Well, here it is. Please keep in mind that I will be doing no editing while writing this; the overall quality will likely be much lower than if I had decided to do this over a span of, say, a year. Keep that in mind when you send in remarks and criticisms.
"I couldn't have asked for a better place to die." Adam had everyone's attention by then. Everyone in the nearby cubicles had either poked their heads up or around to get a better vantage point.
"Really. I was in this clearing-and it looked like it was dropped in the middle of the Colorado Rockies."
"The baseball team?" That was Joe with the snide remark. He was a friend of Adam's long before they hired on to the company, and he knew how to really get Adam rolling when in what Joe called "story-time."
"No, not the baseball team," Adam snorted, "the mountain range. You see, it was this grass covered clearing, and the grass was greener than anything I'd ever seen before. Even greener than the pictures of perfect lawns that you find on fertilizer bags. And the pines were absolutely perfect, like...like..."
"Like something out of a dream?" The lady that asked that sat three cubicles down from Adam and had been there for several years, but he still could never remember her name.
"Well, yeah. But that's what it was, right? The perfect grass, perfect trees, perfect blue sky, the perfect way the mountains peeked over the trees in the distance. It couldn't have been anything other than a dream, right?
"Anyway, the stage is set. In the clearing there's me, of course, and then there's this huge guy standing opposite me..."
"Was he bigger than Dave?" Adam heard that from somewhere in the back. Dave, from the services department, was shaped like a seven-foot-tall Hershey's Kiss and was just about as mobile.
"Bigger than Dave. Not only was he taller, he was built like Dave would've had he never learned how to sit on his ass all day." Sniggering and chuckling rippled through Adam's makeshift audience.
"And, he was dressed something like a Viking-and no, Joe, not like the football team." More chuckling. "And he had this sword that was almost as tall as he was and as thick as my leg. And me? What did I have? A stick." Adam let this sink in for a couple of beats before continuing. "Sure, this stick was taller than I was by a good foot or two, and it looked sturdy enough..."
"That's a quarterstaff, Adam." That was Harold, the resident know-it-all. What he knew was generally useful, but he was annoying enough that Adam still made it a habit to ignore him as much as possible. Of course, now he had to acknowledge him somehow.
"Quarterstaff, stick, tire iron, it really didn't matter-I had no clue how to use it. Besides, what was I going to do against the Meat Cleaver from Hell? Anyway, so the big guy screws up his face and charges me, sword behind him. So what do I do? I throw my stick up like this," throwing his hands up over his head parallel to each other, like he was placing a curtain rod, "and hope for the best."
"So?" Joe asked.
"So, it didn't work." The audience looked stricken. "Hey, it was only a dream. I'm still here. Anyway..." Joe caught Adam's attention and promptly pointed behind him. Adam turned and quickly realized he was staring over the head of Angela, his supervisor. If he could have imagined the stereotypical schoolmarm--complete with the bitingly cold and demanding demeanor, hideously-out-of-date horned-rimmed glasses and clothes that were fashionable in the Forties--and make her 25 and given her the straightest, most brittle caramel-brown hair imaginable, then that image was embodied in the woman he was now staring down in a mixture of shock and surprise. Needless to say, nobody in the office liked her, which of course made her the perfect choice to be their supervisor. Adam quickly looked down and met her stern, unapproving eyes.
"If you weren't too busy dreaming, Adam, then you may have realized that the network has been back up and running properly for a good five minutes. Five minutes of lost time on top of the half-an-hour lost to our system problems. If you still want to dream away, go right ahead, but do yourself a favor at let everyone else get back to work. Maybe they can compensate for your lack of productivity." With that she turned and walked back to her office. Adam felt withered, dried up and useless, especially when he turned back around and noticed that nobody would look at him, not even Joe.
So Adam stared at his shoes. They were nice shoes, really, being made out of brown patent leather and fitting his feet comfortably enough to not be noticed most of the time. The one thing they couldn't do was speak, or they would have been telling him that everything was going to be alright and that he could outperform the rest of the office combined with his work and that Angela was a cold-hearted bitch to everyone so he shouldn't feel singled out. But as they couldn't, Adam could only stare in their direction. Only when he began to feel silly standing there (not to mention overhearing the whispers from around the office that he knew were about him) did he sit at his terminal. He turned his computer back on and proceeded to slog through the thick stack of invoices that were sitting next to his mouse.
