Two feet of malicious concrete
Why, why, why do I have to break everything? Every single time a tool snaps, falls apart, or refuses to start at work, it seems like my fingerprints are all over it. Rakes, rubber mallets, chalk lines, tin snips, pruners, shovels, hand tampers, gas powered saws, the tailgate latch of a pickup truck, it doesn’t matter. It’s a joke now. Something goes wrong, and I just get blamed. I am the company scapegoat. Why does this happen, you might wonder? Bad luck? No, I don’t think so. Too many coincidences. Bad karma? No, not that either. No one could have karma this bad. Am I just focusing on a few separate incidents and blowing them way out of proportion? No way. This has happened far too frequently. Deliberate sabotage by worldwide conspiracy of sentient garden gnomes? You’re damn right!
You know the little fuckers I’m talking about. One or two feet tall, concrete or plastic, often brightly colored, a merry smile on their faces? A merry, devious, sly, knowing, watching smile! Always watching. Decorating people’s lawns or gardens, sometimes just standing there, sometimes taking part in some whimsical activity. Perhaps with a little fishing pole, perhaps holding some cute umbrella? I don’t find them at every customer’s house, but I can sense their presence, feel their beady little eyes watching my every move. Just waiting for a chance to sneak unnoticed into the job trailer or find an unattended hand tool and create a stress fracture or weaken a bolt. Engineered flawlessly to fail only when my particular grip strength or range of motion is used. I’m left with pieces in my hands and wounds on my soul, falling to my knees and screaming uselessly into the sky, while Mark and Dave and Steve just point and laugh because I’ve broken something else. If they knew what I know, they would go immediately and hopelessly insane.
I’m onto them and their nefarious plot now. I had to capture and interrogate quite a few, gaining tiny bits of information here and there before I was able to determine their intentions. Physical torture was useless. Any hammer I used to strike them snapped in my hand. Psychological methods were far more effective. Sleep deprivation, endless taped loops of the theme song for the Disney World ride It’s a Small World, handcuffed to radiators and cut off from all outside contact. They were tough. The gnomes never said anything, but I was able to draw my conclusions through subtle emotional reactions in their faces during the course of my questioning. I know what I have to do.
An abandoned coal mine in the Appalachians contains those garden gnomes I’ve been able to capture. Countless thousands, all staring at me when I climb down to deposit another of their evil brethren. Waiting in the dark, in the damp, in the cold with their endless patience. The weight of their presence can be overwhelming at times, but I am strong and I endure. They are respectable foes, and have grown more cunning as I have hunted them down. I only hope to contain them for now. Every method of destruction has failed in my hands, every tool I have tried to smash them with has broken. Every bomb I built has failed for no discernible reason. But I will persevere. It is only a matter of time before I can figure out their weakness and break their strange power over me. I will not fail.