Blue Files

I was becoming concerned with the presence of bacteria in my life. Bacteria lives on everything, it’s everywhere, outside, inside. I briefly considered boiling my stapler to ensure the removal of all things bacterial.

Bacteria was on my mind (it’s probably in my brain, crawling across my frontal lobe this very moment) as I sat at my desk, dipping a slightly used tea bag in and out of a mug of freshly boiled water. I’ve always been the type of person who reused tea bags (see: cheap), and one day I decided to google the act, just to confirm it was normal. We google things to see how same or different we are from the others. What a relief to find that someone has googled the same thing: “little red bumps on my nipple” “murderous thoughts toward my child” “is Florida part of the United States?”

The results for my reusable tea bag search were grim. A lot of anonymous commenters claiming to be tea experts reporting that using a tea bag more than once can, and probably will, kill you.

“The tea bag becomes very moist after one use,” wrote teafortwo657. “When it becomes moist, it attracts bacteria very quickly and molds over in about five to ten minutes. If you reuse the tea bag, you’re basically drinking mold tea.”

A gent named teabagger55 followed up with “that’s right, if you get mold in your system, go to the hospital immediately because you will die.”

I had reused this particular tea bag five times that day. I wondered if I should even bother going to the hospital. Maybe I was dead already. I looked at the clock. 2:42PM. The last 2:42PM I’ll ever see.

I dunked the tea bag in and out of the mug, staring closely at it. I looked to see if I could spot the mold seeping out of the bag. I imagined it would be green and sludge like, mixing into the tea, causing a reaction with steam rising up in the shape of a skull and crossbones. I dipped it in and flicked it out, over and over again. I was dead already, right?

So this is how it ends. Death by moldy teabag. My last hours spent at a desk answering phones. Repeating the same phrases over and over and over again.

“Thank you for calling Systemex Services. This is Lila, how can I help you?”

“Thank you for calling Systemex Services. This is Lila, how can I help you?”

“Thank you for calling Systemex Services. This is Lila, how can I help you?”

Sometimes I would slip up and ask “how can you help me?” which confused people enough to ignore it and go ahead asking for Bob anyway.

“Unfortunately, Bob is in a meeting at the moment, but I can transfer you into his voicemail.”

“Yes, I understand, but it looks like Bob is away from his desk at the moment, but I can put you into his voicemail.”

“Of course, let me see if I can track Bob down for you.” Then I would put them on hold and hum a few bars of “Momma Said There’d Be Days Like This.”

“Hello, sir? It looks like Bob is in a meeting out of the building at the moment, but I can transfer you into his voicemail.”

Bob never checked his voicemail. And he was never in meetings. And he was always at his desk. He just didn’t like to be disturbed. When I started at this job, he told me “anybody who isn’t my wife goes into voicemail”

“So, I’ll only put your wife through to you?”

His eyes widened, seizing a rare opportunity to be a comedian. “No, hang up on my wife!”

He chuckled, a strange wheezing that was punctuated by his jiggling shoulders. Bob didn’t laugh a lot. His chuckles subsided.

“I hate my wife,” he said, with a serious face. “Don’t ever put her calls through, and if she ever walks through the door, tell her I’m out to lunch.”

“What if it’s at four o’clock or something?”

Bob stared back at me. I didn’t have much of a filter. Not in a fun, “I’m-so-blunt-it’s-just-me-being-real” way. But in the way where my brain doesn’t quite catch idiotic comments before sending them down the chute to my mouth. I imagine there’s a workforce up there, populated by tiny men in hard hats (I would like to think my brain hires regardless of age, race, or gender, but I just automatically picture scads of little straight white men, hard at work) who can’t believe when they let another one slip by.

Bob continued to stare at me, as if waiting for me to apologize for my inane question. I was holding my orientation papers and a pen, so I scribbled as I said aloud “transfer Bob’s wife to voicemail?” This seemed sufficient. Bob continued giving me the rundown of my duties as his new receptionist. He began to describe, in great detail, how I should prepare his morning oatmeal (“not too lumpy, not too watery”) and toppings (“pick out the raisins with the sterilized tweezers, then stir the rest of the trail mix in gently”) in a timely manner (“8:35 on the nose”). I began zoning out.

I thought about where I would hide if an insane, bloodthirsty shooter came in, intent on killing everyone in this office. It would probably be a disgruntled employee, Bob seems like the type that would gruntle someone into killing a bunch of people. I scanned the room, deciding that the shooter would come through the door behind me, probably shoot Bob right away, giving me precious seconds to dive behind that potted plant, where I would have the best chance of deflecting the assault. The shooter might actually end it there, after getting Bob, and forget about me completely. After all, who was I? Just some random person, not an instigator of their own private hell like Bob here. The shooter would most likely turn the gun on himself then, and while I’d be traumatized from watching someone blow their brains out from behind a potted plant, I’d still be alive.