It only took two invoices for Adam to notice that something was wrong. Shortly after he was hired, he was able to get friendly with the gang at the IT department. They liked his stories and he always laughed at their jokes no matter how wretched they really were. So, a couple of months ago, they presented him with a little add-on program that would show a running count of the invoices he had completed for the day. As far as he knew, only the supervisors had anything like that and even then they didn't have a program keyed to a specific user. Before the system took its little nap this afternoon, the program showed a number in the seventies. Now it showed the number two. He quickly picked up the phone and dialed down to the IT department.
"Hello? IT Department." She didn't even have to finish for Adam to know he was talking to Deb. The voice was too nasally to be anyone else.
"Hey, Deb."
"Adam! Hey! What's up?"
"Not much. Hey, could you do me a favor?"
"Sure. What do ya need?"
"Just run a check to see how many invoices I've done today."
"Okay. It's running." A pause. "Hey, when are you stopping by again? We haven't seen you here in a couple weeks."
"Well," Adam checked to see if a certain ice lady was in her office and not making her rounds. "You know how Angela is about letting us roam free in the kennel."
"Short leashes. Right." Adam could hear the ding of something finishing up on Deb's computer. "There we go. Two."
"Two?"
"Yeah. You sure you're busy?"
"Damn! Oh, sorry Deb, didn't mean to, but I have like forty invoices in my 'Done' box."
"I...see. You're forgiven this time." Adam could hear Deb's exasperated sigh over some furious typing. "I was afraid of this. Looks like everyone else is in single digits, too. I'll have to send a note to everyone to call up and double-check their counts."
"Sorry about that."
"No big deal. We would've been screwed if you hadn't caught it right away. So I figure that means-only a dozen donuts tomorrow. Glazed, no filling."
"Ooh, a discount!"
"Don't get snippy or I'll double it."
"Okay, okay. I'll be by first thing tomorrow morning."
"I'm holding you to it, then."
"Thanks." Adam hung up and swore to himself. He pulled the invoices that he had finished before the system crashed (which actually were in a box neatly marked "Done") and piled them in with the ones he had left to do. Then he separated them into two piles-ones that he needed to do today, and ones he could put off to tomorrow. The "do today" pile numbered almost one hundred invoices. He looked at the clock, and had just finished reading the thirty in four-thirty when Angela poked her head out and announced in a loud voice, "We will be working overtime until all the invoices you have in front of you are finished."
Adam sighed as he settled back to work amongst the grumblings of his officemates. This was going to be a long night, and it was best to get started on it now.
<----->
The lights flickered on and there stood Adam in his doorway, drained of just about every ounce of energy in his body. He shambled over to his couch, shedding his jacket and shoes along the way, and flopped into a sitting position on his couch. He couldn't tell how long he was sitting there when heard Joe calling out "Hello?" and cautiously opening the door. Adam grunted in acknowledgement.
"You know," said Joe as he closed and locked the door behind him, no mean feat considering the large grocery bags that he had to wrestle around to get to the handle, "you might want to close and lock your door when you come in. You never know who's going to come in behind you."
"You mean you?"
"Exactly." By this time, Joe had finished locking the door and had made the seven paces to the kitchen counter, where he unceremoniously dropped the bags, reached into one of them, and pulled out a beer. "I figure this kind of day deserves at least one of these."
"You know I don't drink, Joe."
"Yep." He fished into the other bag and produced a Mountain Dew. "That's why I got you this." He opened the Dew and walked it over to Adam. Adam took it gingerly.
"Thanks. And thanks for opening it. You know I still have stains on the wall from that nasty red stuff you got for me a couple of months back?"
"Really? It wasn't nasty when you tried it."
"I got nasty when I tried to clean it."
"Oh."
They had one of those involuntary moments of silence that tend to be found among friends who don't need to say much to each other. Of course, that doesn't mean they weren't doing anything. Adam was nursing his Dew like it was the last mug a steaming hot chocolate in existence, and Joe started fidgeting in his chair looking for the remote to Adam's TV. Adam looked up from his drink long enough to flip Joe the remote, who summarily flipped the set to the nearest basketball game.
