D.O.A. Extreme Horror Anthology Read Online Free PDF Page A

bra.
    Ouch.
    Figures. Figures. Jack began tapping. By twelve, he had reached page thirty. He took out a banana sandwich his mom had made him. Jack ate while he worked. He pushed numbers around, and it felt good to bully something. It set him free for a time. He dreamed, but only on the surface of things. He didn’t let it go too deep. He had work to do.
    “Jack! Pal! How’re those accounts coming?”
    “I’m on it, Mr. Davis,” said Jack, biting back a grimace.
    “I’m relying on you.”
    “Yes, Mr. Davis. Working through my lunch,” he told him, and hated himself for sucking up. Fuck off, he thought, but only to himself.
    “Good man. Just as soon as you can. Mail ‘em to me, eh?”
    Eh, fuck.
    “Yes, Mr. Davis.”
    Jack’s boss walked away, and Jack turned back to his screen. All work and no play. His troll sneered at him. It called him a pussy.
    “Shut up,” Jack told it, and flicked his screen up. Numbers. It was all done by numbers. Everything could be reduced to numbers, or so the mathematicians said. But Jack knew the truth; numbers reduced you .
    He set to tapping, and the pages flew by. For a few blissful hours Jack had no daydreams. The clock ticked past, marking off numbers on the face. People passed his cubicle—seven. He went to the toilet. Twice.
    His phone rang. Twice he picked it up. More work. Demands from Mr. Davis. Twice he didn’t answer it.
    Then, it was just him and the numbers, sucking his soul out through his eyeballs.
    By four, he was finished. Five cups of coffee down.
    Jack hit send. See if Davis could wiggle his way out of that one.
    He looked up. There were fewer heads. It must be cigarette break time. He wished he smoked. Those bastards took up half the day developing cancer. If Jack got cancer, it would be for free.
    He almost wished he had cancer. A day off wouldn’t hurt.
    Johnson. Fuck Johnson.
    Jack stretched his legs out. The back of his chair chose that moment to pussy out on him. His legs flipped in the air again. He whacked the same knee.
    “Fuck!”
    Heads turned in unison. He wanted to put his fingers up to them. Jack knew one of those bastard bitches stayed late and switched the chair back on him every day. No matter what he did, he always got the same chair.
    He put his face down.
    Fuck Johnson. He brought up the Internet. Click, click. What a beautiful variation from tap, tap.
    Variation, Jack realized, was why people kept on living. They waited for their shows to change, they tried tea one day instead of coffee, hot chocolate instead of tea, a mistress instead of a faithful wife.
    But they would never be free. They wanted variation, but within a strict set of boundaries. They wanted it to be comfortable. They wanted parameters.
    There were no parameters. You didn’t have to put up with the same old dross. Jack knew that. If you just had the imagination. You could go anywhere.
    Click, click. The sound of an empty chamber. Flick knife opening. Hammer on nail.
    Tap, tap. Brought to mind a drip. Endless. Rhythmic. Crazy-making. The sound of every day.
    Click…clickclickclick…click. New patterns. New rhythms. Alien and new. Nothing familiar about the sound.
    It relaxed Jack. A flood of pictures poured over him. Words. Stories, news stories, alien abduction stories, stupid-people stories, conspiracy stories. He washed in it.
    Four fifty-five p.m. Time to get his jacket on. He looked around him. People were standing up, stretching out their aching backs, pulling on jackets.
    Jack caught a nameless drone’s eye. A dead, soulless eye. No imagination.
     
    Put him out of his misery. Go on. Take the axe. Look down. The axe is already in your hand. A swing, a hit. A cracking sound, and the axe is stuck. The rest of them look around. Perhaps they can all jump you before you pull the axe out. Perhaps you can beat them to it. Nothing to it, but to try.
    Jack grabbed the handle of the axe, and pulled. The sound he could hear was screaming. His. They were silent. Silent,