The first part of this story, titled The Job, is a prompt written by 
by
I've turned up the heating because my freezing limbs are overtired and I had eaten little. I was one of the last suits to leave the event. In my briefcase, smelling of men's perfume, the deposit slips and signatures. The initiated guests had clapped and hoorayed like silly, the uninitiated had wondered, some sceptic, others curios. Like every time at these gatherings. The job was to bring them in. Appelt's charismatic speech has become a stoic repetition. How did Appelt manage to look like a fresh breeze up there on stage, every single time?
The warmth makes me all too comfortable in the leather driver's seat and I have trouble staying awake behind the wheel. The ride is monotonous.
At half past two in the night, there is hardly any business on the roads. In a deserted village, the traffic light turns red. Really?! After stopping briefly to see if any other vehicles cross the lane, I speed up. Car obeys nicely. It momentarily gives me a sense of unreality, just like a flash of guilt, which I immediately drown out with a laugh. What a lawbreaker I am!
On the highway, things get even worse. At over a hundred kilometers per hour and driving only straight ahead, I find myself closing my eyes, amazed and more than irritated with myself for continuing to drive even though it could end with me at any time. The inner struggle, however, wants to go on. ... Why don't I drive off and look for a parking space? But even for that I am just too tired, as crazy as it feels. I chuckle, a dazed man, from my own thoughts, for sure a stupid grin on my face.
Well, I'll be! I must have fallen asleep again, my vehicle already almost touching the guardrail, I quickly correct the course. I find myself strange, because I hardly take my foot off the gas. I tear my eyes wide open, just like my mouth, imagining I have frog eyes and my face is as felxible as chewing gum. That helps. For about two seconds. Oncoming vehicles blind me. I inwardly salute the nocturnal drivers who get another quarter of a second out of it with their lights.
"Stay awake," I command, muttering it to myself. "Stay awake stay awake stay awake stayawake stayawake awakesaywake ... ." This turns into a beautiful melody I can hear in my mind "Sail away, sail away, sail away ... "
I am delighted, feels good. My eyes fall shut.
by 
Maybe it was all his talk about lizards, or perhaps it was the egg yolk running down his chin, but Appelt lost all my respect at the day’s seminar. We were expected to leave the event renewed, recharged, and recommitted to Appelt’s cause, The Appelt Air. That was always the purpose of these dreary gatherings of fellow door-to-door vacuum salespersons. “Get pumped!” would end each of Appelt’s speeches, if you can call a circus act of gymnastics, pyrotechnics, and food fights a speech. This time, at least for me, it hadn’t worked. I hadn’t been able to keep my eyes open for the last 156 minutes of Appelt’s three hour performance. Just before he made his Big Announcement, I decided to quit my job, the only job I had ever had.
I used to love my job. I was the BEST at it. I could talk any housewife into buying an Appelt Air. I just had to turn it on and demonstrate the expulsion of air underneath the device, which caused it to hover slightly above the floor. This resulted in a vacuum cleaner that literally flew around the room, requiring no effort at all to push it. When I combined this magic with my chiseled chin and my dazzling, dimple-producing smile, I could sell an Appelt Air Vacuum Cleaner to any housewife.
But lately, it was getting harder and harder to sell the things. I’d developed jowls flanking my chiseled chin, my teeth had yellowed from all the coffee I drank to stay awake on the road, and I’d begun to stoop a bit. In short, I was getting older, and the ladies were no longer interested in me, or in the Appelt Air.
The Big Announcement brought my plans to quit to fruition. The Big Announcement was a new and much more exciting prize for the company’s Employee Of The Year. The prize for previous years, which I had won eight times already, was a crock pot. I have eight crock pots. What is a bachelor to do with eight crock pots? Even the ladies are not interested in those.
This year, the prize was a Lexus. And guess who won? NOT ME. I’d even dropped off the list of the top ten salesmen last year, and I was nowhere near winning. When Appelt announced that that creep Archie Archon was the winner of the car I had dreamed about for years and years, I started making serious plans to get out.
Archie had, as always at these events, drunk far too much to be driving anywhere. I offered to drive him and his new Lexus home. I got hold of his new keys. I headed to the door, and hopped into the beautiful vehicle that was waiting just outside, where all could see it and become inspired to sell sell sell. I drove smartly off, and took that baby up to a hundred MPH in sixty seconds, just because it could.
Maybe it was the memory of all the talk about lizards, or of the raw egg yolk dripping down Appelt’s chin as he spoke, but even as I drove my dream car off into the night, I still could not keep my eyes open. Just before I hit the guardrail I had this thought:
I wouldn’t have to quit now. Both I, and the Lexus, would be gone for good.
The second part of this story, in bold italics, is my entry to
Thanks for reading!
