AN-Been a while since I've posted anything, figured I'd might as well keep this account semi-alive/ Hadda write this for school, though I honestly didn't take it too seriously...or edit it enough! Supposedly light-hearted, but I have a lame sense of humor, soo...guess this would be practice with writing something NOT angst for a change.

Comments/opinions wanted as usual.

EDIT 8/29/07- Just now realized the line breaks weren't there! My apologizes for that.

Twenty-Four Hours

“It’s today, man. Your life ends today: you got twenty four hours left. Are you ready?”

Bill shook his head with an incredulous laugh, and walked by the skinny, elderly man looking at him intently without pausing. The people, these days! Bill thought to himself. Weirdoes and freaks, the lot of them. And lazy, too. After all, if that guy would get off his butt and get a job, he wouldn’t be out on the street warning people of encroaching doom.

He careened his neck back at one point and glanced back down the street. The hobo was still there, still watching him; it was a little creepy, actually. The guy was pale-and-smooth-skinned and relatively clean for a homeless man, but his clothes were in tatters and his face was weary. His eyes were the scariest part of him, though…they were ice-blue and almost haunting…

A freezing wind blew down the back of his spine. The day was as nasty as they came; the wind was harsh and the city streets dirty with blackened slush. Bill had left home an hour and a half earlier then usual, just to make sure he got to work earlier than everyone else, as he always did. Although if he didn’t hurry, he might end up being—devastatingly enough—on time, perish the thought!

With that terrible thought in mind, he turned the corner, hurrying towards his workplace. The hobo called after him, “Twenty four hours!”

Three hours of running around later, Bill collapsed into his desk chair, exhausted. He wasn’t a secretary by any means, but it seemed like his superiors were always giving him low-level work to do.

But no matter! Bill’s eyes shot towards the fancy oak door at the end of the hall, just visible from his cubicle’s entrance. Soon, with any luck, he’d be in there instead of in this cramped, old, incredibly under-heated office.

He could quote the announcement, made by the senior vice president of employee relations just three weeks ago, by heart: “As a burgeoning company, we will be increasing the number of senior vice presidents we have residing at this firm to three…”

This was the chance he’d been waiting for! All those long hours spent in the office…all those times he left long after the janitor had given his nightly farewell…all the complaints his (now ex) wife had given him about his obsessing over his job…they would all be worth it, finally! To be a vice president meant money, respect…a nice office and a prepaid spending account for ‘business matters’…

Bill smiled eagerly to himself as he waited for his old and senile computer to warm up. Soon he’d be a revered member of this firm, just the way he’d always dreamed…

Footsteps snapped him back to reality—the president himself was walking by. The President! Bill leaped up; this was his chance to impress the higher-ups and squirm his way in!

“Oh…sir!” He scurried into the aisle and darted in front of the other man. “It’s, it’s wonderful to see you today—ah…was there anything you needed sir? Anything at all?”

The President looked at him for a moment, and Bill felt his heart start to sing. Surely his boss saw what a dedicated worker he was! Now it was obvious that he was the only man good enough for the promotion! This would show his blasted ex-wife!

The president stared at him a bit.

“…Do you work here, young man?”

Bill trudged down the street, dejectedly. The icy wind bit at his face, and his—shined the night before as usual—shoes were soaking wet and muddy. People on the sidewalk hurried around the glum man without looking twice.

He sighed. How could the president not know who he was?! He’d been getting the man coffee—to show how loyal he was—for, why…for three weeks now! How completely unfair…

Turning the corner, Bill’s thoughts turned to getting out of the cold and into his usual lunch-time joint. He’d dreamed of strutting in there as a vice president and getting grade-A service, instead of slinking in as a common paper-pusher and getting grade-Z service (complete with lukewarm coffee). Oh, the world was too dang unreasonable sometimes…

“Twenty four hours, man! You ready for it? Only a little bit of time left!”

Startled, Bill glanced up, only to find the loudmouthed homeless man from before, settled in front of the café’s door. He growled. Why did this hobo have to pick this eatery, instead of any other of the ten billion food places in New York City?!

“This day’s your last!” the hobo promised as Bill tried to get around him to the door. The disheveled man seemed completely oblivious to both the blustering winds and the dirty looks the weather and the businessman were sending at him. “Enjoy it. Make it count! Twenty four hours, man!”

Bill cursed to himself. Forget it, he’d find some place else to eat. He turned to go, but couldn’t help noticing as he did that the hobo was still staring at him.

“What?” he snapped, nerves on edge. He didn’t need this, really he didn’t.

“Twenty four hours,” came the solemn reply.

Why him? That was what Bill wanted to know. Why him?

He tried to keep himself preoccupied with filling out forms back at his desk, but his cubicle faced a window and he could hear the shouting from outside clear and well. The homeless man had followed him to the office, and was still shouting at the top of his lungs about ‘one last day ending’ and ‘twenty four hours, better make ‘em last.’ Bill just couldn’t understand it. Why had this guy chosen to follow him around, of all people? What had he ever done to deserve this at all?

