrounded by other old, banged up cars, vehicles much more worn out than Peter's, some on the edge of falling apart. The parking lot almost acted as a showcase of the overall state of the people working there. A horrifying warning indeed.

  "Almost out of here, buddy," Peter comforted his car under his breath as he walked towards it.  He felt a little better too after saying it. He gently opened the door, which let out a nasty creak, and got in. The old steed neighed into action at once, like it always did, defying its old age. Peter steered it out of its dying pasture, onwards to greener fields.

  After leaving his office building behind him in the rear view mirror, Peter made a turn on the freeway and turned on the radio. The dream from a couple of nights ago was still haunting him, or rather the girl in it. Home was still more than an hour away, so the radio gave him something else to think about, or so Peter thought. While juggling through the stations, he noticed the Golden Oldies station was, surprisingly, the only one that didn't have a loud, static interference obscuring the broadcast, so Peter had no choice but to stick with it. It was in a middle of a song, and the groovy piano solo playing got Peter nodding his head along with it. After the solo, the song's melody hit him like a thunder bolt, giving him goose bumps.

'I chew my nails and I twiddle my thumbs

I'm real nervous but it sure is fun

C'mon baby, you're drivin' me crazy

Goodness gracious great balls of fire!'

  It wasn't the part he remembered from the dream, but after the song ended, the radio host excitedly announced what Peter already knew.

  "That was Great Balls of Fire, by the legendary Jerry Lee Lewis, and next up we ha-" The host got cut off because Peter turned off the radio, still feeling the shivers the tune had sent up and down his spine.

  "Jerry Lee goddamn Lewis," he muttered. Why was he this shocked about it? It's just a funny coincidence that the song happened to play, right? And the song is a classic, on a station dedicated to old classics so it all made sense. He laughed a bit for being this silly and turned the radio back on, shuffling stations as they now seemed to work just fine. Generic hard rock started blaring from the car's old speakers as Peter stopped his station hopping, settling for the one closest to his taste in music. The freeway seemed endless, filled with an ocean of cars, all trying to find their way home.

  After listening to an array of dime a dozen songs, Peter finally got to park his van in front of a modest, four storied flat, his home. Of course he lived in the top floor, so climbing the stairs was a part of his daily exercise routine, whether he was coming or leaving his sanctuary. In the ground floor hall he checked his mail box, which greeted him happily with an electric bill. Peter dragged himself up the stairs with the last of his strength, feeling a slight comfort from seeing his front door, knowing behind it he would find solace.

  The door slammed shut and Peter dropped the keys in a little green cup, sitting on top of a white cabinet in the hallway of his small, one bedroom apartment. The cup was surrounded by wrestling trophies, lined up against the wall, standing tall in front of the cabinet's aging mirror. Bittersweet mementos reminding Peter every day of his glory days in high school and college. He still felt like those were his best days on this rock, no matter the way his promising career had ended in blood, tears and sorrow. Peter rubbed his lower right back and threw the bill on the cabinet, or attempted to as the letter took flight and glided past the cabinet onto the floor. Ignoring it he swayed tiredly into the living room, switched on the light and collapsed face first on the soft, welcoming couch.

  "A long ass day," Peter sighed, his voice muffled by the couch's cushion. His eyelids began closing, slowly but surely. Before Peter had the luxury to fall asleep, his smart phone rang.  He reached for his jacket's pocket to dig it out, cursing under his breath whoever was calling. The culprit was his neighbor, Mark, living one floor below him. Peter sighed again, hesitating for a moment, and decided to answer.

  "Yeah?"

  "How you doing? I heard you come in, wanna stop by?" an irritating voice asked.

  "Why?"

  "What do you mean why? Do you need a reason?" Mark laughed.

  "Well yeah, actu-" Peter started but got cut off.

  "Okay well come down in a bit, I have beer too, see ya!" The call ended abruptly, leaving Peter no chance to argue. Of course, he could just stay home, nothing was forcing him to go. But he was just too nice a guy to leave Mark hanging, and he never wanted to upset anybody, unless they deserved it. But Mark was harmless.

  "Son a bitch," Peter yawned and got up. Well at least having to get dressed again wasn't a problem since he hadn't even taken his jacket or sneakers off.

  Just as he was ready to leave, he remembered the song on the radio. Just to be sure to have it on record he made a stop in his bedroom and added the song and Jerry Lee Lewis in his dream journal. In case of amnesia, it would come in handy. Peter was surprised to realize he hadn't made another entry since the dream from a couple of nights ago, it was still the latest one. Peter shrugged, it wasn't like he had dreams every single night anyway. Two in a row on the other hand was stretching it a bit for him, but it was surely nothing to worry about. Peter stashed the journal in his nightstand, and unwillingly turned around to leave the room, fighting the temptation to just fall lying on the bed. He sighed and walked into his hallway, grabbing the keys from the cup, bracing for what's to come. After a short debate with himself on whether he really wanted to do this or not, he left the apartment.

  Afterwards he'd be happy that he did.