Totally subject to changes at any time, massive edits, further writing, and general construction.
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Small Packages
He had been working there for 13 years, and he still hadn't opened a single package. Bumble & MacAlistar International Shipping, despite one of it's unfortunate founding partner's last names, and maybe because of it, prided itself on both their faithful, reliable employees and fast service, and Marty was no exception.
Marty Strong (Martin, on his blue and white nametag,) had started working for B-Mac, as it was fondly referred to among the people who shipped and recieved packages through them, and the NASDAQ, upon graduating from high school. Now 31 years old, with a wife, a dog named Bear, and a house that's monthly mortage was $900, he was starting to feel a little restless with life. No college education-- Pop hadn't believed in sending his only son away to somewhere where there was something called a "quad" and smoking pot and playing the guitar in a shirt you dyed yourself seemed like the extracurricular activity of the time. 'A good, blue-collar man is worth his weight in gold,' he used to tell Marty. 'There ain't nothing you can't do with your hands that some fella can do with his big brain.' Marty's mother had drunk herself into an early grave, so she had no say in the matter. If she still had been around, maybe she would have tried talking Marty into taking a job in the men's wear department of the local Sears and Roebuck. But in any case, she wasn't, and so Marty found himself applying as a "Handler" at Bumble & MacAlistar, and there he still was.
It was the sort of job that allowed you to let your mind endlessly wander, and Marty liked that. After his first six months, Marty got used to the lift, shift, carry routine, and now, muscle memory controlled him on the job, years of repetition and well-honed biceps doing most of the work for him. Despite his Pop's words of wisdom, Marty actually had a lot going on inside of his brain. There was his wife, Kate, to consider. They had been married for six years, and Marty was still constantly mystified by her. Just the other day, he had come home after a late shift to find her still sitting up, waiting for him, in their living room. 'Marty,' she asked him calmly, 'what if we never get out of here?'
'But we just bought the house four years ago,' he said to her. 'We're going to be paying the mortgage for the next 30 years!'
'Not out of here, Marty-- out of this rut we're in.' His Kate had ideas, she did. She was two years younger than he was, and therefore, two years even more reckless. At 29, she still felt young. She saw her girlfriends moving to the cities-- New York, Boston, Philly-- and she was starting to feel like maybe teaching seven year olds how to write in cursive was a dying lot in life, wheezing its last death-rattles. Marty, in his daily routine of lift, shift, and carry, was a creature of comfort. The thought that his wife-- his lovely, exhuberant, frustrated wife-- was starting to get antsy made Marty get antsy, too. She was trying to shake things up for them. First there were the open issues of Cosmopolitan that she left lying open to "101 Ways To Spice Up Your Sex Life!" and "8 Hidden Spots That'll Drive You BOTH Wild!" That he could deal with fine, but just the other day, she had brought home kits of finger-paint, five of them, and tried to convince Marty to join her in re-decorating the bare living room wall behind the sofa. He had refused, out of princepal-- what sort of person fingerpaints in their own living room?-- but now, delicate little handprints and arching finger swoops in red, green, blue, violet, orange, and yellow seemed to creep over his shoulder as he watched the Tonight Show. You could just barely see the little bump around the base of the second finger from the left of the left-handed prints, but Marty knew it was there, and Marty knew it was the band of the very adaquate wedding ring that his very adaquate yet very lively wife wore, and it made him sigh. There was even a pawprint by the baseboard from where Kate had dipped Bear's front right paw in fingerpaint and then pressed it to the wall. Privately, he thought that being surrounded by children all day in her second grade class didn't help her any.
Between that and the mortage (another thing Marty could spend endless hours contimplating how he was ever going to pay it back on a Handler's salary-- Kate's elementary school teacher's salary went nearly exclusively to paying for the groceries, gas, and her inexplicable shoe collection; how many pairs of high heels does one woman need, after all?) Marty could amuse himself for hours. He was a simple man, while still not being what society would consider a "simple" man. He had very few desires in life-- a few beers after work with his buddies; to please his wife and one day be able to read her mind so he would be able to stop having to guess at why she was mad at him and what she wasn't telling him; to pay the mortgage on time, and maybe, just maybe to have enough cash left over at the end of the month to buy a new set of golf clubs. (This was a new desire he'd been thinking of for the last three months, mulling it over more and more frequently as the weather got warmer and warmer and the opening day of the local golf course got closer and closer.)
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That's it for now. I haven't written fiction in, oh...a quarter of my life, so any feedback, comments, suggestions and edits are appreciated.
XOXO
