Atlas, Broken

by Jeremy Tyrrell

a second functioning hand made simple tasks like buttering toast a right chore.

  There were still no coffee pods in the container. He was still unshaven. Gingerly sliding his shirt sleeve over his arm and clumsily tying his shoe laces just took too long. By the time he left the house, he was already frustrated.

  He had made a cursory check in the passenger side of the car for his teeth, but came up empty handed.

  Traffic, in its sardonic way, revelled in his discomfort and refused to yield even slightly out of sympathy. Everything was just taking longer. Every motion was agonisingly complicated.

  As a result, Henry was late. Genuinely late. By anyone's watch or clock or telephone.

  It wasn't surprising, but it was concerning. With a bit of luck, Mister Miro would not see him come in. It had only happened on a few occasions before, only a few times. Henry crossed his fingers as he crossed the road, scuttling a little faster than he should to get past the great, stooped statue and through the doors.

  Miss Fisher looked up, “Hi, Henry.”

  “Hi, Miss Fisher. How're you?”

  “Fine thanks. How're you?”

  “Can't complain. No one listens.”

  “That's good.”

  He did a quick sweep with his head. No Big M in sight. He was short, though, and could be behind a cubicle on the opposite side, ready to spring out.

  “You need something, Henry?” Miss Fisher asked, adjusting her spectacles.

  “Just, ah, just looking for, ah,” he faltered.

  “Mister Miro is currently on the second floor,” she said with a wink, “You're in the clear.”

  “Uh, that's not –“

  “You're welcome. But you'd better hurry.”

  “Ah, thanks. Um, thanks Miss Fisher,” Henry said, scuttling away.

  He skulked along the cubicle partitions, like a commando behind enemy lines, leaping across the gaps and whipping quickly around the corners.

  The troglodytes in their cubicles hardly dared to watch him as he went, in case they should be implicated in whatever he was up to. It wasn't normal behaviour, not at all, and such actions were sure to draw the attention of Mister Miro. They burrowed their noses into their monitors, shuffled their chairs about a little, anything to appear deeply concentrated in their work.

  He was almost to the point of reaching his sanctuary, only one more block to go, when the photocopier kicking up gave him a start. He turned sharply around. There was a crack and a pop, and his leg buckled.

  “Shit!” he groaned, reaching out to put his coffee on the desk before he dropped it, “Geez, that hurts!”

  Geoff, eyes almost wide enough to be called open, looked over the partition, “That sounded nasty, Hank. You bust your knee or what?”

  “Knee, ankle, one of the joints. What's the difference?” Henry replied, hauling himself up to his chair and rubbing his leg, “Either way it's screwed. Aw, geez. Look at that!”

  His foot was hanging out at right angles, limp. He grunted and groaned as he tried to get it to wiggle even a little bit.

  “Good thing the car's an automatic, eh?” he laughed, rubbing his limb to get some sensation into it, “I wonder what else can go wrong?”

  He clicked on his applications and watched as the familiar progress bar appeared.

  “You're in the wars, then?”

  “Yeah. Never rains, eh?”

  Geoff pointed to his hand, “What happened there?”

  “Fell off.”

  “No kidding?”

  “No kidding.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  Geoff whistled and raised his eyebrows appropriately. He was a good listener, was Geoff.

  Henry went on, “Made a right mess. Couldn't get to put it back on straight away, but. Had to go out and get bread and milk.”

  “Figures.”

  “And when I came back, the cat had had a go at it!”

  “It's a fine thing you've done there, Hank,” Geoff said, examining the gaffer tape, “Looks like a proper job. Is it holding?”

  “It's good enough for now, but there's still a little give when you move it like this.”

  “What did Loretta say?”

  “About what?”

  “Your hand.”

  Henry sighed, “Not a lot. She got me a plastic bag to put over it in bed so it wouldn't leak on the sheets.”

  Geoff shrugged, “Makes sense, I guess.”

  “Yeah. But every time I moved the bag rustled. Had to sleep on the couch because I kept waking her up. And it was sticky and sweaty. Hardly got any sleep at all.”

  “Well, hopefully that'll hold proper, you know.”

  “Yeah, I hope so. You think it's getting pink yet? I can't tell. It's like everything is going ping these days. Lost my teeth...”

  “Still haven't found them?”

