The stairs were no longer just concrete and steel; they were a mountain of my own failures. My lungs burned, and the blood from my forehead trickled into my eyes, painting the world in a blurred, crimson tint. Every step I took felt like I was stepping on the shards of my own wasted years.
"Faster, you pathetic excuse for a 'person'!" the phone shrieked from my pocket. "The elevator reached the top floor thirty seconds ago. It's waiting for you. It's waiting for the end!"
I reached the final flight. My legs were trembling, the muscles screaming for a rest I couldn't give them. I burst through the heavy fire door onto the rooftop.
The midday sun was blinding. The heat radiated off the black tar of the roof, and there, at the very edge of the abyss, stood the chair.
It looked small against the vastness of the city skyline. One of its wheels was bent, glowing with the friction of its frantic journey. It was smoking—literally wheels on fire. The chair didn't have eyes, but as it tilted toward the edge, I felt its profound exhaustion. It was tired of the weight of tired men. It was tired of the fluorescent lights and the endless reports.
"Wait!" I wheezed, stumbling toward it. "Don't do it! It's just a job! We can... we can find a better office! I'll take you home!"
"The chair turned toward me. It had no eyes, yet I felt its gaze piercing right through me.
Though it lacked a mouth, its silence spoke volumes; it was weary—utterly exhausted by a life where, despite having legs, it was never truly permitted to walk. It knew the truth: this world would never accept a chair that moved on its own. It would always be seen as a freak, a broken tool, or a ghost.
Resigned to its fate, it turned its back to me once more and faced the edge."
The chair didn't stop. It let out a metallic groan—the sound of a frame stressed to its limit. With a final, defiant spin of its scorched wheels, it launched itself into the empty air.
"No!"
My body moved before my mind could protest. I didn't think about my mother, my father's plastic-filled lungs, or the unfinished report. I only thought about the loneliness of that chair. I leaped.
For a heartbeat, the world went silent.
Have I lost my mind?
The sheer absurdity of the moment hit me.
I was risking my life for a thing that was designed to be sat on, ignored, and eventually replaced. Just like me."
Gravity seemed to forget us. I reached out, my fingers interlocking with the cold, torn fabric of the chair's backrest. For one beautiful, impossible second, we were floating—two broken office dwellers suspended against the blue sky. I saw the city below, the tiny people scurrying like ants, and I realized how small my problems were.
Then, the earth remembered us.
We didn't fall to the ground; we slammed into the wide, concrete balcony of the second floor.
CRACK.
The sound was sickening. The chair hit first, taking the brunt of the impact. It didn't just break; it disintegrated. Springs coiled like dying snakes, the plastic base shattered into a thousand black diamonds, and the fabric tore with a sound like a final breath.
I hit the concrete a split second later. The world exploded in white light, followed by a crushing darkness. I felt the air leave my body. The cold stone of the balcony pressed against my cheek.
I couldn't move my legs. I could feel the warmth of my own blood pooling under my chest, mingling with the dust of the balcony. With the last of my strength, I turned my head.
There, inches away from my face, lay the remains of the chair. It was no longer moving. The "life" I had seen in it was gone. It was just junk now. A pile of metal and foam.
"You... you fool," the phone's voice came, but it was weak now, its screen cracked and flickering. "You jumped for a chair... and lost yourself."
The lunch bell rang in the distance.
As my vision began to fade into a heavy, velvet black, I looked at the shattered wheel of the chair. I felt a strange peace. I had finally left the office.
The last thing I saw before I drifted into unconsciousness was a single green leaf from the Snake Plant I had moved earlier, dancing in the wind above me, finally touching the sunlight.