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He was on the evening before,
like most people retiring for the day, in a quite ordinarily mundane sort of fashion.
There weren’t any problems or anything the least bit noteworthy about him or his
evening. He was so non-exceptional in every aspect that he wasn’t even exceptionally
average. He mostly just was, and that suited him fine.
The next morning,
however, he wasn’t. He wasn’t not in the sense that he entirely wasn’t, but in that he
wasn’t as people are but as people aren’t and shouldn’t be without a good reason. He
didn’t have a good reason as someone who isn’t doesn’t have much of anything at all.
He was aware of his non-being and was confused, but not exceptionally so as that would be
unlike him.
He tried to remember if anything out of the ordinary had
happened to make him not be, but nothing out of the ordinary ever happened to him so
nothing stood out. He wasn’t sure what to think, so he didn’t think until the force of
habit compelled him to go to work.
He went to work and rode an elevator
up, afraid to meet someone on the stairs. He wasn’t at work very long when people began
to notice that he wasn’t at work. He was so boringly regular that not being at work
wasn’t like him. Others began to talk about possible reasons, mostly uninteresting but
three involved giraffes, why he wasn’t at work while gesturing right through where he
wasn’t. People kept looking where he wasn’t, which led him to believe that they
possibly knew he wasn’t there.
When he found out he was being fired for
not being at work, even though at work was where he was not being, he became mildly
frustrated (not that anyone would notice) and went home (which also passed unnoticed). He
tried to rest, not sure what else he could do, and fell asleep. He slept through much of
the afternoon, unaware of the neighbors screaming as they became caught in the mild
surrealism of his very real but rather dull dreams.
When he woke, he was
again, and this pleased him to a normal extent. The memory of not being stayed with him
for many years, always giving him something to contrast his being with. He was even glad
that, for a time, he wasn’t.
