The Chronicles of Henry Fleck

1
As usual, Henry Fleck was watching the clock, waiting for the hour of 5 to show itself. The work days seemed longer each year, and his misery deepened every day. He only worked for his children's sake. They needed to eat, and he was the only one who could put food on the table. If they were grown or dead he wouldn't work at all. His wife Beatrice was a louse who latched on to him right after high school. She hadn't worked a day in her life, but she had no problem spending Henry's money on fashionable shoes and the latest installment of Vogue.
These thoughts swam through Henry's head, just as they did everyday near quitting time. And after the clock struck 5 he would be out the door, ducking his boss and trying to get on the road before traffic on the 405 got too bad. Rushing to pick up the KFC and get home to his family. The same thing Monday through Friday.
His home was little better than the office in which he worked. He sat on the couch and watched the VCR clock during the commercial breaks, waiting for 10 o'clock, so he could lay his head down and make his nightly escape. He avoided his wife, trying to pass the day without getting yelled at. His only breaks from the drudgery of his daily life involved his two boys.
They would throw the football around in the backyard, watch TV, and he would help them with their homework if they needed it. He was a loving father, but he was still an empty shell of a man.
His life was spent perpetually looking ahead. To the wonders of teenage life, to the mystery of adulthood, and finally to the predictable malaise of retirement. Nothing ever worked out quite right for Henry Fleck.
He never really enjoyed himself, and he couldn't remember the last time he had a real good time. In fact, his kids were the only thing that meant anything to him on this whole ball of dust. His wife could starve, his boss could fire him, he could lose his house; but as long as he had his boys he wouldn't bat an eyelash.
Jason was 8, and still thought girls were gross. Greg was 14, and was trying his damnedest to finger-fuck the next door neighbor‘s daughter. The inevitable stages of boyhood would continue even after Henry’s bones had turned to dust. Henry lived vicariously through his boys, and they were the happiest kids on the block. He took them to hockey games, and they cheered when the players fought on the ice. He took them to Six Flags, and they flew across tracks of metal strapped on to little carts. He took them deep-sea fishing, skiing, mountain climbing, hiking, and to the movies. They had 3 albums filled with photos,
Henry was planning their next trip, to the Catskill Mountains, when he walked through the front door of his split level suburban home. His wife’s car was gone. Thank God, Henry thought. Probably getting her nails done or shopping for a new dress. He went to the bathroom and relieved himself. His afternoon bowel movements were routine, like almost everything else about his life. Henry sat on the porcelain throne, and picked up his current bathroom book, ‘12 Easy Steps to More Money!’. Beatrice had bought it for him last Christmas, and he was finally getting around to reading it. The truth was that he had run out of anything worth reading.
Step 1: Confidence! What absolute crapola, Henry thought. Just like every other self help book, full of encouraging garbage, meant to reaffirm a pleasant outlook on life. Well, the jokes on them. The glass has been empty for 17 years now.

* * * * *

The living room floor was made of particle board, stained to look like acceptable wood. It felt like wood, it looked like wood, but it was not wood. It was made of plant fiber, that is true. But not wood. Just like Henry. He looked like a man, and felt like one. But he was not a man. A man would not allow himself to be bullied into a life of toil and false promises. A man would make his own mind, and do what he wished. A man would not slave away for an ungrateful wife sucking corporate cock 5 days a week.
Just as the flooring was a composite of base parts, so too was Henry. He could be compared, perhaps favorably, to many other men. He could do some of the same things as well as many men. He could type and run Outlook EX. He had an E-mail address and a laptop computer. But these things do not a man make. A man is forged out of triumph over hardship, the overcoming of obstacles. It takes experience to be a man. Age and experience.
Henry is the particle board of men. He served the same function that a man would, but he was not yet a man. He always took the easy way. Working at the same company for over a decade. Marrying the first girl to have sex with him. Eating fast food for dinner every night. Watching TV before bed.
If Henry were to witness a bar room brawl, which is unlikely because he always drank at home, he would move to the safest corner. Away from the rush of sensation that reaffirms the living of their virtue and divinity.
To be fair, the blame does not rest solely on Henry. As a child he read the newspaper everyday, and still does. Doing so instilled within him a fear of danger, a fear of death. Reading of the brutal murders and political appointments daily ruined life for him. Much of his mind was consumed with the problems of others; intangible things that affected him minimally at best. The vice president of a charitable foundation caught embezzling funds meant to bring clean water to children in Africa, a man sentenced to death row for multiple rape-murders, and the Annual Rose Competition all weighed heavily on his mind.
So it is fairly redundant to say that Henry is a coward. Something less than a true human being. Humans are meant to grow, change from day to day, year to year. Progress as inhabitants of this often contradictory multiverse. But Henry has never experienced such growth or expansion. His life and personality were both stagnant and boring. Henry was convinced that he would be stuck in his daily routine forever.

