The 616 Diaries: Entry 14

September 25th, 2019, 2:36 PM

I fucked up. I knew I should have taken this down as a blog—just turn it into the diary it was always supposed to be—but here I am in the present cursing my past self.

Let me explain.

I went to work this morning thinking that everything would be alright. Over the last few days, I’ve gotten used to the ache of my loss. It’s a dull pain—constantly surrounding my weak, little heart—but it’s gotten to the point where it’s manageable. I can get through the day without tearing up; I can work on my accounts without having to worry that I’d forgotten something important. It’s weighed on me and my work got sloppy enough for Jim to notice, so I wanted to make sure to put in quality time today to fix it all. I actually got behind over the last couple days just because I knew I would be too affected to avoid making any huge mistakes.

So when I walked in, sat down in my cubicle and started my computer, I didn’t even think to look at my inbox. I was working for about forty-five minutes before Jim came around and looked shocked. I didn’t know what was going on, but he explained that he had wanted to see me, that he had left a memo for me to come to his office.

I looked down at the inbox and saw the piece of paper, but I was so confused by the entire ordeal that I didn’t even look at it and just followed Jim to his office.

Honestly, I had no idea what was going on. Even though I hadn’t done my work for the last few days, that wasn’t anything serious. I hadn’t missed any deadlines and I had plenty of time to finish everything on time. When I got into Jim’s office, I didn’t expect to see a heavy-set woman with a clipboard turn to me with scorn. It was hidden behind layers of makeup and fat, but I could already tell that she had judged me and found me unworthy.

But I couldn’t say that; I just nodded, shook her hand and then sat down in the chair next to her as Jim walked around his desk. When he sat down and leaned forward, clasping his hands together, I knew that I was in some sort of trouble. I didn’t know how much, but I guessed that it was serious. I just had this gut feeling that it would be catastrophic.

When Jim took his screen and rotated it so I could see, I understood why.

There, in all its glory, was the word file I had used to compile 616 sightings and theories. Not the main one, of course—that one is here at home—but it was definitely the one I had at work. At first, I was mortified, then furious because they weren’t supposed to go into my personal files without a reason, but then they told me what happened.

They told me that somehow I had made the file public and sent it to all the employees on the server. Apparently, the Cloud does not have a silver lining. When I was placing a few account reports onto an email going out to a customer and thought I CC’d Jim, I apparently had copied the 616 notes as well and, even worse, instead I somehow managed to reply to a listserv.

I know what happened, how it happened. I was so fucked up from Renee leaving that I didn’t realize I had accidentally clicked on the notes when I copied the files. And I was so annoyed at my job that I didn’t even think about who I was sending the files, I just assumed that Jim and the customer were the only ones CC’ed. Hell, I don’t even think I looked at the email client again before shutting down the computer and heading home to go obsess about 616 even more.

And you know what? I might have actually gotten away with it if that was everything. Jim probably would have listened to me—which is laughable considering my family and friends did not—and he would have put it down as a little oddity that I was focusing on as my life fell apart. I probably could have talked to the customer and said it was my weird little thing, like how some people like collecting stamps or bugs. Could have just said that I like collecting numbers.

But that wasn’t everything. Once HR told Jim about the file, he remembered how he had been the one who had told me about 616 and so he felt guilty. Looked up the number again, and that was how:

A: he found my posts on the 616 site and

B: he found the blog.

Even if you like the guy, you can’t really keep an employee after you see clear evidence that he’s going insane, which is how it seems to everybody but me and apparently that Ravenseer guy. Not only that, but I was enough of asshole that I publicly shamed and ridiculed my boss, who only wanted to be friendly!

I wasn’t even given a severance package. Turns out you don’t have to when there’s clear misconduct and unclear mental ailments. I have enough money to keep going for a while—I had a ton of disposable income I wasn’t using and my mortgage isn’t going to strain me too much—but that doesn’t really lessen the blow when you lose your fucking job.

And even then, I could have handled myself better, but it turns out that I’m going insane along with being right about 616. I mean, how else can I explain how I turned against Jim, how I started screaming at this HR representative who only met me because it was her turn to fire someone. How else can I explain how—for the first time in my life—I decide to lash out and break things? I threw my fists into Jim’s desk, scattered papers along the floor, even got into a fight with his fern in the corner.

In a Fight Club moment, I even threw myself into his shelves and slammed my fist into his predictable, glass-framed motivational poster that told me that “Productivity was the Key to Success.”

You should already know that they called Security on me—they were already waiting in the other room—but I didn’t put up a fight or even try to resist once they entered the room. Hell, I was docile and completely calm when they got there; I was just staring at the floor.

Because when I looked down at the glass and the blood from my hand, there was a glass six, a bloody one, and another six made out of both.

I pointed at it, tried to make my argument—how it obviously followsme—but I never had a chance. They didn’t even look at the floor before the two security guards grabbed me, forced me against the wall and subsequently caused me to drag my feet across the demonic clue and lose any claim at sanity.

So yeah, that’s why I’m here today, posting from my home right when I should be drinking my third cup of coffee and trying to care about work. That’s why I’m pissed off and hateful and bitter and wishing that I had been even a fraction smarter than what I was. Not only have I lost everyone close to me, but I lost the ability to even support myself in my madness. That’s why it doesn’t even matter anymore if people find out, if anybody sees my lunacy for what it really is.

That’s why I sent my email to Ravenseer telling him everything.

-R