The Loser

by Nathan Kersey-Wilson

Cheryl woke up early. It was still dark out when she tiptoed away from her husband Ed’s snores and slipped into her hot morning bath. She was fully aware of the dangers of blow-drying her hair while in the bath, but the warm water was just too soothing not to risk it. Even if an accident did happen, she would much prefer to die naked in a semi-conscious state and soaked in warmth than in a hospital bed. She dried her hands thoroughly on a small purple washcloth and turned the device on. Her short brown hair was almost dry when a bird hit the window, startling her. Her hand shook and she saw gravity draw the hair-drier out of her fingers’ protection. Her other hand managed to intercept it, but not soon enough to keep it from breaking the surface with a splash.

Suddenly Ed was standing with his back to her in front of the mirror, shaving his neck, and holding the cord to the hair drier. “Why did you have that thing plugged in?” he asked casually. “You know I have to shave in the morning.”

Cheryl stared at the hair-drier floating harmlessly in the water, numb, cold, and wondering if this was death.

“Well, I’ve gotta get to the office,” Ed groaned to the air, without looking at her. He scratched his upper thigh, yawned, and left the room.

As Ed was on his way to a cubicle in San Francisco and wondering if anything remotely exciting would ever happen in his life, he remembered that it was Tuesday, which was John’s day to bring donuts. John had forgotten last week, so Ed decided to call him and remind him. He considered John his good friend.

John glanced down at the screen of his phone and saw that Ed was calling. He groaned and reluctantly answered, solely for the purpose of shutting up his aggravating ring tone.

“Hello”

“Hey Buddy, it’s me. You’re bringing the D’s today, right?”

“I left my wallet at my house, man.”

“But it’s Tuesday.”

“So?”

“You’re supposed to bring donuts on Tuesdays.”

“Ed, nobody likes your whole donut thing, anyway. Everybody forgets their day. And it’s not like we need donuts everyday.”

“John. I need you to turn around, get your wallet, and fulfill your donut obligation.”

John groaned, “Ed you’re so weird.”

“C’mon, why did I even get up this morning if you’re not bringing them?”

“Fine.”

John sped back to his house, irritated by Ed and his irrational donut obsession. His children were still asleep and he didn’t want to wake them up by barging back into the house, but, Ed really needed those donuts. He smelt something unusual when he walked in the door, and, after a couple seconds, realized that it was gas. He burst into the kitchen, just as flames were beginning to spread across the counter from his stove burner, which he had left on after making himself an omelet. John whipped their family’s fire extinguisher off the wall and aimed the foam into the heart of the flames. He moved closer, quickly suffocating the fire. Then his arms went limp, the fire extinguisher dropped to the floor, and he thought about his children sleeping in the next room. It looked as if a bag of flour had exploded all over the room. John rubbed his hands through his hair. A smoke alarm went off.

Ed eyes were glued to the few feet of road he could see in the fog, and his peripheral vision registered every white streak that flew underneath his wheels. He hadn’t had time for his coffee before he left this morning. It was Sarah’s day to bring coffee. She would bring the coffee. She was reliable, unlike John. John didn’t like coffee, probably because he was unreliable, but didn’t know what hot and steamy bliss he was missing. Maybe Sarah would be hot and steamy bliss for him someday…just like her coffee…hot and steamy bliss was carrying a cup of hot and steamy bliss as the whites lines became coffee cups…

Ed felt an irritation at his midriff and regained consciousness. The car was no longer moving. Others were moving past it. He was on the highway shoulder, and bulging into the front bumper and part of the frame was a telephone pole, swaying loosely in the wind. He felt his midriff and discovered his seatbelt had done a phenomenal job. He quickly patted over the rest of his body, and everything seemed to be okay; there were no cuts, or even bruises. He had thought about getting a newer car, with an airbag, but the old-fashioned seatbelt seemed to work just fine. He rolled down the driver’s window and looked up out of it. The pole was now bowing unusually far with the wind and small showers of sparks sprung erupted from where the wires met the pole. Then the pole broke free and crashed onto the hill beside the freeway. Ed concluded that one telephone pole couldn’t hurt, shifted into reverse, and got back on the highway.

The bus driver anxiously glanced back at the children, whose lives were his complete responsibility. He tried the ignition once again, and the engine stalled for the third time. He glanced up the electric Muni line, praying that a train would be able to stop once it saw them in this fog. He tried one last time. Another stall.

He wiped his brow and picked up the radio, “This is San Francisco School District bus number 17, can you contact the Muni headquarters and tell them that we are stuck on the tracks at Geary and Stockton and that they need to stop all trains on line – shit - what line is this?”

