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The Yes Man

Part One - Maybe Rodger's suicide just saved his life.

By Alex MaherPublished 4 years ago 9 min read
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What kind of an arsehole parent would do that to their kid? I mean seriously? Who in their right mind calls their kid ‘Rodger’ when their last name is also Rodger.

Papers flapped as he stormed through the cubical farm followed by a mob of meerkating workmates. Their faces all showing a similar smirk. “Rodger Rodger” they called, in a mock robotic voice with jarred against his ears.

It was just friendly ribbing, they said. "Just a bit of fun," the HR manager told him when he complained. "Don't worry about it Rog, it's nothing". Just more fabric to the blanket of depression that draped over him is what it was, pushing him down and snuffing out any spark of happiness he could summon.

For years he had endured jibes and taunts about his name. All the way through high school and then in the work place. The ‘yes man’ they called him. ‘Rodger Rodger, The fucking yes man. Well I'll show them that it's not ‘yes’.

He slammed open the double doors and headed towards the sun drenched grass lunch area. Anger fueled his movements rather than depression. All he'd said was that he was heading out for a quick bite and then it started.

Such a bunch of pricks.

He slumped into a sitting position with a huff and closed his eyes. The anger burning low and the depression regaining its comfortable position back within his confines of his mind.

Many times he had fantasized about going bat-shit crazy and taking his managers to task with a rage induced flurry of strikes to the head. He could almost hear the sing of aluminium as the baseball bat arced through the air. Strike one mother fucker! The tacky organ played tradadaduhdah as the blood ran free!

But he was a realist, and held no doubt that security would beat the shit out of him before he could so much as run his hair through his untamed afro and spit the words "And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance ..."

He was also very white and no-where near a cool as the great Mr Jackson.

He closed his eyes and watched the green-blue-purple splots inside his eyelids while the sun warmed his skin and cooled his temper. It was during his forty five minutes, and-not-a-minute-more, lunch break that the idea hit him. It was like a weight was lifted. A pathway appeared ahead of him through the thickets of life and he finally had a clear direction. He grinned as another metaphor danced through his mind. It was like he'd been constipated for weeks and finally taken a good shit.

The question he needed to ask himself was how? He contemplated this while rummaging through with bag. He was too chicken shit to jump off the roof. Too squeamish to attempt to cut his wrist and he'd never been any good with pain. Needles. Christ no. He shuddered. He was no junkie smack head.

He picked up a dry and sad looking chicken salad sandwich he had made that morning and considered going to and getting a Big Mac. The bread had been squashed flat and sat limp in his hand. the lettuce was far from crisp and cold. Shit, if he was going to doing it tonight why bother eating god damn rabbit food.

Pills. He grinned -- and a bottle or two of Jack, If I'm going out, I'm going out sideways!

He unwrapped the sandwich and took a bite. It was a un-inspiring as it looked and came to the conclusion that this sandwich tasted as shitful and that maccas wasn't that bad of an idea after all.

The thought of heading over to the "Eroticar Showroom" popped into his head while he chewed. Perhaps stealing a Ferrari or Lambo and flying up the freeway only to be taken out in a hail bullets, road spikes and flames as the super-car crashed had some merit. But he was as much a young Burt Reynolds as he was a Samuel L Jackson, and movie star stunt man he was not.

Pills and Jack would work, and so what if this exit plan was a bit bland. It would be much like his life. Not so much the blaze of glory he had intended back in school. But this, what this would be a was a grand and final one fingered salute to all those bastards that called him the 'yes man' at the office. An 'up yours' to all the useless pricks that turned him down at every promotion over the last ten years of loyal service. A, sorry ladies - I'm hittin' the road

Jack, and I ain't coming back no more, no more, no more, no more.

He took another bite at the stale wholemeal bread and shrugged. A little pepper would help. Maybe some cucumber. He munched on and had a quick rummage at what else he'd packed. Salt and vinegar chips, eaten. An apple, green, warm and wrinkled.

Lambo-greenie.

He snuffed a laugh at his private joke and then gagged. As if life was imitating his thoughts, a tiny piece of wholemeal sucked up through his sinuses and launched from his nose.

That could have been the act that saved Rodger Rodger's soul. That single lump of snot encrusted bread and a memory of a joke he shared with his father many years ago.

What sort of car comes out of your nose at one hundred miles an hour? A Lambo-greenie. 