2
On a seemingly average day, Henry was on his way out of the office for his 45 minute lunch break. Usually he got take out from one of the nearby restaurants. Today he decided to eat in at a diner that he passed everyday on his way to work. He had always thought of eating there, but until this day he had come up with some excuse not to. The Total Package Diner was the penultimate 24 hour diner. It had creaky bar stools, booths made of plastic and off-white tables that made a mockery of eggshells.
He took a seat at the bar, and waited for the waitress to come over. She took his order of coffee and a club sandwich with little words wasted between them. She gave it to the cook, poured Henry's coffee, and went to the cash register to sit and read a magazine. Henry couldn't make out the title, but it was clearly a woman's magazine. There was a picture of some celebrity with a huge smile and unattainable features.
Henry had always had a special kind of hatred for those publications. His mother read them throughout his childhood, and he hated it when she used some bit of useless knowledge they gave her. Either it was some tip on how to more effectively use make-up, or it was something even more pointless. Not to mention the awkwardness that came over him when he thought of his mother using the sex tips. Now his wife read them, and it seemed that he would never escape their presence. Even here, in a rundown diner on the side of the highway, he wasn't rid of them.
Henry sat and tasted his coffee, which was insanely hot. He never liked the taste of coffee, but it was the proper thing to drink. It gave him the energy he needed to complete his day.
There was only two other people in the diner. A trucker driver on the far side of the bar, and what looked to be a crazy man chatting him up. The trucker just sat and listened; not really reacting or adding anything to the conversation, if that's what it was. The madman spoke in such a way as to be unintelligible at a range of 24 feet. He seemed animated, and the speech must have been stirring something inside, something passionate.
He looked like a biker crossed with a mountain man. The gray hair on his head deceived you, for he was not old. His beard still held the dark color of youth, and his eyes were covered by dark sunglasses. His feet were covered in army boots, and he wore layers of clothing that were far too cumbersome for this mild weather. His jacket was made of black leather, and it was so old and dirty it was gray, like his hair. Very dark and frightening, at least to Henry.
After a rare period of silence, the man looked east and got his first look of Henry. To the man, Henry proved a more appealing conversational target than the weary trucker. So he sidled over Henry-way, and sat next to him. “How are we doing today Necktie? I thought your kind was locked up till dinner time?”
Now to Henry, this sort of talk was mildly offensive. Certainly what he said was entirely factual, but nonetheless it was wholly unpalatable for Henry and his meme. He didn’t appreciate the candor of this madman, but he was unable to get rid of him without becoming embarrassed.
“I’m fine thank you. And yourself?”
“Well Necktie, I could be doing a lot better, you know what I mean?”
“Eeeyyyaaaah I do.” Henry chose the elongation of a single syllable word to express his derision. David was very familiar with this tactic and chose to ignore it out of habit.
“To cut to the proverbial chase Jack, we need to talk,” David said with the smoothness innate to the insane and the brilliant.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you’ve got a lot to think about. For instance, the price of gasoline has gone up, costing you more of that precious credit. Meanwhile, your unhappiness tears away the levels of restraint you have in place, causing you to think more and more of unimportant things, like the past and how things could be. And in the near future, great disaster will befall you and your loved ones. Things will happen that you have no control over, and it will leave you a broken man.”
To Henry this man was just another drug addict getting jollies from pestering a sane person. He didn’t think that perhaps it was best to take this stranger seriously. David minded not at all if Henry took him seriously or not.
“So I guess no response to that, aye Necktie? Well, if you want to chat later you‘ll be able to find me. Oh, and I usually charge for the fortune telling. But in your case it doesn’t seem to be fair. Bye bye now Necktie.” With that David stalked out of the diner, waving goodbye to the waitress and throwing a shaker of salt at the trucker. It hit him in the shoulder, and he turned around to see Henry sitting and trying to look innocent. Henry’s club sandwich came and he ate it unceremoniously.
Today was just another day, just another lunch, just another Tuesday for Henry Fleck. By suppertime however, Henry would have changed his mind about today.

