Free Short Story - The Fade

An editor was looking for a Twilight Zone type story. I took a stab at it, and "The Fade" was my submission. Let me know what you think!

------------------

Stale coffee and staler doughnuts tainted the air around Harold’s drab gray cubicle. The flickering of the out-of-date florescent lights hurt his eyes. He supposed it could be worse. He could have been moved into Jerry’s cubicle. It was right next to the bathrooms, and maintenance hadn’t bothered to fix the shorted out lights at that end of the room for over a month.

Lucky bastard got to retire last week. Harold, however, was trapped here.

He couldn’t blame Jerry. He would have retired as soon as he hit sixty-eight, too, if it weren’t for Trina. He’d worked too damn hard to pay off the mortgage early to let the damn government take their home.

Thank god, today was payday. Maggie, the home healthcare lady, had given him the invoice this morning when she arrived. She’d be expecting a check when he got home tonight.

At least, she’d stopped nagging him about putting Trina into a home. He’d promised his wife she could die peacefully at home, and by all that was holy, he’d grant the only other request he’d been able to honor. He sure as hell hadn’t been able to give her any children. Not naturally. Not with all the money they spent on in vitro and then various adoption agencies.

The tired litany was interrupted when Sally, their new department secretary, marched by. Her painfully bright pink hair would never have been allowed in the company when he was fresh-faced out of college.

“Time’s change,” Trina had said with a smile while he bitched about the wild colors, tattoos, and multiple piercings on the new hires.

The problem was Sally hadn’t tossed his paycheck over his cubicle wall. Blasted girl couldn’t even politely hand the envelope to him.

Harold stood, his knees reminding him about his doctor’s suggestion for replacement surgery. Asshole couldn’t even look at him while he typed on the electronic pad all the medical facilities were adopting.

Hey, he was all for progress—until it impeded his career. At his age, the bosses who were young enough to be his kids, or in some cases, his grandkids, didn’t think he could keep up with the latest languages and apps. Now, he was stuck handling all the updates to the legacy systems.

All by himself now that Jerry had retired.

“Sally!” He waved. She was already waiting for the elevator.

“Yeah.” She turned toward him with a bored look on her face. The only excitement was the huge pink bubble she blew.

“You didn’t give me my paycheck.” Harold walked toward her when she didn’t move.

“Who are you again?”

Jesus H. Christ! She’d been here three months and still didn’t know his name. But he kept silent. He didn’t need another “training” session with HR. “Harold Miller.”

She flipped through the rest of the envelopes she held. “Nope. No paycheck for any Harold Miller.” She grinned as she chomped on her bubblegum. “Didn’t you retire last week?”

“That was Jerry Stillwell. My name is Miller.”

“I don’t have a check for a Miller,” she said.

“Could you have accidentally given it to someone else?”

“Nope. Did you sign up for auto-deposit?”

“No, I didn’t,” he said through gritted teeth. “You’ve delivered my check to me at my cubicle every other week for the last three months.”

“I don’t know what to tell you. You need to talk to HR,” she said with a noticeably uncaring shrug. The elevator door opened, and she stepped inside. “And get some sun, man! You’re practically translucent,” she called over her shoulder before the doors slid shut.

Harold bit his tongue to keep from saying the nasty word he wanted to call Sally. It wouldn’t solve anything.

His knee froze and popped as he walked back to his cubicle. So much for saving up for his own surgery. He’d have to dig into savings to pay Maggie’s invoice.

Again.

When he sat back down, he reached for his desk phone receiver and punched in HR’s number.

“Human resources,” Shirley chirped.

He forced himself to smile. One of the management books he’d read said a smile on your face while speaking with someone on the phone would make you sound more upbeat and cheerful.

“Hey, Shirley! This is Harold Miller on five. I didn’t get my paycheck.”

“Paychecks are handed out by each department’s secretary.” From her irritated tone, Shirley probably wasn’t smiling.

“Yeah, Sally just came through, but she didn’t have an envelope for me. She suggested I call you.”

“What’s your name again?”

Dammit! He and Shirley had known each other for nearly forty years. Harold sucked in a deep breath of stale coffee air, repeated his name, and spelled it. “Let me check into it, and get back to you.” The line abruptly clicked, and the disconnect tone whined through the receiver.

