--------------------
X
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A file was slapped down in front of his face at his desk.
"Bing, I want you to look this over for me. Clark's report. I'm thinking of sending his ass down to the mail basement." Chandler's boss took a minute to laugh, "Throw it back to my secretary with a post-it when you're done."
With hardly even getting a response, he was out the door and Chandler had yet 'another' report to look at. He tossed it ontop of the pile with seemingly fifty other files without even cracking it open. Sometimes being the best was just a curse.
He checked his watch. Only ten o'clock; he was there until five. He stretched and leaned back in his leather chair.
"Ahh.." he groaned and put his right foor up on the corner of his desk. He really didn't feel like working. His head felt so cloudy that he didn't think he could concentrate on numbers if his life depended on it.
Chandler let his head drop back and let his mind wander.
Sounds.. The steady drawl of New York traffic down below. Laughter, coming from down the hall. The whirr of a fan blowing a soft breeze down on his feverish head.
"You're going to die, Chandler Bing."
Chandler almost fell out of his chair at the sound of the raspy voice and accidently kicked over a pencil jar he never used onto the floor, spilling yellow HBs everywhere.
He sat up straight gripping the edge of the desk with both hands. He looked around search for the red light that had haunted him all night long.
There were four now, spread throughout the office.
Four. Why were there four?!
His computer beeped from in front of the him and an error about memory popped up over the eighty page report he was trying to download.
That was the reason. They were invading his computer. The memory error was just a cover. Hacking for details. Bank information. Family information.
He turned his chair towards the computer and pressed 'end' to stop the download. Then he loaded all .txt files into the recycle bin. Then all folders into the bin. Then programs. No murderer bastards were going to find anything now. After basically his whole hard drive was dumped into the recycle bin except for the calculator, he dropped his sweaty face into his hands and rested his elbows on his desk beside his keyboard. What was going on here? His heart was pounding and he had people actually trying to hack into his computer. Or maybe his judgement was just screwed?
That couldn't be it. What he needed was another pill. Stop all the stupid new pain that had developed.
Chandler reached into his coat pocket and took out the container.
One didn't seem to be doing any good, so he decided to take two.
--------------------------
"Bing! What the hell?" Once again his boss stalked into the office to find Chandler with his leg up on the desk, snoring in his chair, his head resting on his right shoulder. At the sound of the boss, Chandler jumped and then kicked a 'pen' jar off his desk, adding to the pencil mess he had neglected to clean up earlier.
"Why do I keep doing that??" Chandler demanded an answer from the mess of blue and yellow, completely ignoring them man that was clearly talking to him. He pressed his left temple in an attempt to stop a headache and looked up at who was yelling at him now.
He was about to give a lame excuse about why he was sleeping, assuming that's what his boss was barking about, but he was interuppted before he even spoke a word.
"Why did you delete everything? What's wrong with you?" he asked, "We're on a network Bing, you didn't just delete personal porn; people were accessing reports from your computer. Everybody is connected to everybody here." He paused to get an explanation from Chandler.
"Accident, sir," he mumbled back, and stared at one of the red lights from the corner of his eye. They were still watching him. Watching his evey move. Maybe his work was behind all of this..
"Do you at least have backups? Restore system defaults? Something?"
'Like you give a shit, you golf playing bastard,' he envisioned himself responding.
"No, I believe I don't," Chandler cleared his throat and said instead. Were the walls closing in? Felt like it. His tie started to choke his neck. He loosened it a few inches.
His boss grumbled from the door.
Chandler was sure he was in on it.
"I hate to do this Bing, but I'm going to have to send you home early today. Get your head together.. or something," and then he was out the door.
Chandler groaned and clawed at his eyes and hair. He'd like for him to go home wouldn't he. He was smart enough to figure out his plan. His boss wanted him dead. Probably had five guys with boards with nails in them waiting in his apartment right then just waiting for him to stroll through the door licking an icecream cone and holding a red balloon.
Screw that.
He stood up slowly from his desk chair, loosened his tie a little more and walked out of his office.
They couldn't kill him on the streets of New York in public places. Now that would just be stupid.
------------------------------------------
The cabbies were in on it. One big "cabbie" club that met on Sunday nights when business was slow and sat in a warehouse basement on crates smoking cigars and drinking beer. Just discussing plans to kill Chandler. Ideas to run him down with a cab, to kidnap him and stab him up in the woods, cut off his fingers one by one with a butter knife until he was screaming to be dead. The next cab he would get into probably would be an old police car painted yellow and have the back doors locked from the outside. Then they'd haul him out to Brooklyn where bodies were never found..
He opted to not take a cab home.
