The elevator was full of the walking dead at 8 A.M. Derek crawled in next to them, tilting his head upward toward the floor indicator along with everyone else, as an excuse to not talk. No time to speak about the weather or Little Johnny or about can-you-believe-he-was-eliminated; expecting an important floor-ding soon. Funny thing was people always looked in the same place. Distances them from the people they stand with, shoulder to shoulder, every morning. Easier that way. Wonder where'd they look if there was a mirror up there instead.

The floor jumped past the second floor and dinged in anticipation with the third, causing Doug Chavez and all 19 years of his Sweet Tits secretary to lean forward in advance, like runners hanging on for the gunshot of the opening elevator door. All the other men pretended not to watch Sweet Tits' ass as she walked away. Derek watched Doug's beerflab oscillate through his tight Polo. Doug was a walking heart attack; he'd drop dead fishing or gardening or fucking his secretary or arguing with his somehow fatter wife after he got caught. I could help you, Derek thought.

Floor Four. Ding, no takers. Floor Five. Ding, no effect; all continued to stare on and on, bored and hypnotized. An older man - Henderson, the lawyer from Ten who was on a golf course more than in a courtroom nowadays - coughed the two-note heavy rhythm of the smoker's cough.

Lungs black inside. Tarred like an interstate. Imagine that life, one that will end in a tent, with a tank, with pale suffering. Bullet in the brain would be a blessing, really; perhaps a release of blood from the neck all over that cheap desk of his with LAWYERS ARE PEOPLE TOO on the pen holder, pouring and dripping over the edge and pooling on the floor as the phone rings itself into the voicemail.

Sheila left on floor twelve. Sheila was approaching 40 with a body of a 20-year-old and a face straight from Mattel. She looked not too much unlike "Paris," the older hooker back at the Super 8 on the East Side from the night before. Perhaps not even the Lord God Himself knew exactly when they'd find her corpse under that bed given how slow that fucking place always is, but Derek figured it'd likely be some time before the Pats and the Jets squared off this Sunday.

More of the heard left. All a blur now. All there is in this world is a number indicating the floor, the next floor, the next; a countup to destiny.

Ding. Only Cindi is left; she'll be off on 30. She'll talk to me because she wants me to put my cock in her vagina. The normal man would yank the EMERGENCY handle and do it right there with her; no normalcy here, though.

-Did you enjoy the way her head caved in when you hit her with your father's hammer? she asked Derek.

-What?

-The fair. It's this weekend. I was wondering if you were going to take the kids.

Fishing is what she's doing. She has no idea who I am or whether I have any goddamn kids. Gotta be as discreet as fucking possible while making your intentions plain. Yes, Cindi, you wanna fuck. Why not just rip off your blouse and your bra and scream take me now, Derek?

-Oh of course, said Derek. Mally loves the Tilt-a-Whirl and if David doesn't get his saltwater taffy, I'd never hear the end of it. Besides, it's where Susan and I met.

Derek displayed the old wedding ring that was still on his hand. Cindi smiled an empty, displeased smile. He'd indeed met Susan at the state fair seventeen years ago, but Susan was barren and Derek had no kids. Susan was still in Derek's backyard shed next to the riding lawn mower and that piece of shit Impala he'd failed to fix up five years back; her remains were clunked like scattered Lego blocks inside of the Samsonite that her mother gave him last Christmas. That had been three days ago, when everything finally started making sense for the first time in Derek's life.

Derek snapped back to reality. He'd been surfing the wonderful world of the Daydream Internet for at least ten floors, quietly reflecting as Cindi kept talking and shifting closer. When Derek awakened, the door to his office stood open and Cindi stood behind him, looking slightly miffed. Derek exited.

He plainly heard Cindi call him an asshole under her breath, and as the door shut, she also plainly stated she was gonna dig that Burger King zit-faced freak from Tuesday right out of the gravel pit Derek buried him in, and eat his stomach raw and rotten, out of pure spite for not fucking her right there in the elevator. Derek didn't care what Cindi had to say right now, however; there was more liberation to be planned.

Derek opened the door, but the office was dark and empty. Naomi was not at work that day; he'd fired Naomi late Tuesday night when he'd followed her and her jock boyfriend to the Designated City Fucking Area out by Lake Blowjob and shot them both through the head. He rolled their car into the lake, where it wouldn't be found until long after Derek's little revelation was over.

