"I'm very sorry sir, but at this time we're unable to approve your application..." Dalton flinched away from the phone as a tirade of garbled verbal assault poured over him. "I understand, sir, I really do, I know this is frustrating--" He closed his eyes as the caller continued to berate him. When the man finally paused for breath, Dalton tried to cut back in, "Th-the p-policies won't let us approve it, sir, because there are too many open lines of credit. It's just that one thing, other than that you had everything else we typically look for--!"
Dalton noticed one of the vice-presidents (why did the bank need more than one?) leaning on his doorframe and glaring at him as if all of this was
his fault. For a fraction of a second the younger man wished he could pass the call off to the disdainful son of a--
No, no, just do your best, like you always do, you can still make this right! "Yes sir, I'm aware you had the down payment ready. Yes sir, I'm aware most of your cards are balanced. It's just, the bank prefers no more than--No, please, sir, we can work this out I'm sure! Could I suggest that you maybe, j-j-just switch one line? You c-could close one of them, and the bank would be more than happy to open one of our own credit accounts with you after you re-apply--Okay, sir. Y-yes, sir, I understand. Again, I apologize for all the trouble, and I'm sorry we couldn't come to an--"
The man told Dalton to do something sick to his own mother, which brought up a whole new surge of deeply repressed emotions, and hung up.
"--or that too, that's fine." He sighed as he put the phone down.
"What was all that about?" demanded the vice-president. The stocky man still had crumbs in his mustache, no doubt because he'd just gotten back from his typical 30-minutes-over lunch break. Which meant Dalton had been told to answer all the calls for him, in addition to already answering all the calls that the tellers and receptionist sent to the loan department because they couldn't be bothered to take messages so that the loan officers could get through a single state-mandated meeting without being interrupted.
"Th-that was Mr. Christophe, the gentleman who was applying for a mortgage loan towards the vacation property near the reservoir--"
"And you DENIED him!?" The man looked at Dalton with a satirical slap-jaw, as the younger man held one hand up in supplication and pointed at his computer with the other. "He had a hundred-and-thirty-thousand down payment ready to go! What were you thinking?!"
"No,
I didn't deny him! It came back from the underwriter--"
"Didn't you see that we already approved him last week?!" Dalton frowned. He knew that one of the other officers had been the one to start the whole process with Mr. Christophe, and had been told the details by that same individual precisely because they expected the man to get back in touch with them soon and didn't want to risk putting him off if the other person was out of the office.
"No sir, we
recommended him for approval, we don't get the final say-"
"Don't tell me how to do my job when you can't even do yours!" The man huffed and crossed his arms. His jowls wobbled as he shook his head back and forth. "Dalton, we
just talked about this with you last month! You can't keep denying people over every little thing--it makes the auditors think the bank is using discriminatory practices!"
"Then stop sending me everyone you can't be bothered with..." Dalton screwed his eyes shut as one hand clenched the arm of his chair in a white knuckled grip.
"What'd you say?" growled the vice president.
"Sir, I said, I've had a
lot of clients this quarter--They're being referred to me even though I'm the newest in the office, and--"
"Because you need the most practice, clearly!" The man waved a hand dismissively. "Besides, most of them are people we've dealt with before, so why is it that
you're the one they have the problem with, huh!?"
Because this office has been letting people slide left and right! Some of these accounts have been in collections for YEARS, or else we KNOW they're going to get denied and so they get pushed off on me as a scapegoat! Dalton felt sweat breaking out under his armpits and his heart thudding in his chest. He wanted to scream,
Because you keep making backhanded deals with people to keep them happy, instead of making them follow the same rules as everyone else! I haven't been here for thirty-plus years, so how am I supposed to grease palms with people I don't go to wine-tastings with every weekend?! Instead he sighed.
"I don't know, sir. All I'm doing is following the policies and the rules as written. I think the credit line thing is stupid too, but--"
"If we didn't have rules on credit, we'd never make a cent!" This time the higher up jabbed a finger at him, leaving Dalton to raise both eyebrows in shocked confusion. Was the jackass berating him for following the rules or not?! "Every dopehead off the streets would be coming in for quick cash and wouldn't pay us back a cent!" In Dalton's experience, the customers with low credit had actually been the easiest to work with, because they
wanted to show score improvement and were motivated to be able to buy their homes or vehicles. It was, typically, the "upper class" types and local business owners who always seemed to think they deserved an
exception to the rules. Dalton didn't know what else to say, so he just kept silent. He tried to maintain eye contact--or rather, he stared intensely at the vice president's forehead. The man stared back at him, and after a moment took a step back and pointed at him again.
"Don't get mad at me because
you keep screwing up!" The man turned on his heel. "That's your problem, Dalton, you don't have any
people skills! Loosen up! Be willing to negotiate! I'm gonna call Christophe back and see if I can salvage this, so you just sit that case out from now on!"
