Tyler Barton

The following are a collection of three microfictions.

The problem with James was that the company only needed one. One Jame. The efficiency consultant’s report made it clear that a single Jame would suffice.

This wasn’t the company, the company argued—this was the bottom line.

James didn’t understand. The box they gave him to pack his desk had a hole in it, and on the walk to the parking garage, James lost some of his things. He wasn’t sure what, exactly. It all just felt too light.

Carlos heard the news about James while on a smoke break, nodding along to the story while squeezing the blue-green stress ball he’d found on the ground in the stairwell. Carlos started to feel flimsy. For him, one Carlo was nowhere near enough.

"Ned? Ned Medley? Or, how about: Ned Already.”

“We’re going with Ned? Ok. So, Ned Nebbish.”

“Oh shit, Ned Spaghetti could actually work.”

“Too silly,” the assistant creative director says. “Too idiotic!”

“Okay, then let’s consider: Ashley Bellpepper.”

“I could see a Derek. A Derek is somehow Americana with hints of European mystery.”

“Too fucking silly!” the assistant creative director says, slamming his fist on the table. The sugar crystals that, hours ago, slipped from the muffin tops tremble. “We need people to register the name, and then they go: Huh?, and then they click, and they’re like: Hmmmm.”

“Go huh; click hmm.” “That’s actually really our whole aesthetic in a nutshell, honestly.”

“Someone write it down for his memoir.”

I write “Go Huh; Click Hmm” in red marker on the whiteboard. We are always doing this, writing our boss’s memoir for him. He claims the job is killing him. He makes declarations that feel like threats, such as on Monday when he told us in a low voice that he knows not whether he’ll make it to Friday. He can rub his eyes so hard with his knuckles you start to cry. He turned sixty in June. He’s been in his assistant position for fifteen years. He’s been passed over. And over. And over. And now he’s responsible for naming the “owner” of the facade email account that will serve as the sender of our marketing emails. Recent studies show that the brains of our audience have developed a blindness to our brand name—they’ve seen it so many times that it’s become like a tree on the street, or air itself. They just move through us. In their inboxes we hide in plain sight. But, if the sender is Derek Jalapeño. If the sender is Alisha Suspicion. If the email waiting for you (albeit in a sub-tab your email auto-sorts to) was sent by Peggy Spychild, you might just click.

“First they see the name, and it’s a, a sort a—hmm.”

“Let me see who this fucking person is.”

“And that’s a Huh? as in like, holy shit are you fucking kidding me?”

“You have it backwards, but we fucking get it,” the assistant creative director says. “I sure do! It was my fucking idea!”

“Vaughn Awesomme.” There are groans. “Hear me out though: it’s a double m.”

It was his idea, but he didn’t think he’d get saddled with it. Alas, only the actual Creative Director can both have an idea and be completely unburdened by its follow-through. It’s a super power granted only to that position. If this company is the Creative Director’s house, he can imagine into existence a window wherever he wants one, in any wall or fridge or ceiling or toilet seat, but he never has to remember to close it, or to think about what might fly inside. When other people open a window, they have to fortify it, clean it, put a screen in, hang curtains, and plant perennials in the yard just beyond. Then, they have to tell the story of the window to the shareholders.

“So, we go for a classic name: Ernst.”

“Love love love Ernst. I’m obsessed with Ernst.”

“Don’t fucking say it,” says the assistant creative director. “Please."

IF I SEE ANY OF YOU AGAIN I HOPE IT’S IN HELL, I transcribe on the whiteboard as the assistant creative director trembles out for a lunch break that will never end. We think it might be the end of his book. We think we can’t wait to read it. But I’m trying to hand the marker off, and no one in the room is reaching out.


This story borrows names from Andrew Weatherhead’s book $50,000 (“Ned Spaghetti,” Publishing Genius, 2019) and Mike Andrelcyzk’s Gateway 2000 (“Derek Jalapeño,” Ghost City Press, 2020)

The day Khan found the spit the sky was pink and rank and dying. But Khan couldn’t see it, because he was at work. All he saw at work was the spit. The big pile of it in the closet.

Khan found Justice in the break room, staring at a final, tiny slice of cake. He asked her what the hell was going on behind the door across from the copy room.

“That’s the closet everyone spits in.”

“My last job didn’t have it either, but The Times says it’s pretty progressive.”

“Progressive?” Khan said. “Like dogs in the office?”

“Dogs? God no,” said Justice. “Can you imagine subjecting an animal to this place?”

“An innocent dog…” she said, shaking her head.

Khan left her and walked past the closet carefully, as if a trip-wire might ignite it.

Later, after the post-lunch slump and a confusing virtual meeting in which their boss called the design of the new totebag line an ‘agnostic process,’ Khan felt for the first time in his life like a good spit could realign some foundational aspects of his psyche, so he walked to the closet. He opened the door.

Inside, the spit pile glowed foamily, as two copywriters made it bigger. Khan recognized them from Development.

Tyler Barton

Tyler Barton

Fiction

Winter 2021 - Fast

To Work