Do Not Push

George Carwinkle spent his days at work in a glass box, pressing buttons all day long. The voluptuous red one was for the crane, the blue one was for the stirrer. As he pushed these buttons, his spidery fingers callused with boredom, scents of cocoa and its various complements wafted through the air, flirting with his overlarge nostrils. He would snort and cough, his eyes watering from the putridness of the smell. Oh, how he hated chocolate. He wanted to destroy the cavernous vats of cocoa, take apart the machines, and leave them to rot in their sickening squalor.

He couldn’t understand how he had gotten stuck here, producing this nightmarish dessert. George was consumed by rage at his situation, but what could he really do? His father ran the company for over 30 years, and now he was “obligated to continue in the tradition”. A slow and steady knock had resounded throughout the walls of George’s cheap apartment a few weeks earlier, almost displacing the furniture, as a man’s deep tremolo vibrated further, threatening eviction and eventual death. His chocolate mogul thug of a father had his little mob, and it was an offer he really couldn’t refuse.
He had a brief mental image of himself trapped on the main chocolate floor, writhing in sensual agony as deadly scents ensnared his innocent, uncorrupted nostrils, and throwing himself into a huge, glistening vat to drown peacefully, finally escaping that horrid smell.

Oh, god.

He awoke yet another day, squeezing along the freeways in his cramped SUV, and found himself in his glass coffin yet again. He alternately pushed red and blue buttons, developing a monotonous rhythm. After pressing each a series of 1001 times (he always counted down from 2000), George begin to feel a strange lightness in his forehead. He stopped pushing for a moment and felt the lightness course throughout his body.