"...Yes, sir. Sorry, sir." Dalton said, as the heavy footsteps plodded down the hall. He settled back in his seat and looked at his cluttered desk. The serrated letter opener in his pen cup caught his eye. He wondered how deep it might go into someone's throat before the fragile blade broke off the dinky plastic handle.
The one blessing of the day was that the twenty minutes left until his own lunch break passed without any more phone calls, though his attempts to catch up on the backlog of record-scanning--again, something left to him by others in the office who'd neglected to keep up with their
own records--were still interrupted by people asking him about other accounts he'd worked on, or if they could borrow his stapler, or some other variant of constant inanity. In the time it took the scanner to read the pile of documents he dumped into its feeder tray, he browsed memes on his phone--but even that wasn't free of irritants anymore. Why did
everything have to be political these days?
One of those stupid short videos with an artificial voice claimed, "My dad cut this guy off in traffic, you won't believe what they did next!" as the oversized caption obscured the actual footage of an idiot egging on a road raging jerk, before one of them took a nine iron to the other's windshield. Dalton closed the tab with a grumble as he checked the time.
Why couldn't people just...follow the rules? Everyone always thought they should be the exception. People wanted to force others to behave a certain way, but when those standards were pushed back on them it was suddenly not okay? And any time there was an argument about it, people had to be terrible monsters to one another. And because
some people were terrible, other people had to
be terrible or else they'd just get plowed over and pushed around! Like Dalton always seemed to be.
His lunch break came right on time. As he tried to get out of the stupidly-designed parking lot onto a street that was always under construction of some sort, Dalton's hands tapped an impatient rhythm on the steering wheel. He'd
always followed the rules, hadn't he? At least, as much as was humanly possible. His parents had always told him that if he did the right thing, if he was kind to people, if he studied hard and always did his best, that things would work out for him in the end. Now he often found himself wondering why they would've lied to him all his life. Had the world really changed so much in the time he'd grown up? Or had it always been like this--the wicked prospering, and no good deed going unpunished--and everyone had just been trying to pretend against reality?
The young man saw the intersection light ahead of him change to yellow, and slowed down. The car behind him didn't. The last glimpse Dalton had through his rearview mirror showed him a young, pasty-faced teen with one of those stupid haircuts that looked like a head of broccoli and a glittering pin through one of his eyebrows. And he was, of course, glued to a cellphone.
Glass shattered and metal crumpled as Dalton's vehicle was rear-ended. He felt something in his neck pop painfully, and the seatbelt against his chest tried its best to crush his ribs. His tires squealed as he was forced out into the intersection--
And then the truck T-boned him from the left.
The impact didn't feel like the fist of an angry god. Dalton wasn't thrown from the vehicle. But he
was hurled, sideways, turning and rag-dolling, into blackness. An empty, soundless void. An unpleasant wind, like giant's breath, pulled at his hair and his tie, causing the collar of his blazer and the button up shirt beneath it to flop and flutter.
...Am I dead? How long did it take him to think that thought? How long had it taken him to become aware that he could still think?
Honestly? Kind of a relief. Mom, Dad...is it over? Can I finally see you again? Can I finally...stop trying so hard? He felt like something was closing in on his chest. Like a cold, skeletal hand. Was he...really okay with it ending like this? With everything being over? Never achieving anything? Never becoming anyone worthwhile? Never getting his just rewards for all the effort he'd put in? He clenched his teeth. Hot tears spilled down his cheeks.
I wish...I wish I could've known, at the beginning. I wish I'd seen the truth, so much earlier--it doesn't matter how hard you work! No one cares how smart you are! No! It's all about...about getting what you want, and damn others! Dalton continued to tumble. Had he changed directions? Where was he falling to? Did gravity even exist anymore? And...how was the emptiness getting even darker?
I didn't want to spend so much time studying! I didn't want to play nice, and be a kiss-up, to people who deserved to have their teeth kicked in! I didn't want to be bullied, or shunned! Why couldn't I have just been handed the freakin' manual to life that everyone else seemed to get!? Why wasn't I born rich, or handsome? Why was I the only one who ever had to follow the rules?! A twisted, desperate, animalistic
roar tore itself out of his guts. A sound full of rage, and yet, a scream that was so devastatingly sad
because it was angry. He started to thrash, his numb, no-longer-physical body spasming and warping and swinging at the cessation of existence. Everything that had once been bottled up came pouring out, a projectile vomit of feelings.
Everyone treated me like dirt, but if I ever stepped a toe out of line, I was the bad guy?! Society lets people who cheat, and steal, and lie, have everything they ever wanted but I was the selfish one for thinking I deserved better?! Why weren't they ever punished?! Why didn't society hold up its end of the bargain? If only...if only...if only I could've made them! How many times had he wished he could just haul off and punch someone in the face? How often had he wanted to correct someone else's willful ignorance, or make them taste their own medicine, or just plain
beat them to death for being so damn terrible!? And yet, he'd always bottled it up! Always tried to be "the bigger person," and what had it gotten him!?
Death. He was dead. So none of it mattered now, right?
If only...if only he could've had another chance...
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