cunctation
noun Archaic.
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Jim threw opened the door and walked into the conference room. Those already in attendance were too annoyed by the man’s lateness to notice he was walking differently than normal. And even if they had, they would probably not have cared. Jim was disheveled and his suit looked like it had seen better days. But again, nobody cared. There was only one thing that really mattered to them.
“You’re late.” Growled Mr. Hendrickson, the Chairman of the Board. “You were supposed to be here over an hour ago.”
Jim flopped into the nearest chair. “Yeah, well, I’m here now.” He said.
“You’d better have a damned good excuse, Mr. Willson.”
Jim’s eye twitched. “An excuse? Oh no, I’ve got several. You want to hear them? You want to know why I’m late?” His voice rose just a little bit with each word he spoke. “Fine. I’ll tell you. I’ll tell all of you why I’m late. Let’s see, where do I begin. How about waking up? My alarm clock died during the night. Just up and quit working while I was asleep. Only reason I know that was because when I finally did wake up, it was displaying a whole lot of nothing.”
“That’s it?” Mr. Hendrickson said. “That’s your excuse? You overslept because your clock didn’t wake you up?”
“Oh no no no. That’s just the start. See, I only woke up about ten minutes late. Not terrible, right? If it was just that, I would’ve been here on time and ready. There’s so much more. See, when I noticed that my clock had died, I panicked. Didn’t know when I woke up, see? So I scrambled out of bed and my feet got tangled up in the sheets. I tripped and fell. Right into a side table.”
A few members of the board winced, but nobody said anything else. Jim continued.
“Of course, I couldn’t have hit it normally, oh no. That would’ve been too easy. I hit it on the corner, and this happened.”
He rolled up his pant leg, revealing a bandage coated with blood. He lowered the garment, hiding the injury.
“I don’t know how it opened up that much, but it did. I’m lucky I have plenty of bandages. But my long trip to work didn’t end there. Once I bandaged myself up, I got cleaned up as quick as I could, and ate quickly. That, in turn, nearly made me choke on a piece of cereal. Fortunately, it was only almost. I ran out to my car, and started pulling out. Which is when this happened.”
He pulled out his phone and showed the board a picture of a wrecked car. The entire rear of the vehicle had been caved in.
“Idiot plowed right into me. I got lucky it was the back of the car. Well, obviously, I had to wait for the cops at that point. Took a bunch more pictures of the crash. Both cars, and making sure to show it was in front of my house. It’s a good thing too. See, the idiot who hit me was friends with the cops who showed up. Good friends. Apparently they get together and play cards or watch a game or something a lot. He hit me, and I end up with a ticket. Well, You can bet I spent way too long lodging a complaint against those two. We’ll see how it goes later. Once that’s done, I’m left without a car, so I have to take the bus.
“It takes me awhile to hobble to the nearest bus stop. Guess what I see when I get there? The bus. Pulling away. I can’t exactly run on a wounded leg, so I don’t have much choice but to let it go. The next bus here is in two hours, so that’s out. It’s either walking, or calling a cab. And, well, bad leg, so cab it is.
“I get what has to be the worst cab driver in history. He speeds, doesn’t slow down for turns, has no idea where he’s going, and curses enough to make a sailor blush. It should’ve taken fifteen minutes to drive here from where he picked me up. It took him half an hour. And I suspect that was on purpose to charge me more.
“And then when I get here? I get stopped by security. I’ve got my badge, but they say I ‘look suspicious’, and get searched. I have no idea why. They just did. And I swear they took way longer than I had to.
“And that, Mr. Hendrickson, is why I am late. Is there anything else you’d like to know?”
Mr. Hendrickson was silent for a few seconds longer than he probably needed.
“No, I think that’s sufficient. Let’s begin the meeting everyone, shall we?”
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Hopefully Jim here gets let out early, if only to go get himself checked out by medical professionals. That's something you should probably do right away.
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