Maybe the walk would do him good anyway. Follow his boss' instructions and get his head together. His apartment was only about a hundred blocks away. No one would expect him home early so he didn't have to worry about any of that.
It was a crisp morning turning to afternoon and the sun was out. He probably should have taken his briefcase out of the office, but it wasn't as if he had 'homework' or anything. Most of the time he had little army men in there anyways, that would fight to the death over a bunch of files.
A short woman with a purse the size of a suitcase plowed past Chandler and smashed into his left arm that was sitting in his deep trench. He was surprised at the impact and lost his footing a bit, then turned to look at the woman, expecting some sort of apology. He stopped and waited.
She stalked away looking like she was going to be late for a shoe sale (even though she probably couldn't even fit into the knee high boots due to her obese ankles).
"You bumped my shoulder, you know!" he called out to her and she burned holes in the sidewalk as she walked away.
Other people walking the sidewalks glanced at him as they passed.
"That wasn't very friendly!" he called out again, louder, as she was disappearing into the crowd. "I know where you live!" Chandler added.
"Old," he then insulted her under his breath and turned to continue walking along his merry way on a never ending New York street.
His back pain was absolutely gone and if it wasn't for his weird side effects, he'd be skipping down the street.
Chandler turned a corner, now about 99 blocks from home and something hit him. Not literally, but some sort of force. His heart rate picked up. He felt incredibly hot and needed to tear off his jacket. His head was spinning at the world before him, turning into a brown tint of sticky molasses. Sound was long and deep, and his heart thumped in his ears.
He found a park bench and took a quick seat knowing if he didn't let this thing ride out, his knees would buckle or he'd start crashing into people. Not something he wanted to get into on New York streets.
An old man sat beside him, there before Chandler had taken a seat. The man's grey hair was sticking up every which way, and he was dressed in navy blue ripped sweat pants and an open faded jean jacket over a dirty white t- shirt.
The man sat with his legs wide open, and his eyes turned over to Chandler who took a breath and put his face into his hands.
Colors. Ever color in the crayon box burned through his mind one after another and the dirty homeless man sitting beside him, he didn't even notice.
Nor did he notice the man pull out a dollar bill, probably his booze money for the night, and rest the crinkled paper on Chandler's knee. The man got up and walked away to find a decent dumpster to scrap for food.
Chandler remained on the bench unaware of surroundings for the time being.
X
--------------------
A file was slapped down in front of his face at his desk.
"Bing, I want you to look this over for me. Clark's report. I'm thinking of sending his ass down to the mail basement." Chandler's boss took a minute to laugh, "Throw it back to my secretary with a post-it when you're done."
With hardly even getting a response, he was out the door and Chandler had yet 'another' report to look at. He tossed it ontop of the pile with seemingly fifty other files without even cracking it open. Sometimes being the best was just a curse.
He checked his watch. Only ten o'clock; he was there until five. He stretched and leaned back in his leather chair.
"Ahh.." he groaned and put his right foor up on the corner of his desk. He really didn't feel like working. His head felt so cloudy that he didn't think he could concentrate on numbers if his life depended on it.
Chandler let his head drop back and let his mind wander.
Sounds.. The steady drawl of New York traffic down below. Laughter, coming from down the hall. The whirr of a fan blowing a soft breeze down on his feverish head.
"You're going to die, Chandler Bing."
Chandler almost fell out of his chair at the sound of the raspy voice and accidently kicked over a pencil jar he never used onto the floor, spilling yellow HBs everywhere.
He sat up straight gripping the edge of the desk with both hands. He looked around search for the red light that had haunted him all night long.
There were four now, spread throughout the office.
Four. Why were there four?!
His computer beeped from in front of the him and an error about memory popped up over the eighty page report he was trying to download.
That was the reason. They were invading his computer. The memory error was just a cover. Hacking for details. Bank information. Family information.
He turned his chair towards the computer and pressed 'end' to stop the download. Then he loaded all .txt files into the recycle bin. Then all folders into the bin. Then programs. No murderer bastards were going to find anything now. After basically his whole hard drive was dumped into the recycle bin except for the calculator, he dropped his sweaty face into his hands and rested his elbows on his desk beside his keyboard. What was going on here? His heart was pounding and he had people actually trying to hack into his computer. Or maybe his judgement was just screwed?
That couldn't be it. What he needed was another pill. Stop all the stupid new pain that had developed.
Chandler reached into his coat pocket and took out the container.
One didn't seem to be doing any good, so he decided to take two.
--------------------------
"Bing! What the hell?" Once again his boss stalked into the office to find Chandler with his leg up on the desk, snoring in his chair, his head resting on his right shoulder. At the sound of the boss, Chandler jumped and then kicked a 'pen' jar off his desk, adding to the pencil mess he had neglected to clean up earlier.