A crackling voice came out the radio, “We’ve got quite a lot of static. Please repeat your message.”

“Contact Muni headquarters and-” The radio fell from his hand as he recognized the Muni headlights rapidly approaching through the fog. He turned toward the back of the bus and yelled, “Everybody off! Quickly! Quickly!” Kids shoved, crawled over each other and the seats, crowding towards the door, which was a mere two feet wide. The driver stared into the headlights of the oncoming train, mesmerized by their beauty.

And then everything turned dark. The train headlights vanished, all the houses and stores were black, the streetlamps were swallowed by the fog. The power outage had taken out this whole area of the city. The only light came from car headlights shining in from the left side of the bus.

The bus driver heard the screech of the automatic emergency breaks as power was cut from the train, then met eyes with the powerless Muni driver as her train approached until it was within a few feet of the bus, and then came to final stop.

Ed walked up the dark-polished steps and through the entryway to his office building. He took the elevator to the 39^th floor, walked down the hallway, and had to tie his shoe. He knelt, and noticed a pair of scissors sitting in the wastebasket. He thought this was odd, so he took them out and continued to his cubicle to begin licking and sealing envelopes.

Less than a minute later, Ken stepped off the elevator onto the 39^th floor. His victim, Sarah, was just six cubicles down the hall. He felt his pace quicken, or maybe everything else just seemed to move slower. He would use John’s scissors, which he had placed strategically in the wastebasket just outside her cubicle. Everybody would think John did it, and not patient, humble Ken. He was now standing in the doorway to Sarah’s cubicle.

“Good Morning, Ken,” she chimed in that beautiful voice that he hated. Ken said nothing, but crouched and reached down into the wastebasket- and felt only papers. He eyes darted around the inside of the cubicle, but the scissors were gone.

“Are you alright?” Sarah asked. Ken froze and closed his eyes, his hand still in the bottom of the wastebasket as he realized the absurdity of what he had been about to do. He breathed deep, opened his eyes and glanced at Sarah once before standing up and walking back to his cubicle so that he could clear his head and rethink his life.

At 1:07, Ed took his after-lunch smoke. Cheryl thought he had quit smoking, but he didn’t care. He inhaled and his modern worries and empty heart left him. He was just Ed, and this was what he lived for. He finished one cigarette, not caring that the inside was still smoldering red, and threw it out the window, which was the kind that opened outwards from the building just enough to let a slip of air in. In an unconscious motion, he took out another. He usually went through two packs a day.

In a nearby alley, two men sat in the back of a stolen delivery van, intently watching the screen, which was connected to a camera on the van’s bumper. It showed the front entrance to the building, with six dark-polished steps leading into a short overhanging entryway. A short man in a dark suit, his hair greased back, and carrying a briefcase entered the screen, approaching the building’s entrance. Unexpectedly, he fumbled and dropped the case.

“Stupid Harry,” grumbled Gotrotharp inside the van, gesturing at the screen. “I knew we shouldn’t have trusted the new guy with the most important job.”

“Shut up,” snapped Osconovitch. “That guy, I have confidence in him. And once he does it, he won’t be straddling the fence any longer- he’ll be with us. Look, he’s okay. He’s got it.”

The dark-suited man carefully picked up the case and began walking toward the building again, more determined than before. He was just about to enter the spinning glass door, when, to the surprise of everyone who witnessed it, a small object fell from one of the upper floors, causing his hair to suddenly burst into flames. The man patted his head, looked directly at the camera, and, amidst the screams of those around him, Gotrotharp and Osconovitch clearly saw his lips articulate the word, “Help!”

“What the fuck was that that hit him in the head?” Osconovitch yelled as he grabbed the remote that controlled where the camera was aimed. He moved the camera’s view up the side of the building. All the windows were empty until the 39^th floor, where a man was casually smoking.

“It was that son-of-a-bitch who just threw his cigarette out the window,” Gotrotharp replied.

“I’m gonna fucking kill him.” Osconovitch picked up his sniper rifle and stepped into the alley.

“I’ll go set the bomb,” said Gotrotharp. He ran off toward their inflamed comrade. Osconovitch aimed at the 39^th floor and held the target steady on the man’s head, gradually increasing pressure on the trigger. It clicked, and the thin window shattered.

Ed needed to sneeze. His colleagues hated it and when he sneezed and always teased him about it, because it was slightly high-pitched and effeminate, but also included aspects of a rumbling smokers’ cough. He painfully tried to resist but finally let his upper body fling itself forward as the mucus and saliva flew into the crook of his elbow.

