Second Grade Cynic: Or How to Change the End of the World

By Josh Miller

Uniquely alone and infinitely cynical, Shawn discovers a rare opportunity. The chance to visit and relive his own childhood. Thrown through space and time, he rekindles the faded embers of his youth, in turn changing the course of his future. Crippled by anxious thoughts and irratic behavior, he has accomplished very little as an adult. Given a second chance, will he continue down the same path of mediocrity or make something of himself. As certain doom lurks around every corner of Shawn's mind, he struggles to find purpose in an otherwise meaningless existence. While fate lingers closely behind, Shawn begins to realize that he is the only living soul standing between humanity and certain destruction. What is a professional slacker to do? Find out in Second Grade Cynic: or How to change the end of the world. A novel by Joshua S. Miller

• Language: English
• Publisher: Josh Miller
• Release date: Oct 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370615957

Josh Miller

Josh Miller is an Author, an Educator and the owner of Green Park Productions, a t-shirt screen printing company. He lives in California with his wife and their little girl. No matter the weather, he makes his own sunshine.

Book preview

Second Grade Cynic: 

Or How to Change the End of the World 

A Novel

Joshua S. Miller

Second Grade Cynic: Or How to Change the End of the World 

by Joshua S. Miller

Copyright 2016 Joshua S. Miller

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For permission requests, write to the publisher, at Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

[e-mail]

[phone]

Chapter 1

---

There is a guy and he’s getting older. At least he feels like he’s getting older. He’s only in his mid-30s, and that’s still young, right?

Well he works. He has a pretty decent paying desk job doing some mid-level form of useless time destroying labor, for someone else who doesn’t want to, but still needs it done.

He is able to take vacation time a few times a year, not that he does, but it’s there for him if he wants it. He spends a lot of his time at work, even though he hates it and doesn’t really feel like he does much of anything. He basically hides himself between the walls of other people and shows his face whenever he really needs to. Anyway, his name is Shawn, and this story is about him.

He sits at a desk surrounded by hundreds of other desks, just exactly like his. They all have the same stuff, carefully crammed into a space tiny enough to drive a normal person out of their mind. Every single employee at Ringwald and Associates has the same desk, chairs, phones, computers, and calendars. Though, it should be noted, You are encouraged to bring your own calendar, if that is something that you would like to do. At least that’s what Barbara tells every new hire, after they are introduced to their new cubicle and cube mates.

Jeffrey, the bald 55-year-old ex-military flunk out, sits in the cube next to Shawn, and talks all day long about what it was like in the Nam days. I remember yanking the spinal column out of a gook once, and using it to keep my fatigues from falling down. He would say, as he sipped coffee that had to be spiked with something. Jeffrey would go on and on for hours, about the glory days passed and the seven ex-wives he had. The truth is, he was never deployed in any war, he never even finished basic training. He was kicked out, with a dishonorable discharge, for running around the barracks wearing nothing but a Richard Nixon mask, and shouting the lyrics to the song I’m Henry the Eighth. By Herman’s Hermits.

That’s enough about Jeffrey. There is another tenant close by. Just to the other side of Shawn’s cube, sat a tall, dark skinned, mocha haired, Italian woman by the name of Josephina. She looked like the type of woman Fellini would have cast in one of his later films. She wasn’t overweight per se, but she definitely had enough extra padding to make any pre-pubescent boy instantly cross the threshold.

Shawn would talk with Josephina over just about anyone nearby. Not only because she was not completely obnoxious, but also because he actually felt he could talk to her. They were able to communicate in a more civilized manner than was possible with Jeffrey. Plus she was quite a few years older than him, and seemed to have endless amounts of wisdom, that she would constantly share, even if he didn’t ask. Also, she was an exquisite cook, and would often times bring in her homemade sauce to share with anyone who showed interest.

Shawn’s days were typically spent as follows:

8:15 AM, show up at work, sneak in the back way, sit down at his desk.

8:20 AM, flip on his monitor and open up the web browser.

8:22 AM, pull a stale, cold cup of coffee out of his desk drawer, to make it look like he’s been there since 8 for when Nancy walks by.

8:27 AM, Nancy, the regional manager walks by his desk, looks at him and smiles a very disgruntled ugly, as she makes her way into her office on the other side of the building.

8:30 AM, check e-mails, voicemails, and look around the office to see what everybody else is up to.

8:45 AM, after deleting all of the voicemails, e-mails and deciding that nobody is up to anything of interest, go to the lounge and get fresh coffee. *Note: the coffee is not coffee, it is shit.

9:00 AM, make up nonsense conversation with co-workers over shit coffee. 9:30 AM, sit at desk and do something under the guise of productive until lunch.

11:45 AM, leave the building for hour lunch break, sit in car and drink a beer. Also can be swapped for a trip to the arcade, depending on the day.

12:45 PM, sit at desk in a mild stupor and do some variation of work, that most people would get mad about if they saw how much it actually was.

3:30 PM, leave early and go home.

This is a typical day for Shawn at the office not much of anything really happens, and he knows this. When he gets his inadequate paycheck, he almost always remembers this fact.

Most nights he will sit home and stare at a box in his living room giving off light in various colors. He hates it, but it’s what he does. If he were to try and get up to do something he may just collapse from the over stimulation and die on the spot, and nobody would want that, especially his mother.

Marianne is 62 and retired. She sits at home most days contented in the fact that she is Shawn’s mother, and this alone keeps her satisfied in every other portion of her life. At least that is what Shawn likes to imagine. She is actually 66, very poor and runs around town all day trying to figure out ways to make ends meet. Usually unsuccessful at her attempts to figure out how to pay her mortgage, Shawn will give her money on occasion, but only if he feels the need is genuine.

