Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    A Figment of Competition
    A Figment of Competition
    A Figment of Competition
    Ebook39 pages35 minutes

    A Figment of Competition

    By Chris Garson

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    When Karl Milton accepted the job offer from the restaurant, he had no idea that Caldwell Van Buren worked there also. Karl hadn't seen Caldwell since grade school and to tell the truth, hadn't missed him one bit. If he'd known how Caldwell had it in for him, he'd have missed him even less. That first day in the restaurant began a bitter, albeit one-sided rivalry between the two, a rivalry spanning years and employers.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherChris Garson
    Release dateFeb 27, 2013
    ISBN9781301523245
    A Figment of Competition
    Author

    Chris Garson

    Officially, I was laid off and have a severance package to prove it, but really, it was an early retirement. Very early, I was just shy of fifty. When the time came to make the cut, I gladly volunteered. I’d had enough. Now, after three years of writing, rewriting and rewriting, I’m dipping my toe in commercial waters. I haven’t sold a word, not yet, but then again, I haven’t tried until now. Don't worry, I’m no starving artist. I provided twenty-five years of leadership as an IT executive with a Fortune 200 company. That’s a quarter century of corporate moments, some of which have already found homes in short stories. I was nationally known, in insurance technology circles, which is to say entirely unknown, led an organization commanding a nine figure budget not counting pennies, and spoke to thousands at industry events.THE CURSE OF ARVYL’S FOLLY is my first full length work seeking an audience since my fourth grade classmates were subjected to “Augusta the Dragon” forty-two years ago. After leaving Mrs. Hamilton’s classroom, I attended Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, where I devoured fantasy and science fiction classics and became an avid gamer on my way to graduating with degrees in psychology and sociology and a minor in King Arthur. Now, I live in Cleveland Heights, Ohio and my seven year old son Neil lives on the east coast. I named my cats, China and Rider, from a Grateful Dead set list, and I still like dragons. My collection is large, Neil ran out of fingers and toes just counting the winged ornaments dangling from my mantel, and very cheesy.

    Read more from Chris Garson

    Related to A Figment of Competition

    Related ebooks

    Performing Arts For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Emily Carr

      Jul 27, 2020

      Emily Carr
      4 min read

    • Article

      London Crafting

      Aug 21, 2018

      London Crafting
      9 min read

    • Article

      Howl Palace

      Sep 15, 2019

      Last week, I finally had to put Howl Palace up for sale. Years of poor financial planning had led to this decision, and I tried to take some comfort in my agent’s belief in a buyer who might show up with an all-cash offer. My agent is a highly organi

      25 min read

    • Article

      Thornhope, Indiana

      Jan 1, 2020

      Thornhope, Indiana
      17 min read

    • Article

      Sleep Nights

      Oct 5, 2021

      Sleep Nights
      18 min read

    • Article

      Restaurants

      Dec 13, 2023

      I've won an argument. At last. The only way to travel into the West End of an evening is by tube. For years, I've been losing this argument while watching angry high heels clatter down the escalator as if entering purgatory, while ranting that ‘It's

      2 min read

    • Article

      A Brief Ghostly Encounter…

      Nov 30, 2020

      A Brief Ghostly Encounter…
      7 min read

    • Article

      Tender feeling

      Jun 21, 2022

      It was in the crucible of Melbourne’s 1980s clubland that music, film, fashion and design began dancing to one syncopated beat and posturing to a different modernity. The Cold War was peaking, Reaganomics ruled, and counterculture was resetting every

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Art of Fiction No. 245

      Dec 15, 2019

      The Art of Fiction No. 245
      42 min read

    • Article

      Southern PRIDE, Southern PROMISE

      Jul 9, 2019

      Southern PRIDE, Southern PROMISE
      13 min read

    • Article

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS

      Feb 2, 2023

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS
      8 min read

    • Article

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS

      Feb 2, 2023

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS
      8 min read

    • Article

      Threshold

      Dec 11, 2023

      Threshold
      18 min read

    • Article

      Poetry

      Jun 1, 2021

      Poetry
      3 min read

    • Article

      Stonehenge

      Jul 11, 2023

      Stonehenge
      7 min read

    • Article

      Not-so-deserted Island

      Mar 30, 2023

      Not-so-deserted Island
      6 min read

    • Article

      Black Stump Hotel, Merriwagga

      Nov 14, 2018

      Black Stump Hotel, Merriwagga
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Spoils

      Jun 18, 2018

      “You’re an insufficient man,” Anna had said the day before the day she had asked for a divorce. The post The Spoils appeared first on Guernica.

