The Office
Here's that short story I talked about earlier. It was a test of descriptive writing capability. All description, no explicit plot or character development. You must try to relay a mood with the description.
Read it, then post a comment and try to guess the mood. I'll post a comment later telling you what I was going for.
The office is out of time. Let me explain what I mean. The office is located on the basement floor of a brown brick office building. The building was built into the side of a small hill, so that half of the basement floor faces the beige concrete that has been poured over the hill to keep it from eroding. There is a window that looks out into a small alley between the building and the concrete wall. Though it stretches floor to ceiling, there is no direct sunlight to this window, except at noon when the light cuts into the crevice, only to be distilled by the glass so that it looks as if I am in some sort of strange terrarium, and those passersby in the parking lot above are ogling me with expressions of curiosity as the light forms patterns of refractions about my workspace. The reason the office is out of time is because I cannot see the sun from this room, and my employer would not pay for a wall clock. The day goes by with no change except at noon, so the morning looks much the same as the afternoon. It’s hard to be productive when I can’t tell if I’ve just come or if it’s almost time to leave.
Nothing grows in the alley, there is not enough water or light down here to permit it, and as the day goes on I wither like the feeble grass that trudges on beneath the windowsill. I sit just beyond the window, in a 12 by 10 foot room, painted a dull light gray and carpeted wall to wall in a medium gray carpet of the short indoor/outdoor variety. My desk, well cubicle really, fills the end of the room by the window. There is an empty cubicle between mine and the door to the hallway; at least I have the view.
My cubicle is covered in a mauve cloth with black aluminum trim and a beige work surface. There are cabinets above the work surface; these are in the same black aluminum that frames the cubicle. The colors are designed to keep your mind from wandering about the room, keep you occupied with your work. Creative ramblings cost time, and time is money. The work surface is snowed over with scattered papers, No inbox and outbox; only an unorganized slurry of missed deadlines and half completed projects. It is cool and smooth to the touch, but run your hand along it’s surface and it your hand comes away dusty, turned gray from exposure to the office. In one corner of the cube is my computer, which I drone on in front of day in and day out, as it saps my best years away, leaving my eyes red and vision blurry, my wrists sore and stiff with the beginnings of carpal tunnel. The only spot of color in the room is my bright red chair, a bright island amidst the sea of gray. Here I take refuge, the comfortable chair my only ally against the monotony.
The dropped ceiling is beige with an aluminum grid, with fluorescent lights interspersed at intervals just close enough to provide feeble illumination, but far enough apart to make lighting the room energy efficient. I have under cabinet lights, but their unnatural glow hurts my eyes more than the flicker and buzz of the overheads. If I stare at the lights for a moment and then close my eyes I can trace patterns of starbursts left behind, the pain lightly and slowly receding with the bursts of reds and oranges under my lids. Perhaps they were designed that way to keep me from wasting the extra electricity to use them. The room is finished in a dark gray wood that brings all the shades of gray and beige together at the wood trim and baseboard.
If I stare without blinking for a few moments across the space, the room blurs into a pristine field of ashen grays and beige, like the remnants of some forest fire, where the woods have been gutted and soot and ash have blended together in the rain to form the mortar that replaces the bed of needles and leaves. The natural beauty of chaos replaced by the artificial order imposed by efficient modern living. But when I refocus my eyes it seems all I can see is the decay. The scratches and chips in the paint where boxes have been brushed against the walls. The small rents and tears in the fabric of the cubicles. The light brown remembrances of coffee spilled on the carpet. The greenish brown mold in the half empty cup of coffee on my desk, festering and thriving in the half-light, reminds me that I’m not the only living thing in the building. There is no human noise here. There are the normal office sounds. There’s electric hum and vibration of the computer. There’s also the grating buzzing of the lights, the clashing ringing of the phone. But there’s no human noise. No laughing, or talking. No sneezing or coughing. I am the sole occupant in this part of the building. Well, aside from the mold.
The office robs me of my sense of the passage of time. The drab sameness, the hum of the electronics, the pale shadows created by the artificial lights; they make me numb. The air is cool and stale, with a metallic tang that taints my mouth. All of these form a fog in my brain, helping to blend time into an incomprehensible soup. Sometimes the hours pass as weeks. At other times the day has hardly begun when suddenly it is time to go home. Usually the minutes become hours until finally, weary and spent, I can leave. Another day wasted. I shut down my computer and turn off the lights. The hums and vibrations cease, an eerie quiet ensues. It’s the kind of silence that sends the hairs on my neck to attention, though I can’t explain why. There is no danger here, no feral cat stalking this jungle of sheet rock, plastic, and silicone. I turn to leave, the door closing behind me with a whoosh of climate-controlled air. A few tasks completed, a few deadlines missed. A few more gray hairs.