"So," said Joe, not looking over from the game, though he obviously wasn't interested in it, "how many did you end up doing?"
"One hundred fifteen."
Joe looked over, slack-jawed.
"One fifteen?" Adam nodded in acknowledgement. "Geez! I was the second one out and that was still an hour after you left. And I only had thirty! No wonder Angela rides you like a cheap pony!" Adam looked up from his drink again, with flames of fury dancing in his eyes.
"Hey now, you know I didn't mean it like that," Joe said. "I know that Angela can be a bitch sometimes-well, most of the time. Okay, all the time. Don't look at me like that! My point is that if I were in her position and had someone like you that could produce like that, I'd be doing everything I could to keep you working and making me look good."
"You would?"
"Hell yes. I'd just make sure I'd never get what she has rammed up her ass. I prefer to be regular, thanks." Both men chuckled, Joe at his own joke and Adam at how Joe could always crack him up with the stupidest stuff like that.
"You know," Adam said after he settled down. "It's days like this that convince me that I never should have taken this job."
"What do you mean?"
"I just feel like I'm going nowhere here, just spinning my wheels."
"You've only been here for two years!"
"Yeah. I know. But Angela's only been here for six months, I'm five times as productive as she was, I trained her, dammit, and now she's over me."
"Maybe she, well, you know." Joe brought his fingers up in quotation marks around "you know."
"Ew." Adam paused. "Ew! No! Who would even want to?"
"I don't know. Just bringing up suggestions, is all."
"Eh. Maybe it's just me. Maybe I just need a change of scenery or a chance to do something new. Anything new. That'll be nice..."
"After only a year. Wow." Joe shook his head.
"You never know."
Another moment of silence. Joe went back to watching the game, and Adam went back to nursing his caffeine. Neither noticed the cat-shaped shadow perched behind Adam, on the ledge of the back porch. Of course, with the number of cats in the neighborhood, stray or otherwise, they had no reason to notice.
"Joe?"
"Yeah?"
"Remind me to stop by the donut shop tomorrow morning when I pick you up. It is my turn to car-pool, right?"
"Yep, and yeah. Who do you owe?"
"Deb from IT. You'd be upset with me if you knew why."
<----->
The rest of the IT group were a little miffed that they only got a dozen donuts, giving Deb more than her fair share of flak for her discount. But Adam didn't mind that at all. Not that he had ever worked there, or had any ambition to switch over, but he missed the easy-going camaraderie he saw there. As long as the work was getting done, they really didn't have any problem with what you did in the meantime. The people there genuinely cared about and stuck up for each other. It was something that was missing from his department ever since Angela took over the supervisor's position.
Speaking of which, Adam's trip to the IT department caused him to about five minutes late and, predictably, there was a yellow sticky note posted on his monitor stating, "Please see me in my office when you show up." If there was any single pet peeve that lifted itself over the mountains of others in her eyes, it was tardiness. Even if it was for a good reason, or as Joe would occasionally remark, especially if it was for a good reason. He turned on his computer, as it would be waiting with the password prompt when he was done with his meeting, then walked over to Angela's office and knocked.
He didn't have to finish knocking-he had a habit of knocking on a door three times-before the door opened. Angela didn't even peek around the door to see who it was. She simply retreated back to her desk with a dismissive wave and a disapproving "Come in, Adam." Her office was a glorified broom closet, furnished only with her desk and chair and the computer on her desk, lit from above with the same antiseptic fluorescents as the rest the surrounding area. Out there, it was a generic cubicle farm. In here, it was Siberia. And since there was no chair for Adam to sit in, he stood, making sure not to lean on any walls or look too comfortable. Fitting.
Angela flipped on her monitor and made a couple of slashing motions with her mouse.
"It says here that you came into the building at 8:50 a.m., which is good, ten minutes early, but that you entered this area at 9:06 a.m., five minutes late." She looked up, eyes full of fury. "Where may I ask have you been?"
"IT. You know it's tradition to get them a little something when you need a little help. I was able to tip them off on the lost invoices after the system crash yesterday and they helped me by verifying it. It was a small thing, so it only cost me a dozen this time."
