Shut Up I'm Thinking

Chaotic Instincts (Part 1)

The elevator doors opened and he stepped out, his brown eyes focused down on his feet. After each step he would let his heel drag for a split seconds. His right hand holding the handle of his briefcase, constantly readjusting the pressure of his grip, his right picked at the semming of his khaki's pocket. His light blue dress shirt had not a wrinkle in sight, perfectly ironed. In midstep, the toe of his polished loafer ever so slightly skimmed the tile floor and he halted. His head jerked to the side as a tic and he pivoted to retrace his steps back into the elevator. The process repeated until he finally reached his cubicle without a hitch.

His desk was immaculate, each inch was wiped down every morning. He was unable to set his bag down on the table until he was sure it was clean. The walls of his cubicle were bare, the bulletin board was blank, never been used before, and the filing cabinet next to his desk only held extra supplies. The only things on his desk were the company computer, a cup of identical black ball-point pens, and a container of baby wipes. He popped the lid of the container, but paused from grabbing a wipe when he noticed the next one had a small eyelash on it.

Since he had gotten his job in the accounting firm and a few other workers picked up on his odd tendencies, they found pleasure in watching him fidget at the smallest arrangements on his desk. It started as just turning the Post-It notes around so that he had to pulled them towards him rather than away to grab one and shifting his keyboard just an inch closer to the monitor. It wasn't an everyday occurrence, but on the days where it would take him longer to make it to his desk. He had quickly gotten rid of the small pieces of sticky paper soon after. They would watch from around the corner as he would stand stiff, rolling just his shoulders as he worked up the courage to move everything back to normal. They could never see his thin eyebrows furrow, or how the corners of his mouth played tug-of-war with which way his lips pointed, or how his dark eyes would dart around to find a culprit.

He turned around, the baby wipe untouched, catching a dark shadow moving around the corner of the cubicles across the aisle from him before he could get a good look at it. The blonde hairs on his arms stood up and a chill ran down his tall thin body. Quickly, he turned, opening the filing cabinet and gingerly picking up a new container of wipes by the lid. He used the body of the container to knock the old one into the trash can below. His twitching hands rushed to wipe down every surface. When he would feel finished, the image of the dark figure hiding would come back into mind and he'd restart the process, scrubbing harder.

While the other workers in the office have over an hour of work down already, he hadn't even began yet. When he did, his mind became preoccupied with the words on the screen of his computer and he would get carried away into autopilot. No one spoke to him when they walked passed him, just glancing over at the man hunched over working diligently.

This was written for my creative writing/personality theory class. It's just the sketch we were told to write before the final project to develope the character beforehand. You can hopefully tell perfectly the anxiety disorder he has.