It wasn’t like he was some kind of horrible person. He wasn’t evil…not that he was too amazingly nice…actually, he wasn’t quite sure what he was. Bill was….Bill. That’s what his ex-wife always said. He was Bill: plain as dirt, no interesting features whatsoever, work-obsessed Bill. So why did this hobo decide to push ‘make it count’ nonsense on him?? He didn’t know how to make anything count!

Rgh….he frowned. Maybe his ex-wife had found the bum and put him up to this! That would be just like her! (Well, no, it really wouldn’t be, but Bill wasn’t the one who wanted the divorce—not that he said as much, why bother to waste time putting his point of view out there?—and he was still rather bitter.)

He put his head down on his desk, suddenly exhausted. Wasn’t this just perfect. Here he was, a middle-aged, low-on-the-corporate-ladder lackey, with an ex-wife who was off meeting new men and a number one fan who was also a hobo. Bill was starting to realize that if the only person who actually wanted to talk to him was someone who pushed around a shopping cart for a living, then he had some serious issues to work out.

Hm…

He raised his head again. He could still hear his unwanted fan club of one chanting his irritating mantra; Bill just wished he understood what the mantra meant! Twenty-four hours? Twenty-four hours till what? Till he died? Now wasn’t that a depressing thought…

Not that he believed the bum, of course! How would the hobo know if Bill’s lame life was about to lamely limp away? That wasn’t at all possible, right!

…Right?

Bill forced a laugh. Oh, this was stupid! He was wasting his time wondering about this—he had papers to push! This was the last time he was going to even think about that dumb hobo’s dumb message.

Five and a half seconds later, Bill put his pen down, stood up, and scurried down the hallway towards the front door.

“It’s almost up,” the hobo was saying solemnly when Bill (panting, since he was a tad out of shape; his ex-wife was right, he really had let himself go) reached him. “Better get ready.”

“Why do you keep saying that??” the business man demanded. “Why are you following me around, and what does that mean?”

The homeless man just looked at him. “Time’s almost up,” he said.

“How do you know?!” Bill was surprised he felt this vehement; even if it was somehow true, who cared? What was so important in his life that he couldn’t give up? He didn’t even like his life--….huh. Strange. He’d never realized that before, but…it was true, he didn’t like his life very much. Hm…

“Twenty-four hours. Are you ready?”

“Well, I, um…look,” Bill tried weakly to protest, “you wouldn’t understand. How life is, I mean. Just because I don’t enjoy it doesn’t mean….I….uh….”

Pause.

“Anyway, it’s not like it’s true!”

“Doesn’t matter,” said the hobo, breaking his verbal recording for the first time yet. “It might be true. It could happen. You dunno. You won’t know ‘till it comes, so you should be ready for it. Twenty four hours, man, that’s maybe all you got. And if it is, well, was it worth being alive? You should go out satisfied, you don’t get another chance.”

“That’s…uh…well, it might seem like that to you, but in the real world…uh…why should I take advice from a….argh!” Bill threw up his hands. “No, I’m not satisfied!” he yelled. “Why should I be? I’m middle-aged and—look, I’m balding already, and my wife doesn’t want to be my wife anymore and…and…!”

“Age well. Learn to love bald. Tell her you want her back.”

“Yes…well…it’s not that easy….!”

“Why not?”

“Um, because….it just isn’t! It can’t be. No offense, but a man in your, er….position…wouldn’t really get it…”

“Hey, it’s your last day,” the hobo—who wasn’t quite as old as Bill had first thought, actually—shrugged. “Twenty four hours, not much time left. Are you satisfied enough to go out right now?”

And then he walked away.

Bill paced, from one end of his cubicle to the next. He was getting some pretty strange looks from people passing by, but for once he didn’t care much at all—there were more important things on his mind right now.

“Twenty-four hours, man, that’s maybe all you got. And if it is, well, was it worth being alive?”

“It’s not that easy….!”

“Not much time left. Are you satisfied enough to go out right now?”

He stopped. Something clicked. He might have only twenty four hours left (it was possible, anyway), and who didn’t want to go out with a bang? Maybe…just maybe…he could turn his life outside in and make it something brand new…

The next minute, he was running off down the hall, trying to remember the number of the local florist’s at the same time (his ex-wife liked roses, right?). Despite the fact that he had a small-sized mountain of paperwork sitting impatiently on his desk, Bill didn’t look back once.

“It’s today, man. Twenty four hours, it’s today. Are you satisfied enough?”

The hobo shrugged his shoulders as the short, stubby man with a beard growled at him and walked past. No matter. These things always took a while, people were stubborn.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of last week’s target, Bill, chatting spiritedly with a pretty, brown-haired woman around his age. He was wearing a wedding ring where he hadn’t been wearing one a few days ago; the woman was smiling at him, fresh-looking bouquet of roses in hand. Today’s paper, opened to the job classifieds, lay crumpled-up under the table, where Bill had shoved it when the lady’d arrived.

The hobo grinned to himself. Nothing like a job well done! Making people more satisfied with their lives was such a fun way to pass the time—oh, oh, oh! The stubby, bearded man was coming back, probably for a cup of coffee at the shop down the street.

He sighed, although he wasn’t really bothered. Looks like he had some more work to do.

So he turned and took off down the street after the bearded man. “Hey, buddy, only twenty-four hours….”