Gunshots & Snapshots

1: Time for the time of my life.

Busywork.

Running around endlessly in circles, attempting to distract yourself with pointless, pointless tasks. Meaningless. Empty. Anything to keep your hands and mind occupied with anything but the fact that...

You're trapped.

"It feels like nothing's happened here in years," says a redheaded boy as he sweeps marble tiles, as he washes stained glass windows. "Absolutely nothing."

"Last year nothing happened," mutters a girl in reply. She's not in the same room as him — no, not even in the same city, no! Not even the same country — but she circles him perfectly, pacing around the room with a book in her hand in absolute tandem with his footsteps, in total sync despite being hours away. "And the year before nothing happened, and the year before that nothing happened."

"To add insult to injury," a woman says, a little ways off from where the boy is cleaning. She's sharpening a knife and sighing as she says this, "Well that's just it, isn't it? There are no injuries. I'm being paid for nothing, and it's awfully boring. This is a waste, you know!"

"What a waste," the girl agrees, not knowing. "What a waste..."

Wasting time and money and energy doing pointless busywork every single day. Writing and writing and writing until her wrist cracks and her fingers snap and numbers swirl and mean nothing — but if they don't mean something then what is she worth? If she doesn't do the busywork then she is the waste.

Wasting time and money and energy doing pointless busywork every single day. Cleaning and filing and sweeping and sharpening and dragging and dropping little text documents into little folders — and to what end? What benefit does this have? What are detectives without their case?

"It really is," says a man, sitting on top of a desk that the boy is so desperately trying to dust off, getting in his way. "You're all wasting me, my skill, my talent! What good am I, in a detective agency, when I have nothing to solve? I have nowhere to apply my genius, except on pictograms that lie beneath soda bottle caps."

They all sigh, all at once, around the world. All sigh and shake their head.

"I can do so much more!" She insists to him, insists that she relates. She only ever insists to people that don't hear her. "I can do so much, just give me a chance... I'm not good at math, but I'm good at other things. I want to do other things! If only... There were someone."

"Where is he?" Another man asks, stepping into the room, blond and tall and intimidating. He seems just as curious about his whereabouts as the girl. "I've been searching for him all morning!"

"I've been searching for him forever."

"Don't be like that," the woman sighs. "It's not like we have anything to do."

"How can you say that?!" He demands.

"There's always something to do," the girl mutters, angrily flipping a page. "Something pointless. I'd rather do something else instead, something fun."

"He's probably gone out to have fun," says a small boy, very small, freckles all over his face. "We should go find him!"

She frowns, "I want to go out and have fun."

"He's probably out trying to kill himself," says the man sitting on the desk still, not having budged one bit despite the redhead's imploring. "Would rather be dead than be here. Can't blame him."

She cries out, "I'd rather be dead than be here!"

"I'll have none of that!" He roars. "There's always something to do. He needs to pull his weight or there's no place for him here!"