Then the window in front of him exploded and he felt something brush through his hair. He looked around for a while, wondering whether someone had thrown something at the window or if his sneeze had just been more powerful then usual. This was going to cost him big bucks to replace. The few other people on his floor had not moved; they just thought he had broken a lamp again or something.

Ed brought his hand to his lips, but then realized he had dropped his cigarette when he sneezed. “Shit,” he said as he looked down at the rough purple rug. A quickly expanding ring of flame surrounded where the cigarette had fallen. “Shit. Fuck me, I’m such a fucking idiot,” Ed muttered. “John,” he called. “We’ve got a little problem.” “What is it?” came John’s uninterested voice from a nearby cubicle.

“Well, see, like, I was having a smoke –just one smoke- and then I sneezed and then the window broke and then a sort of dropped my cigarette and now there’s sort of like a fire, a fire in the carpet.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Well, no, actually, no, I’m not.”

John came out of his cubicle and ran over when he saw the flame. “Shit, why are you such an stupid fucking loser? Pull the alarm!” John’s voice climbed steadily steadily higher.

“Fuck!” shouted Ed, “I’m such an idiot.”

“Fuck!” screamed John.

Running his hands through his hair, Ed walked to the wall and pulled the fire alarm.

Gotrotharp sprinted to the new guy, grabbed the case, and dashed through the spinning glass door. The lobby was filled with people, happy people with normal lives. Gotrotharp found comfort in the fact that in five minutes they would all be dead. He darted between them and down the steps into the basement. He placed the bomb in the appropriate place and ran back outside.

As soon as he was outside, the fire alarm shattered his eardrums. Everybody began to exit the building and the building nearby. The city policy was that, whenever an alarm went off in one of these immense office buildings, that block and all the surrounding blocks must be evacuated.

“Let’s get out of here!” John was yelling from a distant world. Ed closed his eyes and pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose, trying to squeeze out his regret and guilt. He walked past the entrance to his cubicle, doubled back, and grabbed the pink box of donuts that was on his desk. He opened it and saw that there were three left, plus about half of a whole grain one that did not appeal to him. He held the pink box to his chubby bosom as he followed John toward the elevator. He knew that the sprinklers, which should turn on very soon, would take care of the fire, but he felt horrible for making everybody else waste their time. He patted the half-empty pack of cigarettes waiting in his breast pocket, and held the donuts closer to his heart with his other arm. He could always count on them.

Ed stared at his smeared reflection in the elevator door, catching wisps of his colleagues’ complaints.

“Why did the alarm have to got off now…is there a fire?...It probably destroyed my computer…I needed to send that report in before 1:30…”

Ed stayed in the elevator when everyone got off at the lobby. John saw him and gestured as he said, “C’mon, idiot, you caused this.” Ed didn’t answer. John shrugged and walked away.

The doors closed and Ed was alone. He took the elevator to the basement, got in his car, and drove out to the place that overlooked the ocean, knowing it would be painless.

The ocean was ugly. Ed got out of his ugly car with its ugly doors. He left the engine running with its ugly sound. The gravelly ground was ugly. The sky was worse. He hated that bush. He kicked at its base and then stomped on it and then kicked it again. He ripped a handful of branches off and broke them into pieces barely an inch long. He put his full weight on the stem, forcing it to the ground, but it wouldn’t snap. He jumped on it again and again but it still wouldn’t snap. Defeated, he walked to the trunk of his car and took out a roll of duct tape and a garden hose. He taped one end of the hose to the opening of the exhaust pipe and ran the other end through the back window. He rolled the window up enough to hold the hose in place. Then he sat back down in the driver’s seat, rolled up the rest of the windows, and took a bite of his passion, a jelly-filled, sugar-coated donut.

The fat tasted good. The sugar and grease and smoke and tobacco tasted good. Ed’s eyelids were beginning to impede on his vision. He switched the donut to his right hand and held his cigarette between his lips so that he could reach the recline lever with his left. For no reason at all, he turned on the radio and heard a woman’s voice.

“…was apparently caused by a man smoking a cigarette on the 39^th floor, and as of now nine blocks of downtown San Francisco are almost completely evacuated…”

Ed knew he had made the right decision. He laid back, took a final hit of his cigarette, a final swallow of sugar and fat…

“…and, this just in, the Gunther Enterprises skyscraper is- the skyscraper is collapsing, oh my god, but there was nobody inside, thank god, there was nobody inside…”

But Ed’s eyelids had already closed.