Choices

Part 1

Casey walked into the already dilapidated building and took the stairs to the 4^th floor of the building, he hissed as he kicked against some scattered debris on the stairs. He hated his job and all that it represented. He walked dejectedly into the office that looked abandoned and stunk.  He wondered who in the right mind would get a business started in this abandoned building with leakages and moss growing on its walls. He didn’t have to think much farther it was the people like him who were desperate for an income and were mostly trying to make ends meet. It was obvious business was slow because the condition of the office didn’t attract many customers.

He had been hired to clean the office and fix most of its leakages and possibly make the office more presentable. That was his job fixing, mending and cleaning. His friends at the club, the only friends he had, called him fixit. He was known for the patch work he did around the neighborhood and at the end of the day he would drown himself in beer at the club sharing jokes about women and politics.  It was boring and the building was dead being a Sunday. He dropped his tools on one of the tables and took a deep breath. The building was so damaged he was confused as to where to proceed from.

He began his chores by filling the holes on the wall and scrubbing the dirt on the walls. He worked for a while peacefully humming to the tune from Bruno Mars’s ‘lazy song”. By noon he was almost half done with his chores. He locked the office and went down for a cup of coffee in a nearby café. He ordered black coffee with no milk or tea, bland and bitter like he thought his life was. As he sipped his coffee he couldn’t help but imagine what he would do if had even a substantial amount of money to himself. He was definitely not going to waste it partying or journeying around the world but rather invest in a cleaning company to help people like himself and also make success out of it. A lady sitting across him in the café winked at him, he smiled politely and looked away and he was still yet to understand women’s fascination with men in uniforms. He was too busy with work to dwindle with any lady for the time being which was just going to cost him more mental stress and at the same time monetary expenses.

He paid for his coffee and walked out of the café. He was exhausted and he was more determined now more than ever to finish his work so he could retire to his room. He walked into the office and as he cleaned the office his foot hit a plastic bag.  He yelped out in pain and angrily tossed the bag unto the pile of trash he had gathered at a corner of the office. He was done with cleaning and it was quite late in the night. All he had left to do was to dispose of the trash. As he packed the trash into a plastic bag, a plastic bag got stuck on a nail on the wall. He groaned aloud, it was the same bag that he had hit previously; he tugged angrily at the bag hence spilling its content on the floor.

Wads of dollars spilled onto his feet, he stood in shock and the weirdest thing happened. He felt like he shifted into a new dimension where he stood in well-tailored suit and leather shoes with his PA running behind him. He laughed out loud; he was headed to a business meeting, in which he had to decide on the company he was going to contract marketing and advertisement of his cleaning company. His limousine arrived to pick him up with his PA entering along with him. She showed him some documents in need of his signature. As he signed on the documents, she informed him of a press conference that was scheduled to hold immediately after his meeting. He went for the meeting and ended up contracting it to a starting company because he was mostly being compassionate to them being previously poor himself. It was time for the press conference before which he had lunch at a luxurious five star hotel with some of his colleagues at work. The press was asking questions mostly on his humanitarian work and praising his success in his cleaning company. “Sir” one of the press men asked him “one last question before the end of this conference. How did you come about your wealth?”

Casey felt everything darken around him, he found himself walking alone on a dreary night with his tools in hand. He was returning from a tedious day at work, his body drenched in sweat. He was angry, he had gone for a cleaning service and his client had only paid him a stipend compared to the service he had rendered. He walked into his regular club where he sat with his friends slowly sipping on a glass of beer. He stretched his legs on the table and the bartender insulted him and told him to remove his feet.  At the end of the night he paid for his drinks with the bartender reminding of his previous debt he was yet to pay off. He walked home to his apartment, which was mostly a small room with a tiny kitchen blaming him for destroying the money he had found at one of his cleaning jobs. As he walked up the stairs to his apartment he ran into his landlord who pulled him aside reminding him of his irresponsibility and not paying the bills.

He fell down and found himself back in the office with the sounds of birds chirping on the window bringing him back to consciousness. Reality dawned on him; he had found a sum of money that had the possibility of changing his life. Whatever he decided to do with the money was going to determine how he ended up either as a successful man or a man not respected by the society. The trance he had seen was what his life would look like should he decide to use the money or destroy it. He was stuck between doing what was right or wrong. He knew what he had to do with the money, so he picked the plastic bag of money (and?)…