Copyright 2002, David Mason -as if that'll stop anyone
Read it, then post a comment and try to guess the mood. I'll post a comment later telling you what I was going for.
The office is out of time. Let me explain what I mean. The office is located on the basement floor of a brown brick office building. The building was built into the side of a small hill, so that half of the basement floor faces the beige concrete that has been poured over the hill to keep it from eroding. There is a window that looks out into a small alley between the building and the concrete wall. Though it stretches floor to ceiling, there is no direct sunlight to this window, except at noon when the light cuts into the crevice, only to be distilled by the glass so that it looks as if I am in some sort of strange terrarium, and those passersby in the parking lot above are ogling me with expressions of curiosity as the light forms patterns of refractions about my workspace. The reason the office is out of time is because I cannot see the sun from this room, and my employer would not pay for a wall clock. The day goes by with no change except at noon, so the morning looks much the same as the afternoon. It’s hard to be productive when I can’t tell if I’ve just come or if it’s almost time to leave.
Nothing grows in the alley, there is not enough water or light down here to permit it, and as the day goes on I wither like the feeble grass that trudges on beneath the windowsill. I sit just beyond the window, in a 12 by 10 foot room, painted a dull light gray and carpeted wall to wall in a medium gray carpet of the short indoor/outdoor variety. My desk, well cubicle really, fills the end of the room by the window. There is an empty cubicle between mine and the door to the hallway; at least I have the view.
My cubicle is covered in a mauve cloth with black aluminum trim and a beige work surface. There are cabinets above the work surface; these are in the same black aluminum that frames the cubicle. The colors are designed to keep your mind from wandering about the room, keep you occupied with your work. Creative ramblings cost time, and time is money. The work surface is snowed over with scattered papers, No inbox and outbox; only an unorganized slurry of missed deadlines and half completed projects. It is cool and smooth to the touch, but run your hand along it’s surface and it your hand comes away dusty, turned gray from exposure to the office. In one corner of the cube is my computer, which I drone on in front of day in and day out, as it saps my best years away, leaving my eyes red and vision blurry, my wrists sore and stiff with the beginnings of carpal tunnel. The only spot of color in the room is my bright red chair, a bright island amidst the sea of gray. Here I take refuge, the comfortable chair my only ally against the monotony.
The dropped ceiling is beige with an aluminum grid, with fluorescent lights interspersed at intervals just close enough to provide feeble illumination, but far enough apart to make lighting the room energy efficient. I have under cabinet lights, but their unnatural glow hurts my eyes more than the flicker and buzz of the overheads. If I stare at the lights for a moment and then close my eyes I can trace patterns of starbursts left behind, the pain lightly and slowly receding with the bursts of reds and oranges under my lids. Perhaps they were designed that way to keep me from wasting the extra electricity to use them. The room is finished in a dark gray wood that brings all the shades of gray and beige together at the wood trim and baseboard.
If I stare without blinking for a few moments across the space, the room blurs into a pristine field of ashen grays and beige, like the remnants of some forest fire, where the woods have been gutted and soot and ash have blended together in the rain to form the mortar that replaces the bed of needles and leaves. The natural beauty of chaos replaced by the artificial order imposed by efficient modern living. But when I refocus my eyes it seems all I can see is the decay. The scratches and chips in the paint where boxes have been brushed against the walls. The small rents and tears in the fabric of the cubicles. The light brown remembrances of coffee spilled on the carpet. The greenish brown mold in the half empty cup of coffee on my desk, festering and thriving in the half-light, reminds me that I’m not the only living thing in the building. There is no human noise here. There are the normal office sounds. There’s electric hum and vibration of the computer. There’s also the grating buzzing of the lights, the clashing ringing of the phone. But there’s no human noise. No laughing, or talking. No sneezing or coughing. I am the sole occupant in this part of the building. Well, aside from the mold.
The office robs me of my sense of the passage of time. The drab sameness, the hum of the electronics, the pale shadows created by the artificial lights; they make me numb. The air is cool and stale, with a metallic tang that taints my mouth. All of these form a fog in my brain, helping to blend time into an incomprehensible soup. Sometimes the hours pass as weeks. At other times the day has hardly begun when suddenly it is time to go home. Usually the minutes become hours until finally, weary and spent, I can leave. Another day wasted. I shut down my computer and turn off the lights. The hums and vibrations cease, an eerie quiet ensues. It’s the kind of silence that sends the hairs on my neck to attention, though I can’t explain why. There is no danger here, no feral cat stalking this jungle of sheet rock, plastic, and silicone. I turn to leave, the door closing behind me with a whoosh of climate-controlled air. A few tasks completed, a few deadlines missed. A few more gray hairs.
Copyright 2002, David Mason -as if that'll stop anyone