Jeremy took a sip of coffee letting his nerves be masked over by its bee like buzz. The way his shoulders rolled back into a more natural position with a single taste drove him crazy. It wouldn’t have been advice he would have taken if his head wasn’t two notches away from its regular broadcasting wave. Coffee laced with a splash of whiskey, who would have thought it could make a stressed filled day of work turn into a relaxed day of being a corporate slave?

Jeremy worked on the corner of 45th in the big black stone building where those who had passed their Radiant Exams with spectacular results, but they were nobodies in the eyes of the world. Every day he walked to work as the buses that sped down the streets carried the Blockers to their fancy jobs in the glass towers on the other side of town. It made him sick that one minor weakness would have him walking for the rest of his life to the crumbling building on the corner of 45th.

His job was the most unbearable thing the big-shot Blockers could think of…writing hundreds of epitaphs from dawn to dusk. Basically, each morning a box of papers covered in various interviews and tapes filled with recordings of Releases were given to each employee and then they had till noon to write the deceased person’s life story. Of course it wasn’t a total waste of a day since after they turned in their first epitaph they got to go to lunch.

Every day at thirteen minutes past twelve each employee was given a baloney sandwich in a plastic zip-lock bag that wasn’t fully sealed and a dusty glass of pleasantly, rotten lettuce juice. It was his favorite part of the day of course it said on the big sign in the doorway and everyone had to remember the one line. Nothing makes the day more pleasant than the sandwich you had yesterday made new and last year’s lettuce turned liquid to wash it down.

A sound spooked him out of his dream of thirteen past twelve and his baloney which he could taste now. If it was in his mouth right now it would taste like his shirt cuff after he applied the Cardboard in a Can which every employee was required to use to make their work process more pleasantly slow. He turned his attention to the sound once again and found himself walking towards a dreadful park filled with natural flowers and squabbling air fish with their wings and odd-beaks.

How someone could find this place enjoyable mystified him. The Blockers always said that they built these ‘parks’ to let the Livestock see how beautiful their city was with its magnificent black hue and smoky air. A whimper came from behind a big, green monstrosity that made my eyes want to devour themselves and he walked around the plant making sure it wouldn’t touch him to see a small female huddled up with droplets of thankfulness falling down her face.

“Why do you let your thankfulness fall from your face willingly?” Jeremy asked pushing a strand of matted hair out of the female’s face, “Your hair isn’t combed. Do you think that if a Blocker man came by and saw you that he would even want to see if you could past the Dusk Exams?”

The small female looked up at him with her beautiful black eyes that maybe even would make the building on the corner of 45th ask for their dark beauty. Rain began to drip and the way it brilliantly soaked through his white shirt making his icy white skin look even more disgusting compared to the background of stunning black. He was a low man in the numbers of the Livestock with skin lack of much pigment and it wasn’t the first time he had been stared up in questioning about it, but then he realized something looking down at the young female. He held his hand up in a wanting way letting her small hand be placed against his palm to palm.

Their hands seem to blend into a storm of ivory each of them becoming each other. The entire moment made droplets of thankfulness come to his eyes and he wasn’t a Blocker he couldn’t hold the emotion back so he silently wept. The youth looked up at him like nothing was wrong wiping her thanks away and catching his with her fingertip.

“Why do you let the world see your thanks, mister?” She said, “The pavement happily bit at my knees and parted the skin on my arm to show it enjoyed my company, but why do you cry?”

“Sometimes us Livestock get caught up in the storm that’s all. We pass our Radiant Exams making us weaker than the Blockers. I couldn’t even watch them slowly tear apart the little brown wolf with the red collar that walked up to lick my ankles.” Jeremy said, “Sometimes when you’re just another part of the Livestock you feel…you feel…”

“Alone?”

He looked up at her and she let her face go away from a frown and become a straight line that looked alien to him, “A child like you shouldn’t use profanities like that hasn’t your mother taught you better.”

“I dunno, I don’t think I’ve got a mother.” She said.

“Why everyone has a mother?” Jeremy said letting his thanks fall down his cheek without wiping it away, “Where do you think children come from?”

“I dunno.” She said and as he thought of it he didn’t even know himself where children came from.

She looked up at the sky letting its darkness clash with her ivory hide, “Did you hear the story of the male child who brought a ball of fire and hung it on a crack of darkness letting an evil brightness into the world? I like that story, but it makes my insides feel like they are filled with flying fish.”

“That story is just made-up.” Jeremy said looking at her while she played with the spikes of green sticking from the ground, “What is your name?”

She thought for a something, “They call me Girl, but I haven’t ever heard any sort of word or name like mine. What is your name mister?”

“My mother called me Jeremy like the word for the feeling you get when you can’t hold back the thanks flowing from your eyes because you want to turn back on something so badly.”

“Jeremy, do you ever feel lost?” Girl said reaching out and taking his hand in an odd way he had never seen before, “Because sometimes when I am lying awake I feel like I don’t know what’s happening and there isn’t anyone to grab onto.”

“Girl, I feel that every day sometimes just out of the white abyss.” Jeremey said, “Sometimes when I am just doing the most random things like tying my shoe or looking at myself in the mirror and I’m the only one there. I realize something in this moment.”

“What?” Girl said something moving in her eye.

“When I’m here sitting with you right now…” He let his hand relax letting her wrap hers tighter around his in her peculiar way, “I…I…I just don’t feel lost anymore.”