Shawn is stingy with his money, because he never had any growing up. He recalls being hungry most of his adolescent life. A notion that isn’t something he likes to recall.

His father was a hardworking man. He worked most of his adult life for a company that processed 35-millimeter film, until one day, when the company decided to thin out their inventory. He was laid off, with hundreds of other men who had dedicated their lives to the company. He fell into a deep depression and after a solid year of looking for work with no fruit, he found a mediocre job that was steady but not great. He never made the money he used to again. For the rest of his life he and Shawn’s mother would scramble to cover this bill and fall behind on that one. Shawn was never really able to understand their particular situation and after a certain point, gave up trying.

Sitting alone, in his 1,200 square foot apartment, Shawn stared at a program designed to make the average viewer happy to be wherever they were, with whomever they were there with. He was not either of these two things.

For weeks on end Shawn would go to work, and shuffle things around his desk, in order to give the appearance of productivity. The fact was, he didn’t do anything of any sincere meaning. And the bosses knew this. He thought he was clever in his ways, and cute with his sideways jokes that he imagined kept him out of trouble. But the simple truth was, that he was just one of so very many people, who also performed at less than satisfactory rates of productivity. There were so many people in the company doing worse than him that they just left him alone. Most of those people were in fact, supervisors over him. The higher ups figured, he doesn’t come to work wasted, he isn’t a pervert or a drug addict, as long as he’s here most of the time and doing something productive, who cares?

He had his moments of productivity. Usually when he felt guilty about the very little he did. He would occasionally get the feeling that he was a bad person and taking advantage of some system that was put in place to remind people how valuable they may or may not be. He would work hard for a few hours straight and get something done of minor importance relative to the universe, but to the bosses, (who were most assuredly paying attention) important.

Most nights were spent in front of the lukewarm glow of the plasma screen, with alcohol in his bloodstream. Not as much alcohol as Jeffrey had in his, but still enough to make a difference to his senses. He spent pretty much every night this same exact way. Intoxicated to the point of sleep. Every morning was a struggle, a cross between rushed hydration and feeble attempts at making sure his teeth were brushed before leaving the house.

Shawn’s weekends were not much different than his evenings. Typically a waste of most resources available to him, although he would occasionally visit his parents for dinner on Sundays.

Shawn’s Sunday visits didn’t mean all too much to him, but to his mother, they meant more than he would ever know. They seldom would have visitors of any kind and when they did, they would go out of their way completely to entertain them to the point of almost driving them away.

Shawn loved his parents, and they loved him. Unfortunately they would never really understand each other in any way that was meaningful for their relationship. Instead they would keep each other company, and Shawn would witness them watching television that he deemed completely un-interesting to him.

At work, after a long weekend of nothing much in particular, Shawn would be slow to gain traction and spend most of his Mondays wandering the grounds and the interior of the office building, trying to find something out of the ordinary. He almost never found anything of interest though. One time, he happened to walk by the office of one of his old co-workers who had been promoted to some variation of a manager. The faint sound of insincere moans could almost be heard from a small distance away. He decided to go in for a closer look. To his surprise, Shawn saw his old co-worker and a nameless body from the office, committing acts that would certainly result in a write up if spotted by upper management. Shrugging it off, Shawn moved on. Good thing they are working so hard. He murmured to himself in jest.

Shawn was often times caught in a train of thought that had no beginning and also no end. Some would call him aloof, but it was less of that and more of him just being constantly caught up in thought. His mind was of the type that was constantly running through ideas, coming up with theories and never seeing any of them to a reasonable end. He would wander the corridors of his office building, so far from his own reality at times, that he would often times walk right passed a co-worker and not even register their existence.

Occasionally he would stumble onto a new discovery and explore it for about an hour, before realizing he should go back to work.

One afternoon he found something he could not resist. He was walking down passed the storage facility where the company would store all of their old office equipment, when he noticed a door that was labeled Janitor’s closet a door that he’d never seen before. To Shawn, this seemed a little off. The reason being, he could only ever imagine a janitor having his headquarters located underneath some dank stairwell, stowed away, far away from where any civilian would see him or her. Civilian being a regular employee of the company. He thought that this janitor’s closet was far too close to the beautiful people to be realistic. As he got closer to the door, a tiny sign became visible. Red lettering on the sign, said Keep out! This means you. So of course he had to find out.

Chapter 2

---

I decided to the open the door, even though I knew I had already been gone for a few minutes beyond what I liked to call the danger zone. The danger zone was the amount of time I imagined it would take for anyone of actual importance to notice I was gone, and for how long. At this point it had been 15 minutes. I decided that I didn’t care, and that I was going to find out whatever it was I needed to know about this closet. Whether it was really just some dark dirty repurposed supply closet, made up to make some poor fool think he had it not so terrible, or if it was a secret rendezvous room. Whatever it was, I was about to find out. I touched the handle and felt a quaint sickness radiating off of the brushed copper doorknob. The kind of absence you felt when you went to open your locker on the first day of school, or pull start a lawn mower that you know for a fact just doesn’t work anymore. I didn’t care. I turned it to the left and it opened with no resistance. As the door crept open, I could smell an aroma that seemed familiar to my nose, but in a way I couldn’t describe right now. I continued in and was quite suddenly encompassed by an all-consuming darkness. Realizing that the door behind me was still wide open, I had serious trouble comprehending what was happening before me. As I stood, plain as the nose on my face, the world as I knew it was disappearing into oblivion. Worse than that, I was going with it. Now at this moment you may be wondering, where exactly it was that I was going. A good thought I may add. I thought that very same thing in that moment. It turns out, I wasn’t going to know the answer to this conundrum until about 6 minutes and 11 47th’s of a second later. But believe me, when I found out, I was just as