Excerpt: "One Cardboard Box" (Modus Dialogukung)

Having left B&M Publishers, he finds himself with a publishing house that he actually hates -- Collins Publishing Inc. But his boss, Abe (whom Lark affectionately refers to as "Captain") also hates him. Let's see what happens!

Looking down the rubber-tiled corridor, I saw his stern face, his jaunting way, making headway like a raging comet ripping through the atmosphere, desperate to lambast the world.

“Lark!”

“Aye, Captain!”

“You’re fired. And no I’m not joking.”

And then, not skipping a beat, in his lumbering giant’s way, he kept tearing away, onwards forever down the rubber-skinned hall.

I stood there a moment, but I figured I’d best start moving my stuff. Took to my desk, found a cardboard box by the door someone had likely intended to throw away, then started loading my books, unlaboring my shelves of their word hoard. But after packing Herodotus and Kierkegaard, I hesitated, and looked at that great couplet of shelves.

This was my hall of heroes, my faming line, the legends in my fantasies, and they’d decorated my walls for -- how long? Only now to come down in smoking heaps of aged dust.

But now, one by one, these gods all fall down, down into the abyss of my forgotten cardboard box.

“Hey, Aaron. What’re you doing?”

“Hmmm? Oh, well, what do you mean?”

“With that box?”

“Oh, I was just using it to collect my books. You know these books pick up so much aged dust sitting here on these shelves, like forgotten idols I imagine.”

“Right. Well, I don’t want to interrupt your war on dust, but I was actually going to use that box.”

“Oh, really? I just found it by the door, no one had anything in it.”

“Right, yeah, I totally meant to nab that yesterday. Me and Chelsea are actually moving to a new apartment. So it’d be nice to have it. I’d let you use it when we’re done with it if you’d like?”

“Oh, I see. That’s fine, you go ahead and take it. I’ll find another box.”

“Are you sure? Didn’t mean to steal it like that.”

“No, you go ahead, you and Chelsea need it more than I do.”

“Thanks Aaron. Sorry about that.”

Bereft of my box, I simply piled the books and carried them to my car, armload by armload. Household gods deserve a better vesselage. But you do the best with what you’re given.