  “Nah. They're in the car somewhere. I'll find them when I get two seconds. But then my hand goes and falls off. Busted my toe yesterday. Won't stay put. And now my leg! Oof, that smarts!”

  “Looks like it's starting to swell. You want I should get some ice or something?”

  “Thanks, Geoff. You're a real mate. I'd better check on the merger status first, but,” Henry replied, stealing a glance at his monitor, “Hopefully I can't do too much damage doing that.”

  “Sucks to be you - whoops,” Geoff said, quickly sitting back down at his partition.

  Mister Miro's corpulent face loomed through a gap in the partitions a way over. It was incredible. Geoff, after working at Atlas for so long, had the uncanny ability to sense when Big M would be wandering the cubicles, even if he didn't have a direct line of sight.

  It was a super-power, it was. Some superheroes can lift cars, others can see through walls. Geoff had the power of prescience.

  Henry snorted to himself as he thought about the other super-powers in the office. There was Janice. She had the power to stop conversations with her presence. It was like whenever she entered the room, the notion of talking about anything more significant than the weather just felt wrong. And Philbert could turn any joke around on the teller.

  Perhaps everyone had a super-power. That was a pretty cool idea. Perhaps it was up to everyone to figure it out. Henry began to wonder what his super-power might be, but his thoughts were interrupted by Mister Miro's tapping foot. He looked up.

  “Oh, hi Mister Miro.”

  He replied coolly, “Hello, Ludlow.”

  “How're you doing this morning?”

  “I'm well, thank you, Henry.”

  “Good to hear.”

  “But I could be better.”

  Henry did his best to hide the annoyance that was growing on his face. Not once had Mister Miro asked how he was doing. Not once did he ever show the slightest bit of concern for his well-being.

  His hand had broken off, damn it! It was evident. It's not like he wandered around with blood stained gaffer tape as a fashion statement, or sported a buckled knee as a trend. Surely to goodness Big M could take two seconds to pull his head out from his rotund buttocks and take stock of how the people around him, those underneath him, were feeling.

  “You know why I could be better?”

  “I couldn't give a rat's arse, Big M, you pompous, fat wanker!”

  That was what he desperately wanted to say. Instead, Henry only shook his head. He was an employee, and as an employee he had to be submissive and accept that Big M's title was higher than his.

  Even if he was a pompous, fat wanker.

  The only reason Miro and he even spoke, he had surmised, was because of the job. In any other setting he and that balding, pale, flabby-faced cretin would never have had anything to do with each other. The job thrust them together, held them together like opposing magnets.

  He shuddered. That was a terrible metaphor. That would imply that they were alike, he and Miro. And he was nothing like him.

  “You know why?” Miro pressed.

  Great. He wanted a verbal respons
e. And he would not stop until he got it. He wanted that little piece of audible submission that reconfirmed what both of them knew, that Miro was his overlord and master so long as his tiny, black heart was beating.

  “Why?” Henry managed.

  Mister Miro paused, a little for effect and a little to let Henry's meek response stay in the air for just that bit longer. He licked his lips, leaned in and rested his arm on Henry's desk. Henry made a mental note to clean that spot afterwards.

  “Because the merger hasn't gone through yet.”

  Henry stopped himself from swearing, and he stopped himself from punching Mister Miro. He didn't, however, stop his eye from rolling in its socket, slowly turning with a soft, spongy sound until it stopped, looking at the inside of his temple.

  “Ooh. Oh, wow!” Henry moaned.

  Mister Miro continued unabated, “It's been a while, Ludlow, too long in my opinion. Mergers shouldn't take this long. It's not rocket science. Why, if I had taken control of it, I could have pushed it through a month ago.”

  Henry held his hand up and clutched his eye, “We only began negotiations a month ago.”

  “Nevertheless, I would have accelerated the process. I would have pushed! You know how to push, don't you, Henry? It requires effort. And I think that's why this is taking as long as it is,” he said, thrusting his finger at Henry, “You're not putting in any effort! I'm looking at you, and you know what I see?”

  “Can you give me a minute with this?” Henry asked, scrounging for a tissue to sop up some of the juices that were spilling over his lid.

  “No, Henry, you can deal with that later. Gosh, I'm imparting my wisdom to you and you're busy putting on your make-up.”

  “Hell's bells! There's something wrong with my eye, sir!”

  “There's something wrong with your whole attitude! If you had a different attitude, we