The Ballad of Josh and Ned

...Thursday, October 2. Night.

The fluorescent tube lights in the hallway flickered and clicked off at 6:00, leaving only the few dim backup bulbs to lead the way for those die-hards who found virtue in staying late. There weren't many. The janitor - Ned, according to the oval patch sewn onto his frayed workshirt - slid his key into the office door, shooting a furtive glance over each shoulder before turning his wrist. He tiptoed in his scruffy workboots (an odd sight to anyone who may have seen) to the tiny, battered metal desk in the corner. The red-haired stepchild of desks. It belonged to Josh. The peon. The gofer. Coffee-fetcher. Whipping boy. Office clerk. The only one lower on the office totem than Ned himself. Josh was not remotely important enough to the workings of McDonald Publishing to warrant staying late. Ned moved, catlike, and did what he came to do. He slid away as quietly as he slid in, moving to higher floors, larger offices, better views.


...Friday, October 3. Morning.

Josh bustled into the office the same way he did every day - fifteen minutes early, buttoned, starched, and spit-shined. He took his duties seriously and he was proud. As he whistled his way to his cubicle (it was more of a dingy corner, really, but he liked to think of it as "his cubicle"), he thought about that shining day somewhere in the future that he'd have his name on a door with a title that said "Editor." He put his coffee cup on his desk and froze. At first, he couldn't quite put his finger on what was wrong, but then it hit him. The hole puncher. It belonged on the left side of the desk. Everyone who's right-handed knows that's how it should be, but there it was, plain as day, sitting on the right! And a new horror greeted him! The typewriter! It was supposed to be center stage, but it was off to the side and...what??...crooked?!

Josh spun around, fingers clenched in his once-combed hair. His eyes then landed on the pen cup and he actually groaned aloud. The caps were on the wrong ones...they were mixed up...some even left open to dry out! He collapsed into his rusted folding chair, which protested laboriously under the strain (even though Josh barely topped 120 pounds soaking wet). Josh stared, glassy-eyed, across the room and his gaze then fell upon one more thing. The filing cabinet. More precisely, the labels. They were upside-down. Even though Josh left every day at 5:00 PM on the button, he knew that of all the people there past that time, only one would have done something so despicable, so loathsome, so diabolical...


...Friday, October 3. Evening.

Ned was about as keyed-up as he'd ever been about coming to work. He even left his trailer a few minutes early, sacrificing the answer to "Who is your baby's daddy?" on Maury, just to get to the office in time for the evening's fun and games. He swiped his security badge through the scanner at the front door, a spring in his step like that of a teenage boy who just saw his first pair of breasts. His first stop was to fetch his supply cart from the closet so he could make his "real" rounds. For all his faults, Ned would never neglect his duties. As he wiggled his cart through the door, he noticed that the daytime janitor had left a full garbage bag on it. He sighed. Some people, he thought. Lazy, useless, good-for-nothing...he half-mumbled to no one in particular. He struggled with the wobbly cart towards the back door that led to the dumpsters. "Damn. What did someone do? Throw out a dead body?"


...Monday, October 6. Morning.

Jaunty whistles and sprightly steps announced Josh's arrival at work. By 9:30, he was happier than he'd ever been, despite his (pleasantly) aching back and arms. Even when his supervisor noticed him wince as he shut the file drawer and asked if he was okay, he smiled as he answer, "Just a little tight from lifting this weekend." He flexed a wimpy bicep and winked. He didn't even notice when his coworkers wondered aloud around the water cooler later that day about the strange absence of Ned, "that nighttime guy," who hadn't cleaned their trash cans over the weekend.