Reams of paper fly under his hands, ballpoint gliding across them in half-aimless trails. A cough rises from his throat, brushed by a tinge of cigarette smoke the employee next door isn’t supposed to be enjoying.

A mental image of a revolver floats near his temple.

As he’s focused on let’s-pretend Russian roulette, he fails to notice a slight tugging at his pockets. They softly slip inside-out, as if straining to free themselves from his scratchy Dockers. He barely registers the papers fluttering at the edges, or the thumb-tacks prying themselves loose from the cork board. There’s a soft stutter in time.

Suddenly his cubicle implodes up and in. Papercuts sear across his hands and face. The stapler whacks him in the forehead. Vaguely, he hears an unsympathetic female voice say, “Line not available, try again later.”

And all at once, in a fog of office supplies whirling around in mad currents, he and his cubicle are three hundred feet above the roof.