I thought about the day as I sat at my desk, dunking and undunking my tea bag. Swiftly running down the inevitable path towards death. Death by mold. It seems so undignified. Unexciting. Not really the way I thought I’d go out. I always pictured something more epically tragic. Like a mass shooting. They’d show my picture on the news, along with the other victims, but I’d stand out because of my tragic youth. Bob was so old. Not in an ageist way, but in a decrepit, Ebenezer Scrooge way. He seemed like he was a hundred and fifty. I was twenty-four. I would be mourned, nationally mourned for weeks. The president would address the nation about the shooting, and he’d mention me by name (or she would, if we had a female president at the time of my death by psychotic gunman).

But there would be no fanfare over someone who died of tea mold. By her own undoing. “Why didn’t she just buy more tea?” people would ask when they saw my story on the “Weird and Wacky Headlines” section of the news.

Dunking and undunking the tea, I started to get a little sad. I didn’t necessarily want to die. I felt a little resigned to it, which is why I guess I couldn’t stop dunking and undunking the soppy, clumped Vanilla Caramel tea bag. I guess there was more I could have done with my life. Right? I should have done more things, but what were those things?

Travel? I would never be able to afford it. Which is why I was working this terrible nine dollars an hour job.

Start a family? I don’t think I’m suited for that. I just really don’t. I really, really never thought that that would be something I’d be good at. All I’ve learned from my family is how to screw up, and I think the world has enough screw-ups without me pushing out a few more.

Skydive? No. I won’t ever do that. No explanation necessary. Only an insane person dives into the sky.

I’ve always been a little bit insane though, I thought. Not in a slobbering, voices hearing, kill people kind of way. I just get the sense that my little men in the hard hats are different than everybody else’s. Like I got a batch who didn’t fully trained and were just thrown into the workforce. Maybe my life up to this point has just been on the job training for my brain guys.

It really didn’t matter either way. Insane or uninsane. My life was ending, and quickly. I couldn’t stop dunking and undunking the tea bag. I wondered if this would be considered suicide. I hadn’t meant to bring about my end, but here I was, dunking and undunking, fully participating in my death sentence.

It seemed as though my wrist had been created to dunk and undunk this tea bag. I hoisted it out of the depths with a slight flick towards the fluorescent lit ceiling. Then down she went, back into the murky waters. It broke the surface, the sides of the tea bag sucking into each other. Back down to the bottoms, the bag flared out again. All the while, microscopic mold particles were fanning out, spiraling in every direction, hitting the sides of the bright yellow mug, bouncing off and filling whatever void was available.

“Lila!” A firm voice, dripping wet with irritation, sliced through my meditation. I dropped the tea bag with a start. The little flap of paper at the end of the string sank into the hot, brown abyss. If I wanted to dunk anymore, I’d have to fish it out with my fingers. Or find a spoon.

“Lila!” Bob spat out my name again.

“Yes, Bob?” I feigned professionalism, although I was positive that he had just stood there for up to five minutes saying my name as I methodically dunked and undunked my tea bag like a crazy person.

“I need you to sort the blue files. I’ll check back in an hour, but I need the blue files sorted.”

“Of course, Bob. Thank you.” I’m not sure why I thanked him. Neither was he, so he stared at me for a moment. I’m no good at maintaining eye contact, so I reached for my pen and scribbled while saying out loud, “sort…blue…files…” until Bob walked away.

I didn’t know where the blue files were or what they contained, least of all how to sort them in the order that Bob would have wanted. I’d been working at this job for five months and mostly faking it. Maybe I should’ve listened more during that first meeting with Bob. It didn’t matter now, now that the bacteria was taking over, slowly killing me from the inside out. I wondered how it would feel. If I’d be able to feel my intestines rapidly eroding, stomach acid spilling onto my kidneys, splitting them open, the kidney skin peeling back like burning newspaper. I would start to feel a pain in back, in addition to the searing pain in my stomach. Would stomach acid burn right through my skin? Would I be able to navel-gaze in a literal sense? Bob would come over to my desk, seeking his preciously sorted blue files, recoiling in horror at my quickly eroding human form. I’d make a hilarious joke: “You can see right through me, Bob,” I’d wheezed, my lungs quickly disintegrating. “I don’t know where the blue files are or how the hell to sort them.”

And that would be it. I’d crumble away into a pile of bone and some skin, dissolving in a bacterial feeding frenzy. Those would be my last words, about the blue files. Would those really be my last words?

