At 11.24 a.m. Duncan
McAllister, on his walk from his desk to the office toilet, ascended. His
physical atoms dispersed and his essential consciousness manifested itself in a
parallel existential plane as a faint aura. At 11.24 a.m. Duncan McAllister
got up from his desk and walked to the office toilet, banging his shin on a box
of copier paper. Once in the toilet he disintegrated – mentally; sinking to his
knees, allowing his face to sag and exhaling in a wheeze. The metaphysics of this new realm meant that it did not register on the
visual spectrum, inhabitants instead identifying one another by auras and
parascents – anosmic smells calling to mind temporal and emotional fixed points,
much like how freshly cut grass or the musty scent of a favoured toy, when
returned to years later, can act as a gateway to a very specific moment in time
and sentimental space. Close to the floor, the acrid stench of errant urine
was stronger but mixed in places with cleaning fluids and other smells which it
was harder for the ever lessening Duncan to place. The gusts under the door as
oblivious workers bustled past created overwhelming olfactory fluctuations in
the toilet’s microclimate which Duncan was entirely unable to process. The essence of Duncan McAllister discovered
that it hadn’t the faintest knowledge of its own psychogeography and stumbled,
figuratively, from one long lost emotion to the next.
Around 11.53 a.m., Duncan composed himself, brushed the dust
and urine residue from his trouser knees. He looked at his reflection in this
mirror, and then in the tap, and then formed a composite picture of himself
from these two versions – neither of which seemed entirely familiar. Around 11.53 a.m. Duncan’s atoms
reconstituted themselves, and his faltering consciousness was gently imprisoned
back within them.
The 12.00 p.m. admin team meeting was typically unedifying.
