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Time crept forward in the cramped, dusky room. The silence was so absolute, you could almost hear the dust draping itself onto the polished faux plywood cabinets. A slight, regular ticking noise came from the corner of the office where the partially dried out leaves of the large potted plant quivered in the airflow that was caused by the blasting radiator. Nobody spoke. Every once in a while though someone’s chair would creek. Søren stirred his coffee as quietly as possible, carefully watching the metallic surface being sucked into the vortex of the liquid. Å, let’s descent into this Mælström… ‘t was the sixth cup of the day already. Søren made a note of that on the appropriate form.

He saw Mette winking at him from across the room. Mette had greasy hair that looked good on her. She also had greasy spectacles and vermillion sneakers. They had gone out one time. He had made a fool of himself. ”The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved,” he thought as he looked at the wall. The 2 o’clock shadow fell just above the one from a week earlier. Søren made a mark of it in pencil. Connecting the dots and... voilà! There you go… Heliocentrism? Not in here mate! I’m the son of modern observational astronomy, Søren thought, but a bad son.

A big pile of documents, stapled together in bundles of four or five sheets, lay on one end of his desk. Søren took one of the bundles and with an experienced flick of his crimson destapler he took out the staples which he then placed in a transparent plastic receptacle. The paper was chucked into a grey plastic bin. After every 20^th staple he made a note of it on his report chart. When he was done, he sighed. Almost a record for this week. Well done Nosferatu my trusty old tool, he thought and glanced over to Mette to see if his enthusiasm hadn’t been too obvious and flamboyant and might have produced what could be considered unnecessary sounds.

The rest of the afternoon was occupied by doing this month’s add & subtractions, the checking of customers’ telephone numbers, to establish a pattern and the Leprechaun file. It was hot in here... Mette’s lips were red and shiny. She had a little golden crucifix dangling on her bosom. And yet it moves... Søren pondered on this for some time. He must have dosed off. The writing was on his forehead: Y T R Ǝ W Ơ Ѭ ҉.

Søren picked up the phone and called the time service. ‘Thank you,’ he said, as he always did before putting the phone down. He made a note of the time on his form and got up.