"Baddumtish." He said out loud to the empty park surrounding him.

The ten year old Rodger had asked his dad what a Lambogreeni actually was, so his dad showed him a picture of a '78 Countach. Ten year old Rodger decided that it was the coolest thing he had ever seen, so off he took himself to the local post office where they had a vast collection of matchbox cars. He'd spend his hard earn pocket money on a scale model Lamborghini Countach all of his very own. He wandered up the street, mind full of exotic Italian super cars, passed the service station. There was the usual smattering of people milling around, but at the petrol station to his left, a large American pick up truck car caught his eye. It was unusual to see an american car in a small village deep in the heartlands of England. However, it wasn't the truck he noticed. It was the girl sitting in the back tray.

He smiled. He remembered smiling at her. She was the most beautiful, angelic thing he had ever seen. His ten year old heart skipped a beat. Her skin glowed. Tanned and blemish free and a smile that made him forget about supercars and toys and other boyish thoughts.

She even waved back at him. He hadn't realised that his hand was waving.

"Nice Rog, real nice,"

The voice was like a needle scratched across an old vinyl record. If the young girl of his ten year old dreams had a look that melted hearts. Britney Watson had the opposite.

"You may want to um" she wiped her face with a pretend tissue and swayed on past him. He grabbed a tissue from his back pack and wiped his face.

"I just coughed, jeez."

She ignored him and pulled a towel from her bag. He checked the time. Twenty minutes to go.

"Well. Best be getting back then,." he watched her lay down while he popped his left overs back into his backpack and brushed crumbs from his lap. "These files won't file themselves, will they... Hey Brit?"

It wasn't that she wasn't attractive. She would have been beautiful, except for the fact that she looked at him as though he was something a canine produced that she'd accidentally trodden in. She had legs that went on forever, and a style like one of the girls in that old Robert palmer video from way back in the 80's. The metallic sword swish and the words 'Simply-Irresistible' floated around Rodger's mind.

She also had an attitude that her shit didn't stink and everyone else's did.

Rodger chuckled to himself again as she continued to ignore him. His thoughts turning again back to snot Supercars and that young girl from twenty years ago that ten year old Rodger had never forgotten about.

-----

It was dark when he got home. The rain was trying establish itself, smearing across the windscreen with a shudder of the wiper blades. The plastic bag from the myriad of chemists he had visited bulged in his pocket and rubbed against the seat of his old Saab, making and uncomfortable seat more uncomfortable.

The break squealed as he pulled in the drive and shuddered to a halt. He didn’t bother locking the old car, the door slammed with a satisfying thunk.

“Screw them all.”

It wasn’t the first time he had contemplated suicide, but this was the further-est he had been to going through with it. The keys jangled in the door key and the stepped through, leaving his shoes at the front.

In the bedroom, he dropped his corporate clothes that Rodger Rodger, The Yes Man, would wear, and got into his favourite old comfy trackies. Grey with a blue stripe on one side. The Adidas logo had long gone, but the stitching showing the silhouette of the logo still remained. The bottle of Jack lay on the bed, beckoning him to open it. The golden liquid glistened in the light the room and the overhead fan chopped its reflection within the glass.

“Soon.” He said, addressing the bottle, “soon.”

The first of the pills tasted plastic as he popped them into his mouth. He had put in three, cracked open the bottle and swallowed. The burn flowed down his throat and he grimaced.

“Salute motherfucker,” he toasted his shadow and down another three tablets with a bourbon chaser. He chuckled as he looked at the bottle of Jack, singing a little ditty in his head. “Jack and Pill went up the hill, to fetch a fail..”

Before long, a third of the bottle had gone, and half of the tablets. His head was spinning. Or was it the room?

He sat on the bed, the room slowed, then he found himself laying down. It was all he could do to put the lid back onto the bottle so it wouldn’t spill.

He closed his eyes and let the momentum of spinning darkness take him for it’s ride. The drumming of the rain on his roof mixed with the spinning of the room and lulled him into the sleep that he had been wishing for. Within the swirling darkness the vision of the girl in the back of the truck meandered back into focus of his minds eye.

Maybe in the next life unknown beauty, Maybe the next …

The darkness took hold.

END OF PART ONE

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About the Creator

Alex Maher

G'day I hope you enjoy my stories.

Find out more at http://www.amwriting.net or join me on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Alex.L.Maher/

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Cheers

Al

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