"Why do I keep doing that??" Chandler demanded an answer from the mess of blue and yellow, completely ignoring them man that was clearly talking to him. He pressed his left temple in an attempt to stop a headache and looked up at who was yelling at him now.
He was about to give a lame excuse about why he was sleeping, assuming that's what his boss was barking about, but he was interuppted before he even spoke a word.
"Why did you delete everything? What's wrong with you?" he asked, "We're on a network Bing, you didn't just delete personal porn; people were accessing reports from your computer. Everybody is connected to everybody here." He paused to get an explanation from Chandler.
"Accident, sir," he mumbled back, and stared at one of the red lights from the corner of his eye. They were still watching him. Watching his evey move. Maybe his work was behind all of this..
"Do you at least have backups? Restore system defaults? Something?"
'Like you give a shit, you golf playing bastard,' he envisioned himself responding.
"No, I believe I don't," Chandler cleared his throat and said instead. Were the walls closing in? Felt like it. His tie started to choke his neck. He loosened it a few inches.
His boss grumbled from the door.
Chandler was sure he was in on it.
"I hate to do this Bing, but I'm going to have to send you home early today. Get your head together.. or something," and then he was out the door.
Chandler groaned and clawed at his eyes and hair. He'd like for him to go home wouldn't he. He was smart enough to figure out his plan. His boss wanted him dead. Probably had five guys with boards with nails in them waiting in his apartment right then just waiting for him to stroll through the door licking an icecream cone and holding a red balloon.
Screw that.
He stood up slowly from his desk chair, loosened his tie a little more and walked out of his office.
They couldn't kill him on the streets of New York in public places. Now that would just be stupid.
------------------------------------------
The cabbies were in on it. One big "cabbie" club that met on Sunday nights when business was slow and sat in a warehouse basement on crates smoking cigars and drinking beer. Just discussing plans to kill Chandler. Ideas to run him down with a cab, to kidnap him and stab him up in the woods, cut off his fingers one by one with a butter knife until he was screaming to be dead. The next cab he would get into probably would be an old police car painted yellow and have the back doors locked from the outside. Then they'd haul him out to Brooklyn where bodies were never found..
He opted to not take a cab home.
Maybe the walk would do him good anyway. Follow his boss' instructions and get his head together. His apartment was only about a hundred blocks away. No one would expect him home early so he didn't have to worry about any of that.
It was a crisp morning turning to afternoon and the sun was out. He probably should have taken his briefcase out of the office, but it wasn't as if he had 'homework' or anything. Most of the time he had little army men in there anyways, that would fight to the death over a bunch of files.
A short woman with a purse the size of a suitcase plowed past Chandler and smashed into his left arm that was sitting in his deep trench. He was surprised at the impact and lost his footing a bit, then turned to look at the woman, expecting some sort of apology. He stopped and waited.
She stalked away looking like she was going to be late for a shoe sale (even though she probably couldn't even fit into the knee high boots due to her obese ankles).
"You bumped my shoulder, you know!" he called out to her and she burned holes in the sidewalk as she walked away.
Other people walking the sidewalks glanced at him as they passed.
"That wasn't very friendly!" he called out again, louder, as she was disappearing into the crowd. "I know where you live!" Chandler added.
"Old," he then insulted her under his breath and turned to continue walking along his merry way on a never ending New York street.
His back pain was absolutely gone and if it wasn't for his weird side effects, he'd be skipping down the street.
Chandler turned a corner, now about 99 blocks from home and something hit him. Not literally, but some sort of force. His heart rate picked up. He felt incredibly hot and needed to tear off his jacket. His head was spinning at the world before him, turning into a brown tint of sticky molasses. Sound was long and deep, and his heart thumped in his ears.
He found a park bench and took a quick seat knowing if he didn't let this thing ride out, his knees would buckle or he'd start crashing into people. Not something he wanted to get into on New York streets.
An old man sat beside him, there before Chandler had taken a seat. The man's grey hair was sticking up every which way, and he was dressed in navy blue ripped sweat pants and an open faded jean jacket over a dirty white t- shirt.
The man sat with his legs wide open, and his eyes turned over to Chandler who took a breath and put his face into his hands.
Colors. Ever color in the crayon box burned through his mind one after another and the dirty homeless man sitting beside him, he didn't even notice.
Nor did he notice the man pull out a dollar bill, probably his booze money for the night, and rest the crinkled paper on Chandler's knee. The man got up and walked away to find a decent dumpster to scrap for food.
Chandler remained on the bench unaware of surroundings for the time being.
