Lifeless Body Sleepless Mind

The hour approached noon and Yevguiny Parvorov was enjoying his early siesta. His work ethic was lacking in so many ways that had his employment not been vouchsafed by a deceased uncle, his would be the life of a vagabond. As it was, he hardly dared to touch the lathe and hammer which were his profession’s scythe and sickle. Having been born into riches and kept afloat by the toil of other men, he had descended into morbidity of both body and soul.

The one thing which could be said for him was that he was a thinker to rival the great philosophers. Much like Ignatius J Reilly in A Confederacy of Dunces, he possessed surprising mental acuity and a cunning knack for excuse-making. His power of thought allowed him to catalog and judge all the numerous faults in the world he saw, but his equally impressive ego prevented this keenness from becoming self-reflective. His whole life had been spent gazing at the flaws of the world without a thought toward his own role in the unholy debacle.

The most recent catastrophe of humanity that he pondered had been his boss’s tie — or moreover the flakes of piroshki crust which adorned it. The sight of which had given Yevguiny some substantial displeasure. The revulsion he felt and the depression at such a flawed world threatened to overcome him and render him completely unable to work. Though considering that prior to sighting the tie his morning’s output had been one roughly-hewn wood bowl, the reduction of his working capacity could hardly constitute a tragedy.