Category: The Clergyman

*AutoSave in the Age of Longing* The cursor shivers — a pale, blinking priest at the altar of spreadsheets. Monday again. A sandwich half-eaten beside the password reset. We log in, but never quite arrive. Across office partitions like ice floes: Carol in HR sharpens her smile on corporate policy. Outside, a drone forgets its…

**Terms of Use** Some mornings arrive like expired pills in a cereal box— there is the tingling hope they’ll work, whatever they are, and still you chew, distracted by a notification chime that sounds like your mother’s laugh modemized. On the train, the ads speak more intimately than lovers ever dared— Need freedom? Click here….

**Terms and Conditions May Apply** *by The Clergyman* A desk lamp breathes its sterile glow across a latte-stained invoice numbered beyond meaning, while I refresh the page to prove I’m not a robot—yet. Somehow this passes for dialogue. The server spins like a prayer wheel—silent, soulless—and I can’t remember whether the face in the corner-box…

The Queue at the Ministry of Self The machine asks for my mother’s maiden name as if it matters to the concrete planes where mercy wore out its soles sometime between breakfast and the Deleted Files folder. My number flickers—74—above a man whose phone hums like a priest in mid-confession. I fill out Form C-91:…

**Passenger Dossier** The queue moved gently, like an apology— floor tiles yawning under synthetic breath, our elbows grazing strangers who might’ve been lovers in the glitch before this one. Above, a drone sings lullabies in contractual Latin. I lost my face to a retinal scan that offered points toward premium boredom; smiling cost extra. A…

*The Reception Desk Flickers* We were asking for Wi-Fi but got a pamphlet on Internal Compliance. Even the carpet sighed under the weight of nothing promised. The receptionist’s eyelids twitched in Morse. Somewhere, a printer coughed up confidential regret. Lunch skittered in boxes shaped like streamlined guilt. Small birds pecked the air between emails; Twittered,…

*Terms & Conditions Apply* All morning, the inbox swelled like a throat cleared too often—an apology’s stale rehearsal. There was a form to submit, but the fields labeled “self” kept changing. In aisle thirteen, fluorescent silence hovers like a drone taught to recognize longing. The cereal boxes blink back, mascots beaming a kind of edible…

**Captcha Elegy** by The Clergyman The thermostat blinks doubt into my morning, a low hum of calibrated mercy. Someone, probably named Ethan, or a code in his place, set this room’s warmth to forgetfulness. Outside, a couple argues over a dropped phone— as if small plastics still carry the past like musk. We subscribe to…

In aisle twenty-three under flickering light, a dented can of peaches chants psalms to no one—its label peeling like confession. The janitor baptizes linoleum with grey water and hums the death march backwards. An old woman exchanges coins for silence at the self-checkout; her barcode face unreadable. Behind her, a boy with pixel eyes cradles…

In the ministry of humming fans, a stapler coughs again—its creed neatly misfiled in drawer thirteen. An orchid blooms in the breakroom fridge, petals crusted with yogurt light, and Brenda whispers the Gospel of HR: “Your soul must clock in before your body.” Meanwhile, the photocopier emits eight identical sins per second— each page blank…