“Underwear,” I said out loud, quietly, but triumphantly. There. Last word. I’m going out like I came in. I giggled, then breathed back into solemnity. These were my last moments.

The phone rang. It startled me. Very disappointing. My last words upstaged by a phone call. The phone rang again. I picked up the receiver.

“Thank you for calling Systemex Services. This is Lila, how can you help me?”

Ugh.

The voice on the other end paused. “What?”

“How can I help you?”

“This is Sheri, I’m calling Bob back about the receptionist position.” She said this very clearly and very sweetly.

“Oh…well…I can transfer you to Bob, just one moment.” I poked the “hold” button. Bob was trying to fill my vacant position before I was even dead. It seemed a bit pushy to me.

Line 2 lit up and rang. I loathed juggling the lines. There were only three lines, but it became ten times more confusing when multiple calls came in at the same time. The thought of it caused anxiety to catch in my throat, and the reality of it was causing my incompetence to ooze out of my pores. Probably due to the bacteria.

I answered Line 2. Sheri the New Receptionist was still holding on Line 1, blinking rapidly and waiting to take my job.

“Thank you for calling Systemex Services. This is Lila, how can I help you?” I tried to sound cheery to Line 2.

“Lila, it’s Helen. Put me through to Bob.” It was Bob’s wife. She understood the game, but she didn’t like when I played it.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Helen, Bob just stepped out for a meeting, but I can put you into his voicemail.”

“No, Lila, Bob did not just go into a meeting. Put me through to his phone.” She used an expletive. I never liked to use a lot of expletives.

“Hold, please.” This is what I did when I didn’t know what to do. I just put people on hold for a little while.

This seemed like a lousy way to spend the last moments of my life. I didn’t want to sit here any longer. I looked at the mug of tea. The tea bag’s little paper tail had sunk down to the bottom. They print a little idiom on each one, and it reflected up to me through the muddy tea water. “If you think you’re stuck, trying moving!” it said.

I picked the mug up, tilted my head back, and drank the contents down, bacteria and all. It wasn’t easy to chug all that tea, and it was rather hot. I gasped the gulp in and set the mug down. Gingerly, I plucked the tea bag out and placed it unceremoniously on the desk. Moisture seeped out and I knew it would only be a matter of time before it reached the papers at the end of the desk. Bacteria everywhere.

Line 2 blinked impatiently, while Line 1 tried to outshine it. I picked Line 2 up.

“Helen?”

“Lila? Put me into Bob’s phone!” I sort of started to see why Bob hated his wife.

“Just one moment.”

I carefully pressed “Transfer” and dialed Bob’s extension. I heard him pick up his phone from his office.

“Hello?”

There was a pause. Then a lot of expletives. I smiled, just a little, and stood up. I walked over to closet and retrieved my pretty red coat, picked up my purse, and walked out the door.

The moment the sun hit my face and I felt no remorse, I knew that this was the way I was supposed to die. My steps hit the pavement with purpose and precision, as I walked away from Bob, away from the oatmeal, away from the phone lines, and into the future. The future consisting of my final few hours, anyway. I was moving with purpose, by golly, but with no destination.

It was then that I passed by the bar with the green door. It had been in one scene in a big blockbuster movie a few years ago, so tourists would go in and pretend they were George Clooney (they weren’t). Without knowing quite why, I backtracked my steps. I gripped the gold handle of the green door and pulled open.

Later that night, as they loaded my body into an ambulance, the bartender would tell the EMT that I had only had about five or six drinks (“five or six…honest!”). Because he couldn’t have known about the bottle I stole from over the bar and downed in the bathroom. He couldn’t have known about the drinks I stole off of the other table. He couldn’t have known about the cleaning fluid I drank, mistaking it for an absinthe bottle, hidden under the bathroom sink. And he couldn’t have known about the bacteria, which I still maintain was the real cause of my untimely death.

***

Eileen Tull is a writer, performer, and teacher based in Chicago. Her writing has been published online by Empty Mirror, First Literary Review (East), and Scout & Birdie, among others. Eileen’s poetry has been included in the following books: The Art of Being Human Vol. 6: Sagittarius Love Poems, The Art of Being Human Vol. 9: The Best of Poetry, The Art of Being Human Vol. 10: We Want Peace!, and Veils, Halos & Shackles: International Poetry on the Oppression and Empowerment of Women. As a storyteller and theatre artist, her work has been seen across the country in San Francisco, New York City, Cincinnati, Dallas, and all over Chicago. She currently works as a full-time drama instructor, teaching creative arts classes to people of all ages. She is looking forward to self-publishing her first poetry collection, 33 Poems About Peanut Butter, a poetic memoir about resilience and survival in the year 2020. Instagram: @Eileen.Tull