3
The wall clocks small arms indicated 29 minutes had passed, so Henry paid the bill and left for the office. He got his car into the 4th story of the parking garage, and sat on the hood to take a breather. His encounter with David didn't shake him up too much. He lived in the city, and was used to crazy people. As he sat on his car, he began to think about what David said.
Could his family really be in danger? There wasn't a thing that could have frightened Henry more. The thought of something bad happening to his children ate away at his rationality and his body began to respond to the imaginary stress. His palms got sweaty, and his chest became constricted with tension. He was falling apart on the hood of his Honda.
Time to go to work Henry, pull yourself together.
Henry had enough time to sit for a few minutes and compose himself. Although he spent most of his work day alone, he still needed the appearance of a calm demeanor. Henry was one of the top middle management goons in his company. He was basically a secretary type for the vice president of the Mason Argo Company's construction branch. He maintains the connections between Gerald Covington and the level directors of the Tokyo office. All day he sat, waiting to receive phone calls and dial his own scheduled ones. A life spent in waiting. He regularly had other office folks meandering into his office with invoices and memos, number sheets and files. Henry spent much of his time scrawling on dead trees.
He got to the lobby elevator without an incident, and pressed the up bottom. While he was waiting for a ding, a woman stood next to him. She was also waiting for a ding, which would bring her one step closer to a job. She was hoping to be a secretary, or an assistant, and she was desperate for work. It showed in her eyes. She stood, but not still. She swayed about like a rope hanging from the gallows. Her every movement made Henry even more nervous. Like everyone else in polite society, he tried not to take interest in strangers. But, Henry was not a master of self control.
He looked over at the woman, who was about five feet to his right. When he noticed that she was looking his way, he made it look like he was checking the time on the lobby wall. She knew that he was looking her over. She wore a gray pant suit, and heels that gave her a few extra inches of height, which she needed. She had short hair in the style of a female news anchor, cropped to curl just above the shoulder. It had the pigment of burnt sienna, and looked incredibly soft. He was captured by her beauty. She had a pleasant face, but at the moment it was marred by stress and anxiety. After she caught him looking her way, he wouldn't chance another snafu.
So he just stood there, staring at the elevator doors, first from the outside, then from the inside. They didn’t exchange words, civil greetings or otherwise. It was clear that they were both uncomfortable, but neither took any of the steps necessary to remedy the situation. This scene played itself out several thousand times a minute across the United States, and very few people ever say hello or smile. People aren’t very good when they leave their comfort zones.
Henry got off on his floor, and thanked his God that it was all over. The woman was on her way up to some advertising firm or law office, never to bother him again. It wasn’t often that Henry was placed into predicaments such as this, but he always handled it the same. With complete inaction. So it is that Henry handles most problems in his life, by doing nothing.
He managed make it to his office without suffering any more personal humiliation. Henry's face was still red from the elevator ordeal when his secretary came in to his office with a message from his wife. Apparently Beatrice was not going to be able to pick the boys up from school, so they were going to ride the bus home. Not an entirely unexpected situation. Greg was a fine young man, and always did a decent job watching his little brother. There was no cause for concern.
The rest of Henry's work day was routine. He sat in his chair, received a few phone calls, and drank sake. He always got free sake. It was one thing about his job that Henry actually enjoyed.
His day was nearly finished, when he got a call from Beatrice. She said that she wasn't going to get home until late, because her bridge club was taking a trip to an Indian casino. This was strange, because Henry hadn't heard anything about a bridge club before. But, he wasn't going to call her out on something so trivial. Henry chose his battles with the utmost care.
Henry was not a man to let strange occurrences come between him and his day plan. He left the office, got in his car, and began the descent to street level. The traffic was thick as usual, but Henry had grown used to it. He was waved in by an elderly man in a pickup truck and took his place in the long line of cars. The work van in front of him had a bumper sticker on it that read "Keep on Truckin'" in large friendly print.

