“F*%k!” He accidentally slammed the file cabinet shut on his ring finger again, the ring finger of his left hand, the one that ached and throbbed with the ironic absence of a ring. The nail pounded with dull pain as he slipped it into his mouth and massaged it with his tongue, comforting his nerves. The folder he had removed was one of billions that were secured in unfathomable rows of cabinets around him. His desk sat squat and unimpressive in the middle of a seemingly infinite hallway of off-white tiles and flickering fluorescent lights.

He marveled at the way so many insignificant little creatures found their way through the ceiling panels into those lights where they starved, shriveled, and died. Perhaps they were seeking the warmth of the fluorescent bulbs, he thought–but then, the glow they emitted was so cold and artificial. This was the great hoax of being, insects so desperately seeking warmth and light, shelter from a dark world, only to discover that the solace they sought was in fact a fraud.

After so many days of the same wearisome work, managing the affairs of other people–people who largely cared not for him or his guidance–he began to wonder what his purpose was. This was the first job, and though he was very old, it was the only job he ever had. It was the only thing he knew.

He opened the folder he had just removed, it’s worn edges soft against his wrinkled fingers. The thing held volumes of unorganized papers, much more than it seemed to be capable of holding, but he didn’t ponder this conundrum for very long. He began to sort through the papers; financial history here, criminal record there, the documented history of this man’s life. In his medical records laid a diagnosis of terminal cancer, age 27.

Something happened then, and he stopped sorting. Like so many folders before this one, he carelessly shoveled the papers back in, pulled open a random cabinet (not the one to which the folder belonged), and jammed it in among some others. His head swam with despair. This job was easy to manage when he started, refreshing, the opportunity of a lifetime, but had since become overwhelming and tedious. There were the affairs of too many people to manage. He still kept folders of many who had already died, hidden somewhere within the clusterfuck of file cabinets, and still he was receiving new documents daily.

He couldn’t cope. Another day at work he thought might kill him, and he decided to take refuge again in the cathartic effects of alcohol. He opened a desk drawer to find a glass bottle about a fourth full with dirty brown liquid swishing around inside. He pulled hard at it, as if to suck out an elixir that would restore him, but he was greeted only by the awful taste of whiskey that made him grimace so. Slumping forward, he let his forehead rest on the desk and his arm hang, and as this tired old man drifted off to sleep and let the bottle slip from his hands onto the ground, the vastness of the universe moved around him in disarray.