Chapter Text
NOTICE – Further training required.
Stanley stared numbly at the paper in his hands.
No one at his office had been put on probation in years. But today, his supervisor handed him the notice with her mouth set in a stern line. The notice wasn’t confusing; oh no, the notice itself was crystal clear –he would have to take supplementary classes and pass not only the entry exam, but the midterms and finals in addition to his nine to five job if he wanted to have any hope of keeping his current position.
After a few minutes of skimming, re-skimming, then skimming again, it started to sink in. Here he was, being sent back to school with a “dunce” cap atop his head, like some bright-eyed bushy-tailed intern recruited fresh out of college. Stanley gripped the paper until his knuckles turned white. Somewhere through the ringing in his ears he heard it crinkle in protest.
Was this even legal?!
Probably not. But in this economy, he had little hope of finding a better alternative.
Being busy with work during the day meant he would have to settle for taking night classes. This frustrated Stanley; it had taken almost the past four years to establish a perfect daily routine, one that allowed his grueling workdays and home life to coexist, to finally feel a sense of comfort and accomplishment at how well he was juggling day-to-day activities.
And now he had to rip out the scaffolding and start from square one.
Stanley’s routine up to this point was simple: every Monday through Friday, he would wake up at 7:00 in the morning and arrive at work at 9:00 sharp. Then, he would pack up his things and head home no earlier than 5:00 in the evening, and arrive home just before 6:00–assuming he didn’t stop for takeout. Once home, he would either cook himself dinner or heat up leftovers in the microwave. He usually spent the rest of the evening unwinding on the couch, pretending whichever newscaster currently on television was keeping him company, when he didn’t have any chores left to take care of.
But the most egregious offense of all? Pursuing further education would take Stanley away from his beloved audiobooks.
Stanley was admittedly very attached to his audiobooks. One might even call this attachment “excessive” if they got a good look at it up close. Fortunately, Stanley lived alone with no wife or friends to judge his preferred method of escapism, and he was careful to always listen at home so as not to draw unwanted attention from nosy strangers, using headphones to avoid garnering noise complaints from the neighboring tenants as an extra precaution.
Chris had recommended this venture down the rabbit hole to Stanley about… two months ago? Three? He couldn’t really remember. What Stanley did remember was brushing him off at first, saying he saw the appeal, but wasn’t the whole point of books to read them yourself?
To be fair, that was before he actually gave them a chance.
It took a while to find the perfect book to start with, eventually settling on a modern retelling of classic novel The Brave Batsby , a cautionary tale about following the “American Dream” (which he hadn’t touched since high school). Then there was the matter of choosing a voice to read him the story. This took even longer than finding a book to begin with, much longer than Stanley would have liked. How could he have anticipated that there would be over twenty different voice-overs of the same damn novel? But Stanley was nothing if not stubborn; he had committed to this path of action and was determined to see it through. He would not rest until he had found a voice that would make revisiting this strange and disorienting tale worth his while.
First, he tried the voice of a young woman. She sounded almost like she was nodding off to sleep after only a few words and Stanley began to feel drowsy. So he tried another–the voice of an older woman who reminded him too much of his supervisor. The next was too peppy and the one after that was so quiet he had to turn up the volume to maximum, and not even pleasing to the ear once he could hear it. Well over three hours passed before he stumbled upon a voice that made him perk up, sitting a little straighter in his chair.
“On the day I turned thirteen, my father taught me an important lesson–perhaps the most important lesson I would ever learn: we are all capable of changing our lives beyond repair.”
This one sounded older. Masculine. A little rough around the edges. There was just something about it. A rich, deep baritone with a British lilt that rumbled easily through the speaker’s chest. It was a thunderstorm cresting over rolling hills, and as it wandered its way through the first paragraph, it marked the beginning of a new chapter of Stanley’s life. He felt his shoulders release tension he didn’t know he had been holding.
“Soon enough, I would learn what he meant and why my mother stared at the kitchen door every Wednesday, as though she had been waiting for…”
The voice trickled through his eardrums and into his bones, pooling in his heels with a soft buzz. Stanley pressed pause. In the silence that followed, the sensation subsided, and tension slowly crept its way back into his limbs. He pressed play.
“... an endless sea of forgotten dreams…”
Ooh, yes . Something about the way the letter ‘s’ ripped itself free from between those teeth sent a shiver down Stanley’s spine. Now this was a voice he could get used to hearing. What was the fellow’s name again? He thumbed through his phone and pulled up the credits.
H. King.
That night, he was roused by the sound of beats skipping at the end of the recording. Well… it would be more accurate to say “that morning,” given he’d startled awake at 3:00 AM and promptly fallen off the couch. Though he would never admit it to another living soul, he slept better on that night than he had for the past two decades.
The following night, he listened to the recording in full, this time wide awake. As Stanley listened, he found himself chuckling at the dry delivery that accompanied most jokes, felt his eyes sting when the protagonist watched his one true love leap into the arms of another, even noticed his mind gravitating back to the objectively unremarkable plot points and otherwise unmemorable dialogue during work hours. Stanley had never been so deeply invested in this particular story or possibly any other, and he wondered if this particular voice was the reason why. And then something else occurred to him: perhaps listening to the voice read other books would produce the same effect.
He pulled up the website where he had first found the book and scoured the page for a link that would take him to more written works voiced by this “H. King” but found nothing. Guess he’d have to make do with looking the old fashioned way. If he’d been able to find books voiced by this–more likely than not–gentleman here, then he could use that as a starting point to branch out from. First, he checked other books by the same author. When that turned up nothing, he sought out highly esteemed literary classics. After sifting through five or six pages of Boogle search results, he struck gold: right underneath a picture of the cover for A Divided Harmony sat the words “audiobook recording generously provided by H. King.”
