The Commuter Chronicles, Pt. 2

She is talking to me.

Or at least trying to.

Her eyes are protruding from the sockets like bloodshot boiled eggs. They look just about to pop out, possibly interrupting her mumbling, incoherent monologue. Any moment I expect her to try and push them back in and continue muttering.

A little thread of drool anchors her flubbering lips to the lapel of her blazer. Her body trembles furiously as she stands there, stammering at me. Distracted, I try to concentrate on the pulsing vein in her rigid forehead, nodding placatingly.

Little beads of blood form at the corners of her eyes, rolling down her cheeks with a viscous leisure.

Like most conversation, I don't find this one particularly pleasant.

When her eyes finally rocket out of their orbits in a frothing fountain of blood, I'm not exactly surprised. She flails wildly, wordlessly, showering clotted red gunk out of her ruined face. I kind of stand there, more or less looking for an opportunity to exit the discussion.

What surprises me is when she attacks. She tries to bite my throat. Her blood-stained teeth click together sickeningly, inches away from my jugular. I hold her back, hands clenched on her shoulders and neck. This reminds me of a girl I dated once.

She wanted to get married. Talked about it to no end. She had 4/5 of her life planned out before I even met her. The other 5th I'm assuming she'd reserved for an extended engagement with life-support equipment of some kind.

She was the kind of girl about whom I would say, "she is just looking for an excuse." I tried my hardest not to give her that excuse. Something about the institution of marriage makes my stomach squirm like a dying cephalopod. In fact, something about the entire process of life planning and domestication sends me into a migraine-induced murderous rage.

Her agonizingly plotted life cycle was like a relentless vacuum sucking the meaning out of my own existence and leaving me a perfectly hollowed-out shell. An excellent, quasi-living stage accessory to adorn the mercilessly uniform production she lived in.

She was the goddess of the world she had invented around her, a veritable Bridezilla, but not at all restricted to her (already painstakingly visualized) nuptials.

For my part, I sort of regarded her as one would a brain-damage patient of some kind. Except the part of her brain that was irreparably spongified was the part where other human beings had existences and interests beyond merely pleasing her.

I imagine she looked on me as a chronically misbehaving pet, not that she had the mental capacity to care for a pet, but judging by her treatment of me, I could surmise that my ability to amuse her and pretty up the background was a source of constant disappointment.

This disappointment was something I tried to achieve as often as possible.

So, with her her treated like a retard, and me treated like a stupid dog, it's clear to the observer that mutual humiliation was a basis for our relationship.

But, I'm not going to let the past cause me to neglect the lady currently in my arms, as it were.

I force her back, her jaws snapping at my throat.

This is why I hate dating.

A sharp kick to the stomach sends her backwards, and a quick right hook to her twisted, inhuman face rotates her around like a ballerina in a pit fight. I grasp a good fistful of her flying hair (in this context, a convenient female appurtenance) as she starts to overbalance away from me, and before she can recover, I drag her across my cubicle and feed her scented locks into the paper shredder.

The rest of the office seems oblivious to the whole affair. I shrug and plant my foot on the lid of the shredder to secure it, effectively trapping my would-be companion.

Her ruptured eye sockets continue to bubble up bloody goo as she snarls silently, straining at her machine-tangled scalp, the shredder whining angrily and the smell of burning hair stinging my eyes and nose.

Not one of my more stimulating encounters with a woman.

Although, as I watch her gnashing her teeth and writhing like a cat hooked up to a car battery, I have to say this isn't the messiest romantic entanglement I've ever been in, all things considered, and at least I won't have to talk at all.

But, speaking of entanglement...

Looking around it becomes apparent that the bugeyed mumble is a new craze in our academic circle, because my colleagues all seem fully engrossed in their own respective bouts of convulsions and profuse salivation. In a moment, I imagine, a dozen pairs of eyes will pop in a very unprofessional manner, and I will be occupying a spot on a dozen menus in place of the fucking chicken shwarma sandwich.

I am going to need an office solution, here.

But first, I must see to my date. I'm sure she's getting lonely. Excuse us, everyone, myself and my blushing companion will need an intimate moment.

Tugging the soiled heavy-duty Swingline (tm) stapler free of my late-lady-friend's pulpified skull and wiping my sodden brow, I'm pleasantly surprised at how well the paper-shredder withstood the terrific pounding I just gave it. I'll have to remember the manufacturer. I look down at my handiwork, absently prying one of the girl's teeth from the battered enamel of the stapler.

The paper shredder unleashes an eloquent grinding sound as the shattered wreck of her head catches in the machine's motorized maw. It begins to tug the wads of flesh and bone into its record-effacing depths, and I clean bits of hair and gristle from my blood-slimed fist just as the abused device lets out a final squeal of protest and ceases to function in an eruption of blood and fibrous goop, spouting from the general region of my lady-friend's straining neck-stump.

My shirt, and face, are located right in the path of this shower of gore, but, I'll admit, this is a small price to pay for a quick emancipation from the awkward social duty of having to more tactfully dispose of an over-aggressive woman. I bid my ex-companion adieu, from which, any promise to call her is conspicuously (and fortunately) absent.

The scramble-egg texture of brain matter is also conscipuously absent from this fountaining head-chunk smoothie. Wonder what that means...?

I turn just in time to see the rest of my co-workers performing ridiculous-looking dances as their eye sockets burst wide and spray blood all over their immaculate cubicle partitions.