Nonetheless, he knew he had an appointment at nine, so he spruced himself in the back bathroom, masturbated briefly (thinking, and get a kick outta THIS one, of fucking Cindi in a broken-down elevator), and returned to his office chair, staring into Naomi's reception room, out the door, to the elevator, through the building, over the city, over the skies, over the galaxies beyond the stars and planets and nebulas and whatever else the fuck was out there. They say the stars watch us without caring. Well, I don't give two shits to Thursday about you, either. You'll grow fat, bloat out your gasses, and rot away, just like all the rest of us.

John Rogers was bald enough to captain the fucking Starship Enterprise, but any idiot knew he was a redhead; his face always flushed as red as a high school girl with a finger in her crotch when he felt any sort of emotion. John arrived into the dark of Derek's office five minutes early, tugging along all the Banquet dinners and Coors in his considerable stomach. He stopped in Naomi's office, looking at Derek as if the lack of lighting had just struck him, say, like a hammer caving in the back side of his head. Derek smiled emptily and folded his fingers.

-Derek? John said loudly, as if he was a parent trying to find out where his child was. Derek? Are you open today?

Derek spread his arms in a Christ-like sway of welcome.

-Open as the legs of Paris, Derek said.

John ho-hoed in somewhat nervous and entirely forced laughter, and pointed to the light switch, raising his considerable eyebrows in a question. The fat son of a bitch looked like a mixture between Jerry Springer's bodyguard and Harry Potter's uncle, and carried with him the smell of fresh sweat and probably half a ton of breakfast bacon.

-The light?

-Yes. May I turn it on?

-No, John, you may not.

-I ... oh, I see. You must be having one of those nasty change-of-season migraines. We can still see the contracts I've drawn up, so that's good. Where's, uh, your little secretary?

-She's on vacation, John.

-Oh, good man, John said as he drew out the inevitable contract and began his inevitably long and inevitably pre-planned inevitable speech about it.

Derek's folded knuckles tightened increasingly as he uh-huh'd and umm-hmm'd his way through John's mumbled and stumbled presentation. The words hit Derek's ears and died right there, like panicked pheasants against a windshield. Wonder if old lard tank knows how little this shit matters. Wonder how much he'll think about it when he's dying of renal failure or prostate cancer. Keeps him busy, though. That and the Catholic Church and Fox News at Nine and how Tiger Woods and the New York Giants are doing and how awesome it would be if his battleax of a wife sucked dick like the girls on some website he had secretly bookmarked, probably with the name TeenEighteen or whatthefuckever. You keep following their tetherballs and you keep sane and you keep vacuuming those Southern Chicken zap-a-dinners all the way to heart disease land. You vacuum that shit right up.

A pause. John started glowing red; an anticipatory glow, red as a jacked-off Rudolph. Here, Derek thought, is when I'm supposed to agree. Here, he'll bark out a "Well!?" with a bit of a growl and give a teeth-revealing grin.

-Well!? Barked out John with a growl in his voice. A growing grin revealed dip-stained teeth.

-Well, John, you fat son of a bitch. I've never heard of a shittier deal in my life. You really have to work on that sales pitch of yours, because you sound like a goddamn used car salesman pushing a station wagon on me that's as used up as a whore. And knowing that land you're trying to push, you essentially are trying to sell me that exact fucking thing.

John's face fell in a tick of the wall clock. A different shade of red washed over him like a freshly pissed-on home pregnancy kit. A vein stuck out in his forehead as his jaw slacked open to a Neanderthal gape. That's one wound-up son of a bitch, Derek thought. Who cares about a butcher knife or a power drill; I could probably talk this guy straight into the grave.

Derek held an icy stare with John and wondered for a moment on the feast the worms would have when this bastard was lowered into the ground. Alas, poor John; where be your baldness now? Your Titleist? Your poor salesmanship that was wont to set the table on a roar?

John sat frozen-faced, his mock shock not keeping his redheaded rage back as well as he thought. The seconds on the wall clock ticked, ticked, ticked their way into the twenty-first century. Elsewhere on the floor, a maid spoke over a headset in accelerated, angry Spanish.

Derek slowly and emptily smiled, then pointed his finger in a gotcha-pose at John, conjuring up a shallow but loud laugh in the process. This time John laughed considerably, returning fire with a point of his own fat finger.