“Screw it,” he mumbled to himself. “I’m going to lunch early.”

* * *

A few minutes later, Harold strolled over to the park across the street from his office with his pathetic brown bag with its peanut butter and jelly sandwich and carrot sticks in one hand and a can of diet cola from the office vending machine in the other.

He found an unoccupied bench and sat down. When Trina and he were fresh out of school and fresh out of money, she made their lunches for work every day. Her sandwiches tasted like love. When she couldn’t make them anymore, he took over the task. His sandwiches tasted like. . .nothing.

Maybe it was the artificial flavors and preservatives the food companies relied on. Maybe it was everything going on in his life. Or maybe he was just too old and too worn out for his taste buds to work properly.

He put the other half of his peanut butter and jelly sandwich back into its Ziploc and pulled out the baby carrots. Those didn’t have any taste either, though the crunch was rather satisfying.

Across the path and underneath a huge maple, a homeless man sat. His clothes were nothing more than rags. He held up a sign that begged for spare change. None of the midday joggers, the powerwalking ladies in dress clothes and sneakers, or the kids from the nearby university paid any attention to the bum whatsoever.

It didn’t take being homeless to be invisible in this country.

Harold closed the Ziploc baggie with his carrots and dropped it in his brown paper bag. If Trina had a hard day, he’d eat the remainder for his dinner. He slugged down the rest of the diet cola and tossed the can in the trash receptacle next to his bench before he stood.

“Hey, man!”

Of course, the homeless guy wanted money. He hadn’t spoken to anyone else. He hadn’t been there when Harold sat down on the bench. Hell, he didn’t even remember the homeless guy arriving.

Harold slowly turned back to face the stranger. “Yeah?”

“Can you really see me?” The guy seemed surprised.

“Yeah.”

“Got any spare change? I’m hungry.”

“No, I don’t.” He spent the last of his change on his soda. His one treat on a Friday. He didn’t even have a paycheck to cash because of HR’s screw-up. He also knew what would happen next.

“Liar,” the homeless guy snarled.

“If you’re hungry, you can have the other half of my sandwich and the rest of my carrots,” Harold offered.

“I don’t want your fucking leftovers,” the homeless guy shouted.

“Sorry, it’s all I have.”

When the homeless guy continued swearing at him, Harold walked toward the park entrance. The shouting faded away, so he glanced over his shoulder. The homeless guy was gone. Maybe he decided to pester someone else.

When Harold returned to his cubicle desk, he called HR again. It rang ten times before he slammed down the receiver. Even if Shirley was still on her lunch break, someone should have been covering her phone. Maybe he needed to go up to HR and have his own talk with Shirley.

He pried himself out of his chair once again. Just ten years ago, a jog up two flights of stairs would have been a piece of cake. Now, it was damn near impossible.

No one said a damn word to him on the way to the elevator. He pressed the “UP” button. The little light didn’t come on. He tried again. No light. Had the elevator died again? If was working fine just ten minutes ago. He punched the button with his fist.

This time, the light came on, and the elevator groaned to life. When he arrived on seven, the entire floor was silent. Not just Shirley’s cubicle was empty, they all were.

There hadn’t been any notice about a Friday afternoon party. So, where was everyone?

Harold strolled over to the accounting section across the hall from HR. A faint sound came from the back of the room. He followed the scratching noise until he found one guy at his desk. He was scribbling numbers at a furious pace on a yellow notepad. In fact, he was writing so fast it was a wonder his pencil didn’t catch fire.

“Excuse me?”

“Yeah?” The balding man didn’t bother to look up at Harold.

“Do you know where everyone is from HR?”

“No.” More scribbling.

“It’s against company policy to leave a department totally unmanned during office hours.”

“And?”

“Thought you might know since Accounting and HR are neighbors.”

The balding man jumped to his feet. A huge spaghetti stain marred his flat gray tie. The polyester was the same color as their cubicles except where the sauce had turned the material orange-red.

“Look, asshole, I’ve got to fix this spreadsheet for the CFO before five o’clock. Now, get outta my face.”

