Interview Abduction: A Short Story
By Aron White
Copyright 2011 by Aron White
Published by Morning Paradise Press
Cover Image Copyright by Raphotography, Dreamstime.com
Check out Aron's website for more stories at http://www.aronwhite.com
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Interview Abduction
Boredom oozed from Bob’s fingers as he slowly typed in another job search query. Fifty similar matches popped up on the website and he clicked to see the list, heaving a sigh while scanning through the results, none even coming close to what he was looking for. Hitting alt-tab on the laptop keyboard with his left hand, the doc file containing his list of brainstormed job titles popped up and Bob highlighted the last one before pressing the strikethrough hot key, crossing it off like the others.
Six months of unemployment. Six months sitting around the house in a bathrobe all day, watching tv, reading books, going for walks outside, preparing three meals a day, phone calls with head hunters and trolling the internet for potential openings. Some of Bob’s friends tried to tell him the time off was a blessing in disguise. Relax for a while, take a vacation, see the world and recalibrate your life. That might be fine and dandy for everyone else, but he abhorred such thoughts. One day he’d been pulling down a good salary with benefits, busily working fifty to sixty hour weeks then before he knew it, the economy had tanked and he’d been given the pink slip. Nice to know you, thanks for your years of service. Sixty hours a week had gone to zero in the blink of an eye and he was bored out of his mind.
Hitting alt-tab again, Bob pulled up his email account and confirmed that his inbox was still empty without any radical changes in the past five minutes since checking it last.
“Time for a break,” he said, pushing away from the desk in his spare bedroom/office to make another run to the fridge for more beer, picking up the three empty cans from the floor as he left the room.
After dropping the cans into the recycle bin in the garage, Bob went to the kitchen, pulled a fresh beer from the fridge and popped the top open, guzzling about half the contents before the beeping sound from his phone caught his attention.
“Eh?” Bob grunted as he finished a gulp, wiped his face and stared at the device several feet away on the kitchen table. Someone had texted him and while the screen had gone dark again, a small green light near the top of the phone started to blink. He watched it for a moment, hoping against hope that it wouldn’t be some text advertisement for porn, a dating site or a way to get rich by providing your social security number first.
The screen lit up as Bob picked up the phone and flipped up the lock screen to read the text message.
Out of work? Tired of staying at home? Reply to this text for a fabulous employment opportunity.
“Are you serious?” Bob asked, snorting as he hit the delete key, set the phone on the table and began to trudge back towards the spare bedroom/office, two additional beers in hand. The beep from another text message stopped him in his tracks and against all intuition, he changed course, put the beers on the table and picked up the phone again, rolling his eyes as he prepared to read the new message.