-Bwo-ho-ho, Derek, you ass-licking son of a bitch. You got me. You actually had me going for a while on that one. So, well, what do you really think of my land? It's yours if you sign here, as you know, and as you know even better, this whole county's as pure as a nun's honeypot.

-I'll take the land, Derek said, rolling open the top drawer. A Luger, borrowed on permanent loan from the Nazis by his grandfather and passed through the generations, sat fully loaded on top of his neatly ordered stockpile of Bics. Derek placed his hand on the handle, caressing it with his thumb and enjoying the warmth it brought him. He looked back up, not quite at John and not quite infinitely beyond him. He wondered briefly about the reaction that illegal who polished the floors would have upon seeing this senseless waste of human debris splattered all over the degrees that lined the back wall.

-I have one condition, Derek said.

-Is this about your secretary? asked John. I won't tell anyone about where the bodies are dumped, just as long as you can pull Naomi out of the water so I can have her before she becomes too bloated.

-No, they're mine and nowhere a part of the condition, Derek said seriously, prompting another Jim Carrey-esque change in John from comical to highly confused.

-I was just joking, John said. I know with your wife that you and Naomi don't have anything going, you're an honorabl ...

-What's your favorite food? Derek interrupted.

-What?

-Your favorite food? The one you enjoy eating the most often?

-Well, fried chicken and mashed potatoes, I guess, John said with another one of the forced, nervous laughs.

-As long as you promise me to keep stuffing those down your piehole until the end of your days, I will sign the deal.

Another nervous laugh. Guess he doesn't understand my point of view. Nobody understands my point of view, except the stars - the burning, always-dying stars, ever watchful with their dead, indifferent glow.

-Of course I'll agree. Just as long as you agree to join me for a beer after work today. 'S been too long. John pointed that fat finger at Derek again, as if physically indicating the final punctuation himself.

-My pleasure, Derek said, and lifted the Luger. He brought it just under the edge of his desk and took a Bic out with his other hand. He signed the paper for some irrelevant land in Christ-knows, Kansas, and dropped the Luger with a thump back in his drawer as he rolled it back in.

-Tell that secretary of yours to have a good trip, John grunted as he lumbered toward the elevator. And don't forget, beer down at our usual tonight, if you're not planning to follow a housewife home from the mall today and shoot her through the forehead.

Derek nodded peacefully, and gave the empty smile in John's direction as the elevators cloaked him from view. Derek stayed in his seat, still smiling unphased into the empty room, until he decided maybe John had a good idea after all; perhaps a miserable homebound housewife deserved a parole from the prison of life today. He nodded - still smiling - and tucked the gun inside of his coat, out of view. He brought his suitcase out of a closet, where yesterday's client, a nervous young intern jumping headlong into the black unknown of corporate misery, still hung by his own Mossimo belt. He nodded and smiled to the stiff but slumping corpse. It's a tough old world, friend-oh, but at least it's no longer tough on you.

Derek took the fire exit and descended dozens of stories without so much more than a brief wind. The sun - just another star on its way to oblivion like everyone and everything else - smiled warmly on his face as he strolled with purpose down the honking road and through the myopic crowd. Everyone's intent on today. I'm intent on forever. Should be that way, really. I'm the only one who realized he's just marking time. I'm the only one who knows that all that really matters is helping one another, and in this world under the gaze of the uncaring stars, the only way to help others is to keep them from coming even close to the horror of his revelation. Things were out there more terrible than death, or, specifically, the lack of things. Once you were convinced and fully sold in spirit to the fact that nothing matters, you understand the only answer: that nothing matters. Sure, preventing the ones Derek knew in his heart would also find the horror he found meant their deaths, but death isn't the worst. Nothing is the worst. And since Derek's revelation, he knew nothing. He knew it quite well.

They say the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing you he didn't exist. No, Derek thought; the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was not existing at all.

He smiled at a prissy woman leaving a department store with a considerable bag of sweaters and high top shoes. Wonder how much she spends to enjoy, and how much she spends to forget, Derek thought, and settled upon the opinion that the majority funded the latter over the former. He followed her stiff walk past an Applebee's and briefly debated which of his hungers to feed.

~~

pretty dark man, I'd say I was focused for 90 percent of it and yeah mostly good writing. Fav part was actually the elevator concept(if it was a mirror...) and then the end was very good too