This was yet another bit of required reading, but from his middle school days. Revisiting the tale of two boys–were they meant to be childhood friends? Stanley couldn’t tell–who ran away from home to join the military, knowing their country was on the precipice of war. He had never been particularly fond of Peter, the main character, but hearing those shortsighted plans and that incessant, childish internal monologue brought to life by that glorious voice… somehow transformed the boy soldier into something almost endearing. He was so shocked at the pain in the narrator’s voice during Charlie’s death scene that a genuine tear rolled down his cheek, and he had to put the book down for a good cry.
After a few hours he felt better, but there was an emptiness inside of him. It churned impatiently whenever his thoughts strayed too far from reality and back to the story, and he knew that the only way to fill the gaping hollow in his chest was to finish it. Every last bittersweet word that dribbled down into his ear became a balm for his soul, and when he finally got to the last page, all that was left of his pain was a poignant sense of vulnerability at being moved to tears by little more than words on a page.
And it was then that Stanley realized he had never felt more like himself. When was the last time he had laughed–really, truly, fully laughed? When was the last time he had let himself cry? He couldn’t remember. Why couldn’t he remember?
Was Stanley’s life really so bland…? What a terribly bleak thought. Maybe there was more to it. Maybe, if he kept chasing after that voice, he might just stumble upon the solution to this conundrum.
Now that he had gotten a taste of what the voice could promise him, he craved more. Like a man possessed, Stanley devoured book after book. Pretty Okay Expectations certainly lived up to its title, but to have it read to him by a familiar voice gave him a strange sense of companionship. Not quite parasocial in nature, at least he hoped not–closer to regularly eavesdropping on an author’s live reading at a bookstore or library out of curiosity and a simple enjoyment derived from keeping a routine. It scratched an itch in Stanley’s brain, one he hadn’t realized was there until now.
The more stories he listened to, the more they began to blend together. If you asked him, Stanley wouldn’t be able to tell you where Pretty Okay Expectations ended and Noby Wick started, and he barely remembered anything worth noting from Buck Unending , although that might be a testament to how unmemorable its plot was. The previous evening, he had finished the final chapter of Folly and Foolhardiness , a tale that didn’t touch his heart quite as deeply as A Divided Harmony had, but one he enjoyed all the same. Having observed so many of H. King’s different inflections, he couldn’t help but smile at the poorly disguised excitement in the narrator’s tone whenever he got to speak the love interest’s dialogue. He wondered if that had been one of their favorite childhood books. Maybe they had always dreamed of playing the part of a tall, dark and mysterious man who hid his sensitive side from all but a lucky few. That, or they were in their element speaking dialogue with a British accent.
Stanley sighed. When had he become so attached to the voice of someone he had never met? He hadn’t even enrolled yet and he was already beginning to miss those nights he frittered away folding laundry and washing the dishes to the soothing sound of that wonderful voice. He couldn’t even let the voice wash away the tension and frustration in his body later this evening because he hadn’t picked out which audiobook to read next. Even with his job on the line, all he could think about was the one thing that brightened his days.
What was he going to do with himself?
. . .
“Hey, it’s not so bad,” Connie chirped.
Stanley shot her a deadpan look. “I’m being sent back to school so that I can keep a job I’ve worked–with practically no issues, mind you–for the past ten years. Remind me again why I should be optimistic about this.”
His chipper coworker pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Well… if they didn’t want you anymore, they could’ve just fired you.”
That was a good point.
“Right. So what, you think this is fair?”
Connie shrugged. “Nah. But at least now they can’t make you take on any at-home assignments. ‘No registered students may work overtime.’ It’s in the company policy.”
Stanley wanted to say something about how this particular policy came with a footnote that allowed his boss to cut his hours and dock his pay, but he decided against it. Connie was only trying to cheer him up. Besides, she was one of the youngest directors in their marketing department and had a promising future ahead of her; she would probably never be put in a similar situation.
“Fine, you win. Maybe it won’t be so bad. But I’m not counting on it,” he snipped. “Tell Chris I said hi.”
She flushed bright pink at the mention of her fiancé, mumbling something under her breath that sounded vaguely like “yeah, if he can hear me over his ego.”
Stanley grinned. “Trouble in paradise?”
Connie stuck out her tongue, inadvertently smearing her lipstick. “Real funny. I’m gonna head back before Jane notices I breaked for lunch early. Enjoy your peace and quiet, old man.”
Stanley rolled his eyes good-naturedly as he waved her out the door.
While he didn’t have any close friends at work, he managed to keep a good rapport with coworkers in the departments adjacent to his own, and Connie was the one who, about a year ago, had approached him first. With no one else around to let her in the building after her keycard stopped working, let alone anyone else to listen to her rant about how she’d spent six hours driving upstate for a job interview only to realize at the last minute that said interview was scheduled for tomorrow, Stanley found himself in the surprising but not unpleasant position of making an acquaintance by proxy. It became a weekly occurrence: Connie would vent about her problems, which on any given day might range from student loans to a malfunction of the lobby vending machine, and Stanley would sit nearby, listening. Nodding along or shaking his head when it suited him. He supposed he got along well with people like that–people who liked to talk and needed to feel heard. People who could fill the silence.
Maybe someone like him was suited for the life of a student after all.