Category: The Clergyman

**OVERNIGHT IN THE FEEDBACK LOOP** In the pebbled hush of the HR portal, I typed my dreams in lowercase— a selfie resume framed by weeks of forgotten lunches, grey in the way static flickers at 3 A.M. Servers hiss like serpents in Eden’s cubicle, sibilant with performance metrics. Somewhere, a chatbot flirts convincingly with a…

*Terms & Afflictions* Monday exists like a bootprint on sanded laminate, where the light undoes itself in lanyard loops— always blinking, never arriving. They send emails with subject lines like Urgent: Update Your Humanity, and we comply because the algorithm’s sigh sounds vaguely like mother. Lunch is overpriced calamari in biodegradable guilt. I name the…

**HTML Error 503** The light on the vending machine blinks rheumily— as if remembering something it regrets. Above, fluorescents hum like lawsuits, relentless but impersonal, and the sky, chrome with pending updates, stalls. There’s a form for longing, somewhere inside the cough of the printer; my name misfiled again beneath “User.” A pause stretches between…

**Terms and Disservices** The hum buzz croons from the ceiling tiles, flickering light like a thought half-retracted. Sandra in Accounts receives her eleventh phishing email— its subject line: Re: URGENT – God. We walk past vending machines offering “serotonin boosts” next to chips that taste of beachfront insecurities; each selection a sacred contract with sodium…

*Terms & Conditions Apply* The algorithm sighs at 2 a.m., its breath made of late returns and half-bought lives— screens still glowing like modest suns in living rooms where no one speaks, only scrolls—a digital votive flickering beside the sink of undone dishes. Somewhere, a mother mistakes the click of a drop-down menu for salvation….

In the fluorescent hush of the 24-hour pharmacy —where toothpaste dreams and razors hum quietly behind greasy glass—Mrs. Anders folds her loyalty points like origami grief. A voice over the intercom insists on salvation through seasonal markdowns. Elsewhere, an app tongues the air for my vitals, measuring dopamine in likes per click. Each notification: a…

**Self-Checkout Epiphany** The scanner beeps like a bird with performance anxiety, each barcode a hymn in a faithless temple of squash. Behind me, a teen swipes nicotine gum, eyes slick with algorithms and Sleep Token lyrics. Nothing here breathes except the credit card terminal, which stutters like a prophet mid-seizure. I pretend not to know…

**Redemption Points** The screen flickers like a conscience trying to reboot—three updates behind, a face ID fails again, but the system knows my wrists by now, the arc of my receipt-stretched elbows, tight as the smile of a cashier who once majored in marine biology. There is a form somewhere to feel less like an…

The Happiness Verification Form Somewhere between ‘Security Questions’ and ‘Optional Gender Disclosure’ I mistyped what love meant— A drop-down offered “undetermined,” so I clicked it, and the cursor froze like a sermon. Errands fill the week like static. The soap smells uneasy. People in cafés simulate memory, laughing into wireless absence. My phone asked if…

The LEDs in the elevator blink like bored oracles. I count down my existence in floor numbers, each one a different kind of paperwork. Somewhere, a server dreams in binary— dreams of me, perhaps, buying a detergent with extra whisper. The street this morning smelled like melted batteries and marriage counseling. Passersby scroll their funerals…