The Seventh Floor

Up, again. The third time this week. He had heard them laughing as he walked out, the trill lingering well past the fourth knock of the elevator. Nothing, he pondered, was going to change. The dredgedakrious loop, the watered-down soda, the stained toilet floor, or the mocking stare of his children as he face-times them every Thursday at two past seven as he hides under the desk of his floor superior. The going had not been easy, the path was not well-trodden, but stagger forth he did, and lucky for him, as it was just this precious quality of staggering that had endowed him with the mistress up on the seventh floor.