by Alison Wassell
When I arrive at work to find a sloth snoozing at my desk, I can’t help but take it personally. Monday is the only day I go into the office. The rest of the time I work from home, and I know by the way silence settles on the room whenever I walk in that my co-workers resent what they perceive as my life of leisure, picturing me, Tuesday to Friday, in my pyjamas and fluffy slippers, feet up in front of Netflix, while they toil away for the same salary. The reality is nothing like this, but I lack both the mental and physical energy to tell them so.
The sloth is sporting a pink bow and a gift tag. “Saw this and thought of you,” it reads, in a childlike scrawl that could belong to any of them. They titter in unison, but no-one claims responsibility. I remove the bow. The sloth shoots me a grateful glance.
My new companion slumps silently beside me as I work, snoring gently and, more than once slides to the floor in his sleep. Each time it happens I haul him back into a sitting position. His weight is more than I can safely bear, given the state of my health, but not one of my colleagues moves to assist me.
“How do you stand this?” the sloth mutters, in a rare moment of wakefulness. He fixes them all with a death stare which they either don’t notice or choose to ignore.
At 5pm my co-workers shut down their computers, put on their coats and charge through the door like a herd of buffalo.
“Have a fun week!” they call, as they leave. I stay for another hour, completing tasks and summoning strength for the journey home, my frayed nerves soothed by the hum of the slumbering sloth. When I finally turn off the office light he takes it for granted that he is coming with me.
The walk is short, but torturous. We make an ungainly pair, my every step causing me to wince, his long arms and shorter, weaker hind legs unsuited to travelling on the ground. The fact that he seems almost blind doesn’t aid our progress, particularly when crossing roads, but somehow we make it home.
He declines dinner, claiming he lives on a restricted diet, and that a single leaf will keep him going all day.
“Me too,” I tell him. “Although not the bit about the leaf.” I show him to the only tree in my garden.
“The world looks better, upside down,” he calls, as I leave him happily hanging there.
Worn out by the day’s work, I sleep soundly between the usual spasms of pain. In the morning I find the sloth exactly where I left him and, on a whim, decide to join him. Every muscle protests, but once I am in position it feels surprisingly right.
Between snoozes, the sloth lectures me on self-esteem.
“Celebrate yourself, even when no-one else seems to value you,” he says. Then he tells me that, without sloths, there would be no avocados, that his ancestor, the giant ground sloth, was blessed with a digestive system large enough to process the seeds whole. Having feasted on the fruit he crapped out their seeds hither and yon.
“And what would your colleagues do, without their smashed avo on sourdough?” he asks.
The following Monday I tear myself away from the tree and leave him sleeping, stopping off at the supermarket on my way to work. In the office, I silently place a green, leathery-skinned fruit on every desk.
“No need to thank me,” I say, with a smile.
Alison Wassell is a writer of short and very short fiction from Merseyside UK. Her words have been published by Fictive Dream, FlashFlood, Bath Flash Fiction, Does It Have Pockets, Gooseberry Pie, Frazzled Lit, The Disappointed Housewife and elsewhere. She was Highly Commended in the 2024 Bridport Prize (Flash Fiction).
