by Niles Reddick
Sartre believed hell was other people, and he may have been right, although he hallucinated crabs followed him around Paris. He didn’t have an Inbox. My Inbox is hell—all life’s annoyances dinging in on me daily even after they’ve been blocked, even after I’ve unsubscribed (though I’d never subscribed): the good neighbor insurance company who dropped me because I had a claim, the tractor company that I bought a wedding gift from for my nephew, and even the church I visited once who believes their spam is mission work. It’s even worse than the Postal Service delivering credit card invitations with tower of Babel interest rates, expired coupons to grocery stores, and lawn care service fliers I don’t need because I live in a city apartment.
The deleted file is my favorite. I send most of my hellish inbox junk there. Each time I right click and block followed by delete, it’s a Babe Ruth homerun for me. Love sending stupidity back to the cloud—the journals who reject everything but want me to subscribe and pay; the invitations from former employers still inviting me to meetings that are, and always were, simply time sucks, big fish gobbling minnows; and salespeople sending spam even after I retired because they never update their lists.
I may not worry about my Inbox any longer. I don’t recall my password, my number of guesses have locked me out, and I can’t get anyone at Microsoft on the phone. They redirect me to an online AI assistant who refers me to a page from their manual about something altogether different. So, the light at the end of the tunnel for me is a return to my pre-tech days, the realization that I didn’t need all the technology, and more time to savor reality.
Niles Reddick is author of a novel, four short fiction collections, and two novellas. His work has appeared in over five hundred publications including The Saturday Evening Post, New Reader Magazine, Cheap Pop, Flash Fiction Magazine, Citron Review, Hong Kong Review, and Vestal Review. He is an eight-time Pushcart nominee and three-time Best Micro nominee. His website is: http://nilesreddick.com/
January House Literary Journal 
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