"Let me correct you. It was tradition. Those lazy animals can't keep our system running smoothly for more than a week at a time. They don't need any help getting any lazier. Especially when it causes one of my employees to be late. Do I make myself clear this time?" Adam knew what was coming next. During the first few days of Angela's tenure, they would have loud, nasty fights as she tried to impress her way of doing things upon him. They were elaborate affairs during which she would remind him that she had the power to push his uppity ass out on the streets, never to return to this glorious company. He would counter with the simple fact that he was the most productive invoicer this company had ever had. That would shut her up long enough for his to get through the rest of the day. Since she has never completely been able to break him to his corporate will, they've had many opportunities over the past six months to refine the entire argument and rebuttal into a simple shorthand when neither felt in the mood to argue.
Adam, for his part, cocked his left eyebrow. Angela reacted by narrowing her eyes with enough force that she hoped would generate laser beams or hellfire or whatever else Adam could imagine to incinerate him where he stood.
"Get out," Angela whispered. So Adam did.
A fair number of his co-workers had assembled close to Angela's door. They weren't so close as to listen in on the bulk of the conversation, partly because they didn't want to be seen peeking in when Adam would open the door, but mostly because they didn't feel like they needed to as they were anticipating at the least an entertaining shouting match. Needless to say there were a number of disappointed faces in today's crowd.
Harold silently mouthed what happened?
Adam mouthed back, short form.
Murmurs spread quickly through the office, attempting to figure out why they had decided to cop out this morning. So Adam wasn't at all surprised when he got to his cubicle to find Joe standing right next to it.
"Short form, huh? What, you not feeling well all of a sudden? You looked fine driving in."
"Nah. I was in too good a mood after visiting IT, so I wasn't going to let her spoil my morning."
Joe leaned in so he could talk low enough to have the right amount of a conspiratorial air to his voice. "You know, you may have spoiled the mornings of half the people in this office."
Adam smirked. "They'll just have to live with it. Now scoot before she catches you commiserating with the enemy."
It was only when he turned around to input his password that Adam noticed the cat on his desk, looking ready to pounce on his mouse. It wasn't a real cat, but the black ceramic glaze and the green glass beads for eyes made it lifelike enough to be creepy. There was a paper tag tied around the cat's neck with red ribbon. Adam turned the card around and read what was written in a carefully ornamented script:
May your fondest wish come true soon.
Adam actually caught himself scratching his head, which he quickly stopped. It was really odd, though. There didn't seem to be anything indicating who left the cat. It didn't look like something anyone in the department would leave for him, though he went through the list of culprits. Joe wouldn't leave anything that looked that expensive-at least not without making a good prank out of it; this didn't look like a prank. And he really didn't associate closely anyone else in the department, if you didn't count the arguments with Angela, and he was sure that she would rather claw her eyes out and fill the empty sockets with rubbing alcohol than make anything that could be mistaken as an act of kindness in his direction. Maybe it was someone in the IT department, sending it as a thank-you for tipping them off. It's not something one would normally do for something like that, but he knew that the gang down there was just crazy enough to try anyway.
Following that train of thought, he picked up the phone and dialed.
"Hello? IT Department." Thankfully it was Deb.
"Deb? It's Adam."
"Oh, hey! What can I do for you?"
"You wouldn't happen to know anything about anyone leaving a black cat on my desk?"
"A cat? Animals aren't allowed in-"
"Ceramic, Deb. Fake."
"Oh. I didn't but hang on and I'll check." Adam could hear Deb yelling across the room, even through her hand, which was likely cupped over the receiver so he wouldn't hear her yelling. After that, it only took a few seconds before she removed her hand and replied.
"Sorry, Adam. No one down hear is claiming responsibility. Oooh! Maybe you have a secret admirer!"
"No! Um, I mean, I hope not. I don't need that kind of distraction."
"Distraction? From what?"
"Um...well..."
"Uh-huh, I thought so. Still...is that cat cute at least?"
"I...guess." Adam looked over the cat again. "Though I'm not the one to judge what's cute."
"Huh. Ceramic cat. I'll have to remember that. I just hope they aren't too expensive."
"I don't know. I need to go though. You know how Angela gets."
"I don't envy you. Okay, I'll let you get back to your search. Catch you later!" Adam heard Deb start to giggle as she hung up the phone.