“Sorry.” Harold back away slowly, but the crazy bald man had already dropped into his seat and scribbled on his pad again. Seemed like everyone else was having a rotten day, too.

* * *

Later that evening, the bus driver missed Harold’s stop even though he pulled the bell five times. His knees ached something fierce by the time he walked, or rather hobbled, the six blocks back to his house.

When he entered the front door, Maggie wasn’t sitting on the living room couch, waiting for him. A skinny white lady in the same uniform sat in his recliner, smoking a cigarette. Her hair had been bleached so much most of it had broken off.

“Who the hell are you?” he demanded.

“You got your payment for this month.” She took a puff and blew a smoke ring into the air.

“You didn’t answer my question,” he shot back. “Who are you? Better yet, where’s Maggie?”

“Personal emergency. I covered for her for the last couple of hours.” The woman took another drag and crushed out her cigarette in the crystal bowl Trina’s mother had given to them for a wedding gift. “I’m Lulu.”

“And how do I know you’re telling the truth?”

She shrugged. “Either I get the check now, or no one’s coming to care for your wife on Monday. Company policy.”

He couldn’t afford not to have help with Trina. He would drop by the bank tomorrow and transfer the funds. He’d been in IT long enough he didn’t trust the online service.

“Just a minute.” Harold hobbled back to his office and grabbed his checkbook from its hiding place. He trusted Maggie, but he was glad he’d taken precautions. A peek into Trina and his bedroom showed his wife sleeping soundly. The fresh smell of Trina’s lavender soap told him Maggie had bathed Trina before she had to leave for her emergency.

He hobbled back out to the living room, wrote the check, and handed it to Lulu. She snatched it out of his hand and left the house, making sure to slam the front door.

“Hello?” Trina called from their bedroom.

Not only had Lulu woke Trina, she left the crystal bowl full of butts. He’d deal with cleaning the bowl later. He hobbled pack down the hallway to their bedroom. Trina was sitting up in bed and had turned on the bedside light.

“I’m sorry for waking you, baby,” he murmured.

“You’re late getting home from work, Harry.” She was the only one who ever called him that. She smiled her gorgeous smile, the one that had initially attracted him to her, and patted the mattress. “You must have had a rough day. Tell me about it.”

His throat closed, and his eyes stung. Trina’s good days were getting farther and farther apart. The doctor had warned him that would be the case when they delivered their Alzheimer’s diagnosis. Well, if she was having a good day, he was going to enjoy it.

He undressed and lay down beside her, and she cuddled against his chest just like she used to do. He told her about his day, leaving out the part about the missing paycheck. No sense worrying her over a trifling matter.

“I think some people don’t have a good woman to come home to.” He sighed. “I’m lucky I do.”

“You will always have me,” she murmured.

“I hope you remember that.” He meant to be teasing, but the words hurt him more he imagined.

“Of course, I will Harold James Miller. For ever and ever.”

* * *

Harold woke to Trina’s screams.

“Baby, what’s wrong?”

“Who the hell are you? What are you doing in my bed?”

“It’s me. Harry.”

“I don’t know any Harry.” She grabbed the Rockafeller Center snow globe that played Frank Sinatra. She loved her some Frank as much as she had Harold.

But she no longer remembered either man and lobbed the glass and ceramic at him.

He tried to catch the souvenir from their twentieth anniversary trip, but it passed through his fingers. The funny thing was it passed through his chest, too, and shattered against their bedroom door.

“Trina, get in bed while I clean this up.”

“Get away from me!” She threw her jewelry box at him. “Get out of here. I’ll call the cops. I swear I will!”

* * *

Maybe it was a good thing Trina’s fading mind was capable of remembering 9-1-1.

When the cops arrived, she told them a wild story about a strange man in her bed who faded away after she threw something at him and said she’d call the police. Harold tried to tell the officers his side of the story, but they ignored him.

Instead, they called an ambulance, and the paramedics gave her a mild sedative so they could transport her to the hospital.

Again, Harold tried to talk to them, but they ignored him. Hell, he couldn’t even get his damn trousers on, but none of the police officers cared.

Or they couldn’t see him. Just like he hadn’t seen the homeless man at first. That guy didn’t have anyone who cared about him.

And Trina no longer remembered she cared either.