Dave Berkoflavin was feeling bored and directionless. Being a cube dweller for over twelve years was getting to him.
He’d had his job at the Xerozatis Factory Corporation for over 12 years and really wasn’t getting anywhere. XFC had promoted hime to manager but that didn’t really change anything. The work still sucked and he wasted more time scrolling Twitter and texting friends than working as the Manager of Inbound Exports QRC Monitoring.
One, clammy, rainy day as he completed his quarterly output assessment projection report he nodded off and had a dream he was flying. He was a human drone, flying low over houses checking out women sunbathing topless in their backyards.
Then he was an eagle soaring over a mountain watching the small mammals in the forest scurrying in fear as his shadow passed over them. He felt powerful. He felt regal. He felt someone kick his chair.
His boss scowled and asked for the projections which weren’t done.
“You stay here until you are finished now that you’ve had a nice nap.”
And Dave stayed late into the night finishing the report. As he walked to his car in the rainy night the eagle dream came back to him almost as a hallucination. He was that eagle.
He stopped going into work. He carefully carved a giant eagle head out of pine and began wearing it, eating raw fish and dancing around his apartment flapping his arms. During the day, he’d run put on the mask and run around the neighborhood terrorizing squirrels.
After a couple of months somebody noticed and called the police. When they arrived, he quickly climbed up a tree as high as he could and perched there.
The police did not know what to do so they started shooting at him, blasting chips of wood off his mask. Finally they got the shot and Dave fell out of the tree onto the ground in front of them. He was wounded but not dead.
A van came and took him to the animal rescue shelter. It took many weeks for the bullet wounds to heal, but eventually the did and Dave was taken deep into the mountains and released. He was a free bird.
Unfortunately, the quarterly projections never got done and the Xerozatis Factory Corporation went bankrupt. Many people lost their jobs.
Such a shame.
