The Incumbent Paradox
He’s not too proud to hurt someone to prove a point if the need be. He squeezes a bottle of hand sanitizer into his mouth; later he will be sick into a white sink. The scent of hickory smoke nauseates him on the green at the barbecue and he asks to be excused so he can go and vomit into a handkerchief behind a tree. When he turns back the grill is directly between him and the picnic tables. He runs into the taupe concrete building bent low and working his arms up and down, like a cockroach. His feet pad down the carpeting and he takes refuge in a cubicle, not his cubicle. He sits in the office chair with armrests for a few minutes trying to breathe correctly. He finds he has forgotten. The central nervous system begins to take over, and the lungs jackknife his torso like the Jaws of Life as they expand. Swiveling the chair to face his coworker’s computer, he’s filled with a sense of dread. His chest puffing and deflating, his eyes rolling and his mouth hanging open, his spittle drying. He bangs on the keyboard with his fist like an unfed toddler. It wants to know if he wanted to turn on sticky keys. Over the edge of the cubicle opposite to this, a head peers. It wants to know why he isn’t outside. He shrieks and scrambles and falls down in his haste to escape to the bathroom. He pounds furiously on the hand sanitizer dispenser and shovels handfuls of the pink stuff into his fluttering mouth. He sits on the tile in front of the row of stalls retching and waiting for somebody to find him.