      13 min read

    • Article

      The best bad things

      Sep 29, 2020

      The best bad things
      12 min read

    • Article

      Snapshots of Kansas

      Aug 2, 2023

      I haven’t owned a four-stroke single for 15 years – but I still belong to the national owners’ club, and I still attend a meeting, a Thumper Cafe, every year or so. This year’s meeting was a dinner, held at a cafe in very rural Kansas. So rural was i

      3 min read

    • Article

      Ineffectual Tribute to Len

      Mar 15, 2019

      After graduate school I hung around another year and drove a cab for Iowa City Yellow Cab. The cab was a boat, a Chevrolet Caprice wagon. I could have put a mattress in the back and lived in it. I didn’t hate the job. I’d sit in the Kroger parking lo

      24 min read

    • Article

      The Vixen & the Vigilantes

      Nov 21, 2023

      “ She was a voluptuous creature.” So said veteran San Francisco police detective Ben Bohen in 1890 when recalling Belle Cora (depicted at right), the most notorious woman of Gold Rush–era California. The beautiful and cultured Cora ran San Francisco’

      12 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for A Figment of Competition

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      A Figment of Competition - Chris Garson

      A Figment of Competition

      By Chris Garson

      Copyright 2007 Chris Garson

      Smashwords Edition

      Dedicated to lbk,

      Who gave wings to my muse,

      Inspiring my flight into the sun of my imagination.

      Karl straightened his clip-on black bow tie, the worst part of the restaurant’s absurd uniform, and walked beneath the wind torn green awning with Wilshire’s emblazoned in antiquated script across the front, not so eagerly anticipating his first day on the job. Neil Diamond’s Love on the Rocks, a favorite among the elderly matrons in baggy flower-printed sundresses who frequented the patio, blared from tinny speakers in the high corners of the two-story wall between the patio and the restaurant proper. Windows ten feet tall stretched from one end of the white painted brick wall to the other, affording a peek inside where the echo of nineteenth century elegance lingered in the dining room’s crystal chandeliers, sunken parquet dance floor and stylized molding. Across the square from the patio, an orange and white RTA train clattered westward towards downtown Cleveland.

      Karl had recently graduated from an eastern college and moved back to Cleveland. He’d taken an apartment close to Wilshire’s, location had been an important consideration because the Fiesta didn’t drive so well since the stick had broken off near the floorboard. Dick the mechanic, a Hell’s Angel with a skeleton riding a chrome-piped hog tattooed on his right shoulder had tried to fix it, but now reverse was to the right of third, not left of first, and first could be to the right or left of third, depending on whether you were coming from second or fourth. The right door didn’t fit the frame, so the car made a sucking sound whenever he drove over thirty, and the gas gauge always said full.

      He was doing the circuit, interviewing with banks, investment houses, and brokerage firms, trying to convince them that though his liberal arts degree had trained him for absolutely nothing, he had an unlimited capacity to learn. He’d written and rewritten his resume dozens of times, trying to make landscaping (commercial foliage maintenance engineer), interviewing strangers in shopping malls (market research analyst) and warehouse gopher (inventory control manager) sound impressive.

      After two months of schmoozing with blue-suited power moguls, the so-called movers and shakers in Cleveland’s tight knit community, nothing had popped and Karl had taken the job at Wilshire’s to tide him over. He’d bought two pair of black polyester cuffed trousers and five white Oxford shirts to go with the bow tie. He held his breath and walked through the open double doors onto a green-carpeted hallway lined with white lattice walls and plants that Karl had installed during his stint as a commercial foliage maintenance engineer. Fifteen feet away, to the left of the hostess stand waited Shannon McNabb, the manager who’d hired Karl, and a familiar looking man about his age.

      Shannon McNabb, Irish in name only, was a short, uptight woman who wore her

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1