You are Summoned

Trying to open the bottle of aspirin while eating my breakfast proved to be a bad idea. The spoon slipped from my hand and plopped into the bowl, creating an impressive splash. Milk and a few colorful nuggets of vaguely fruit-flavored cereal splashed all over my shirt. Not a big deal, this kind of thing happens, but little annoyances like this are amplified when you have a headache, and today I had a whopper. To make matters worse, it was just a normal, random headache.

It wasn’t a hangover, which would have at least indicated that I had some fun the night before. There were no happy memories of partying to go with the throbbing pain behind my eyes. My memories of last night were those of a typical weeknight of boredom, playing games and watching videos on my phone.

If only I could just forget everything and jump back into bed. Sadly, I had already burned all my sick and vacation time and it would be several more weeks before I accrued another day. I told myself to toughen up and deal with it, not that it made my head feel any better. All I could do was fish the spoon out of the bowl and shovel down the rest of my breakfast.

Checking the time, I could see that I needed to move it if I wanted to catch the bus. Before I left the apartment, I needed to switch out of my breakfast-encrusted company polo shirt and into something clean. Only one shirt in the pile of clothes on the messy floor of my bedroom proved to be a worthy candidate. It was an older, faded one that my manager kept hinting that I needed to replace, I really needed to do some laundry. At least it was clean, well, sort of clean. At least it didn’t reek too bad. You don’t want to be the smelly guy at the office.

The usual cast of characters were gathered at the bus stop when I arrived. I’ve seen the same people every day for months, but I couldn’t tell you a single one of their names. This was LA and it wasn’t the kind of city where you just struck up random conversations with strangers.

My dad would have known them all by now and been on all their Christmas card lists. Sadly, I never inherited my dad’s ability to make friends wherever he went. Mom was the same as me, an introvert who preferred to just interact with her family, not with strangers at a bus stop.

Thinking about my parents brought up bittersweet feelings. I had lost them both a few years ago when they were involved in a bad traffic accident. The only family I had left was an older sister who lived back in Florida. We talked a couple of times a year, but she was busy and had a family of her own to take care of.

“You have it, don’t you? It wanted me, but it couldn’t have me,” a homeless lady said as she approached the bus stop. She wore several layers of clothing that had to be stifling in the California spring heat wave we were experiencing. Being accosted by a crazy homeless person was the last thing I needed right now, but of course, she made a beeline right toward me.

“It’s you I’m speaking to,” she said, pointing a filth-encrusted finger in my face. “Their touch is on you; can you see the words in your head yet? They wanted to take me, but I told them to take you instead. Don’t you want to go?” The crazy woman asked. Before I could figure out what to do, she tipped her surprisingly clean bowler hat to me and wandered off, muttering to herself about the words in her head.

Nobody said anything about the incident and we all just pretended that it hadn’t happened. It wasn’t my first time dealing with the homeless in the area, and most were pretty cool. I didn’t mind stopping to chat with the ones near the apartment, often buying a meal or giving a few bucks if I could spare it. The bus finally appeared down the street, and I craned my neck to see who our chauffeur would be today.

Great, it was the angry bus driver lady today. Jorge, the normal guy on this route, was a good dude. He was friendly and always said hi to everyone as they got on the bus. This lady didn’t even want to look at you.

She was also a horrible driver and seemed to hit every pothole on the route. The pain in my head pounded harder with each thump of the tires. If there was an Olympic sport for driving into potholes, this lady would be a gold medalist. By the time we reached my stop, half a block from my office, nausea had joined the pain party inside my head. I soldiered on, and somehow made it the rest of the way to the insurance office complex where I worked without puking.

“Yo, Rico, did you catch the game?” Will asked as I finally sat down in my cubicle. Will was a nice enough guy, but way too into sports. He was one of those people that couldn’t fathom the fact that I didn’t care for sports and didn’t watch every game that he did. He was also a morning person, which I most definitely was not.

“No man, I missed it, but don’t tell me what happened, I’m planning on watching it later tonight.” Telling Will that I planned to watch the game later was a good way to avoid a long conversation about something I had no interest in.

Long, boring conversations weren’t fun when your head was feeling like it was going to explode. Sure, I’d have to watch some recap of the game later and regurgitate the highlights back to Will about it tomorrow, but by then, the headache would be gone.

I logged into the system just before my shift officially started. The insurance company that I worked for was a stickler for signing in on time, never early, and never late. They wanted to avoid paying any overtime while also making sure that every possible minute of work was squeezed out of you. My current work queue populated, and another exciting day of handling car insurance claims was about to begin.

The queue never seemed to shrink. You’d think with all the new safety features in cars that people wouldn’t be such idiots. No matter how much safety tech they packed into each vehicle, drivers still seemed to keep crashing into each other. It wasn’t just crashing into each other. People found a myriad of strange ways to damage their vehicles, even without another car being involved.

My headache was becoming worse, despite having taken some aspirin before I left the apartment. I’m sure if you took too many, you’d damage your liver or something. Exceeding the recommended daily dose was the least of my worries right now, so I fished through the top desk drawer, looking for that bottle of Ibuprofen I had bought when I caught the flu last year. Just my luck, the bottle was there, but it was empty. I tossed the empty bottle in the trash, lying to myself that I wouldn’t forget to buy another one at the grocery store this week.

“Mr. Rico Kline, may I have a word with you?” Barbara, my supervisor asked. Her sudden appearance startled me, causing me to jump a bit in my seat. She always seemed to magically appear at the entrance to my cubicle without warning, like she was some kind of office ninja.

“Sure Barbara, what can I do for you?” I replied, trying to smile and look upbeat, which is how the company wanted all their employees to look at all times. It wasn’t easy to maintain that facade when you were in pain, and it was never easy to maintain it when it came to Barbara, the most annoying supervisor on the floor.

“I needed to go over your production reports. You’ve only closed three files this week and the expectation is for every insurance adjuster to close out at least ten per week. It’s already Wednesday and I don’t want you to fall too far behind. Is there anything I can do to help?” She asked.

I had played this game before, Barbara didn’t really want to help me, she was just offering help to check a box on the employee evaluation form. “Did you offer additional assistance to help bring the employee up to standard?” It looked like there was another personal improvement plan write-up heading my way soon.

“It’s just a rough spot on a couple of these claims, I’ll catch up before the week’s over,” I replied with a confidence I didn’t feel.

“Great, I’m glad to hear that. The last thing I want to do is have to write you up for not meeting the expected performance indicators,” Barbara said, moving on to her next victim.

“Dude, you need to pick up the pace. I heard that corporate is pushing to reduce the headcount in our department,” Will said, leaning over from his side of the cube.

“Yeah, I’ll get it done. Don’t worry too much about those layoff rumors. We’re understaffed as it is. Hey, you don’t happen to have any aspirin or something. My head’s killing me,” I asked.

“I think so, let me check. Did you party it up last night? That must be why you missed the game. My buddy Rico’s living large! Just take it easy on the weeknight parties, you look rough today,” Will said with more enthusiasm than anyone had the right to possess at eight in the morning.

I heard the metal drawers of Will’s desk open and close, as he looked for some medicine. Each slamming of a drawer brought new waves of pain into my head, and for the first time, I started seeing spots in front of my eyes. Maybe I was having a stroke or something?

The pain intensified and the sounds in Will’s cubicle faded as my hearing began to go. Panic set in as a bright pop of light and a final, nauseating burst of pain slammed into my head. I was in total darkness for a moment before some strange lights flickered and a booming voice called out from the darkness.

“The new link to this mana-free world is complete. Connection to a viable subject has been established.”

“You are summoned!”