by Lucas Buckman

 

            The one thing Doug hated most about his job, were the lists. Doug’s boss, Fred Bonsap, was a meticulous list maker and insisted every member of his 3 person office have long detailed lists of what there daily objectives were. Doug worked at Bazoomerboost energy goo company, a company based in California, he worked at the distributor in Glintoc, Ohio. The company’s primary duty is to initially relay information from headquarters to the warehouse. There office, a small hole in the wall at the end of an even smaller strip mall off route 12. There were four people who worked in the office, Zeke, Roy, There  boss Fred, and Doug. Fred occupies the renovated closet turned office while his subordinates split a three-way cubicle. Tensions ran high in the office, it was quite typical to go a whole day and have complete silence, except for Roy, who typed oddly loud.

             A typical day for Doug: wake up at 7 am, hop into the bathtub (Doug is afraid of showers) , make instant coffee and eat a grab bag of Doritos(Cooler Ranch), get in his small datsun (which was even smaller because Doug is about 6’8) and drive to work by 9 am, he checks in with Fred gets his list of goals, sits at his desk for eight hours playing snake and downloading celebrity sex tapes, clocks out, goes home, watches an episode of Frasier, then falls asleep with the lights on.

            Doug hunched over in his datsun trying to savor the end of his bag of Doritos, he pulled up to his norzal parking space. He gripped the croquet mallet in his hand as he walked through the door of his office. As he came no one looked up from there desks, Doug could see his boss in his office playing gameboy, Zeke and Roy both filling out various forms. As Doug sat at his seat he saw something to familiar placed on his desk, a list. Doug stood up, this startled the others because of its rarity, no one ever moved in the office. Zeke and Roy both looked up and just stared for about a minute eyeing the mallet in Doug’s hand.

            “What’s the mallet for?” Zeke asked blandly

             Doug stared back at him, staring into his lonely blue eyes, they were all lonely, not one of them seemed to have any sort of life outside of the office, aside from Fred who once had a wife who left him for a professional basketball player.

            “I like croquette” Doug answered back.

            “Oh…Ok”  Zeke lost interest and returned to his work, as did Roy.

            Doug just stood there holding the mallet in his hand, eyeing each of his co-workers heads, they reminded him of piñatas, Doug loved cracking open a piñata when he was a child.

            Doug left work that day, as typically as any other day. He returned to work every day on time for the next month, each day bringing in something new, bat, bowling ball, golf club, a rope, a pan, a broom, a dictionary, a brick, an umbrella, anything. And everyday he would stand up with that object and glare at all of his peers. They didn’t seem to notice nor care. What his co-workers did not know is that Doug had begun to craft a list of his own, titled “Things to Kill my co-workers with”, next to each object in the list was a detailed description of how each object would work, the list contained one hundred objects, he was seventy nine.

            “What’s with the pillow” Roy asked dully.

             “Sleep” Doug replied.

            “what’s with the telephone cord?”

            “Phones broken” Doug replied.

            “Why do you have a large boot?”

            “Hiking” Doug replied.

            “It isn’t snowing so why do you have a snow shovel?”

            “always prepared” Doug replied.

            Doug replied and replied his way down that list all the way until number one hundred, which was a dumbell. When Doug got home that night he went to his desk and took out the list and crossed out his one hundreth object. He smiled and his eyes rolled back into his head relishing in his accomplishment.

 

            Zeke, Roy and Fred lay next to each other on the floor of the office bound and gagged. Doug sits in his chair watching the fear pouring out of the three middle aged faces.

            “Life should never be this mundane, never” Doug said with a lot of energy.

Unable to respond the three of them just roll around, struggling to get loose.

            “For the past hundred or so days I have gone through one hundred objects, trying to narrow down which object to kill all of you with” Doug said lighting up his face.

            Doug held up the list and showed the three men, he then crumpled it and swallowed it, his throat couldn’t take it, Doug turned purple, then blue, and in mid gasp he collapsed onto his desk head first. The list had killed him.