prompt: comeuppance, title: what goes up in misc. flash fiction

There are only two escalators in the entire state of Wyoming. Well, four, two sets, matching up-and-down pairs, just two sets in two banks in the same city, not even the capital Cheyenne, in its second city Casper instead. Whole damn state, just two sets to speak of.

I learned this freshman year at the College of Heating, Elevators, Escalators and People-Movers and my classmates took it as trivia then moved on, but they didn’t have the vision I did. I didn’t see a question on Jeopardy, I saw the opportunity to live out the American dream: a life lived working as little as possible. By Wyoming law, they required an authorized local repairman on call, there was one guy out there whose entire job was sitting in some office, waiting for the two times a year bankers’ shoelaces got caught then quarterly maintenance checks. A middle-class living doing just that and then coasting straight to the grave, the actual factual American Dream.

I researched when the lucky bastard was due to retire, graduated valedictorian with a major in Escalator and a minor in Painting because, hell, I was gonna need something to do with all that free time. You may say “but that means living in Wyoming” and years ago you may’ve had a point but Amazon ships to Casper same as anywhere, you can have everything you want now anywhere as long as you can pay and wait a few extra days and what does the only escalator repairman in Wyoming have other than money and time?

After graduation, I landed one of the few escalator jobs in South Dakota, got some experience, started making the right connections and when that son-of-a-bitch finally collected up his gold watch, there I was to swoop in.

For a while I had it all, but as we say in escalators with every rise there’s a fall and comeuppance arrived when I gave into pride. That podcast about obscure jobs called to interview me. Then an NPR gameshow had me play the mystery guest. Then YouTube did a documentary about me. I forgot the fundamental rule of well-kept secrets, if you don’t keep them secret, they aren’t kept. Couldn’t just have the easiest job on Earth, no, I had to be a minor celebrity too.

Now a thousand hipsters fly in from Chicago every day to ride the only escalators in Wyoming and the damn things break twice a week. When I’m not fixing what’s broken by trust-fund kids, I’m expected to play tour guide to children of millionaires who find the real world funny. I may as well head Wyoming’s tourism board now and it’s not like I can quit, I built my whole life to be qualified for this one job I ruined by still wanting more. No one else would ever hire me and so here I am, trapped inside my well-laid plans.

There are only two escalators in the entire state of Wyoming. And they’re my living hell.