4
The ride home was uneventful as always. It was stop and go most of the way, giving Henry lots of time to mull things over. He arrived home to find the living room deserted. Strange. Greg and Jason should be sitting around watching TV or playing videogames. He began to search the rest of the house. The bedrooms were empty, as were the bathrooms. The backyard held no children, and neither did the basement.
They weren't here at all. Panic exploded in his head, spreading its chaotic chemical signals, causing his heart to race uncontrollably. Something was wrong. Henry walked to the kitchen, picked up the phone, and dialed his wife’s number. It went straight to her voicemail. Why does she even have a cell phone if she’s not going to have it on or answer it!
Henry could not control himself. He was sweating profusely, calling every number he could think of. Greg’s best friends house, the school, the police. Nobody knew where his kids were, and the police couldn’t report them missing yet. Something must have happened. Something bad. He knew of no reason that his children should not be home, and, coupled with the ominous clairvoyance of one David Huxley, these events took on a significance that could not be ignored.
Henry was not a man of action. He had a date book, appointments, and a schedule. He was the last man do to anything impulsive. But now, it seemed, Henry’s hand was being forced. He knew this. He also knew, that it was his time...
His time to act.
So he went to his car, and started it up. He searched the block, then the neighborhood, then the town. He drove down avenues he hadn’t seen in years. He passed hookers and homeless on the streets, trying to scrape out a life in the mire. He saw an adult book store, a prison, and a college, all on the same street. He flew around town, desperately searching for his offspring. Every minute that passed during the hunt, Henry got more dejected. He scanned the sidewalks and streets for anything that would lead him to Greg and Jason. He saw nothing but the filthy streets and gutters of a town whose name he couldn't remember. Henry grew numb from the chemicals being pumped through his system.
As the search dragged on, he began to calm down a bit, to think rationally. Things weren't as bad as they seemed. Greg and Jason were probably at home right now waiting for him. They must have gone to the store, or a friend's house. This was crazy, driving around town for no reason. They have to be safe. They have to be...
Of course they're safe, he thought. Everything is going to be alright.
As you know, whenever someone is repeating that mantra, things aren't alright. It is a simple way to trick the brain, but it's ultimately ineffective. One can pray and hope till their eyes bled, but its not going to change anything. Henry was not one to pray, but he was praying now. He was praying for the safety of his kids; for the safety of all kids, lest he appear selfish in the eyes of God. Henry wasn't devout. In fact, one could say he paid lip service to the Catholic Church. Right now though, Henry was a believer. He believed in a God that wouldn't let bad things happen to good people. He believed in a God that punished the wicked and rewarded the righteous. He believed in a God that didn't exist.
The whole drive home he sat in a tense silence. The only thing he heard was his engine, and the sound of air rushing past him. It was easier this way. Without noises to distract him he was simply a driver moving towards his destination. There was no urgency, no tragedy, and no crisis. He allowed his mind to go blank, and it gave him the strength to continue. Without his incessant mind chatter, he could look at things from a detached point of view.
He knew that the only logical course of action would be to wait patiently at home for his wife and children. All the running around had solved nothing. In fact, it had made everything worse. He might have seen Greg and Jason by now, coming through the front door, or walking through the back one. He had failed his offspring somehow, and there was little he could do to change that. The guilt climbed up his legs and settled in his stomach. There it settled for the night.

5
It was later that evening, when Henry returned, that he discovered everyone where they were supposed to be. His sons were watching TV, and his wife was talking on the phone in the backyard. To absorb these images after hours of a frantic stress induced energy high would cause some to collapse, others to cry in desperate joy, and yet others to go completely insane. Henry, like certain others are want to do, did not react at all. He shambled around the house, and eventually made his way to the bedroom for sweet escape.
Greg tried to talk to his father, but received no answers to his questions. He asked where his father had been. He asked why he was so sweaty. Henry didn't appear to hear him. He just stared at Greg, with eyes unblinking. Greg was a bright kid, and he knew when things were amiss.
Earlier his father had come home, and walked right by them, yelling their names. When they answered he didn't hear. When they touched him he didn't feel. He couldn't hear Jason crying. Greg had been puzzled by his father's behavior, but dismissed it out of turn. Now that he was back though, Greg wasn't sure if everything was alright. But, being a respectable young Christian man, he wasn't going to question his father.

* * * * * *

David Huxley had been following Henry the rest of the day, and watched as the seeds of doubt he had sown took root. It was a good life being a crazy man. He took every opportunity to shake up the Normals, and he had a damn good time doing it. Its not that David is mean spirited, or malicious. He just delights in the elaborate dances of human emotion. And this waltz was utterly perfect.
Henry had taken every step exactly as he should have, the panic shutting down his mind, giving rise to the perfection of unconscious thought. He had followed the blueprint laid in his brain, and this is what intrigues David. That hardwiring in all of us, that takes over when all other means of cognition have failed. Where does it come from? Why does it exist? Is it a result of genetic memory or the inherent link between all of our minds?
Maybe a better question would be, why do we exist?
The answer is simple. We live to create, to pass on our memories, our genetics, and to give life to that which is lifeless; but mostly we live to fuck.