Desiderium, Monsters the First Ch 13
My #WedPeeks post for this week is chapter thirteen of my new novella, coming soon! Desiderium is a dark fantasy/horror and is for mature readers.
*Warning: There is violence, sex, and a lot of profanity in these pages.
~ THIRTEEN ~
Crumbling Pieces
I hadn’t even turned my computer on at work when Brian showed up at my cube. I had expected it, of course, but not quite that fast. I suppressed a shudder—this was not going to go well.
“Terryn, where the hell have you been? You look like shit, brother…are you OK?” he asked, sounding concerned but clearly also pissed.
“I’m fine, Brian, I just…”
“You are not fine, man. You’re pale as a ghost. And you’ve got dark circles under your eyes. You look like you’ve lost weight, too. What are you into? Are you in some kind of trouble?”
I took a deep breath. I was feeling much better this morning but I wasn’t at 100%, not even close. His rapid-fire questions were throwing me off balance and interrupting my barely maintained calm.
“Brian,” I said, “I’m fine. I just haven’t been feeling well and haven’t been eating well. That is why I haven’t been at work. And I’m sorry I didn’t call, I just didn’t feel like I could even get out of bed.” There is nothing more convincing than a lie that consists almost entirely of the truth. Of course I wasn’t going to mention why I felt so badly. He would fill those explanations in himself. People always did. Especially people who knew you and already thought the best of you.
“You feel like you’re coming out of it OK now? You’re gonna have to hustle with Jim, you know. He’s ready to fire your ass for not showing up or calling for a week. Golden child you may have been, but right now you’re fucked, brother.”
“Yeah, I think they called my mom, too.”
“You’re damn right they did. Fuck, Terryn, we all thought you were dead and lying in a ditch somewhere. Your mom told us about you and Sophie, and then we thought maybe you’d offed yourself somewhere.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, man,” I said. “I’m glad to know you all think I’m so unstable.” Brian puckered his lips at that but said nothing. Clearly my mother had told them more than just about my break-up with Sophie. I wondered how much they now knew and how much that might affect my future employment here.
“OK,” I said. “I’m headed off to Jim’s office then. Might as well get this over with.” I laughed roughly. “Hey, if I don’t come back, will you box up my stuff and run it by my place?” I was trying to make a joke, but it sounded heavy even to my own ears. Brian said nothing. He looked at me for a moment longer, and then headed to his desk with a shake of his long-haired head.
Jim didn’t look surprised or pleased to see me when I knocked on his door.
“So, you are OK then. I’m glad of that.” He said, leaning back in his desk chair. “Your mother was awful worried when you didn’t call her back. Have you called her yet? She was ready to file a missing persons report, but I talked her into waiting one more day. Said you probably were just on a bender after you and Sophie.”
“I sent her a text this morning,” I replied. Lame, I know, but that was as much of an explanation as he was going to get for now.
“Good.” He sat for a moment looking at me. “You know how much I value your work here, Terryn. You’re the best damn developer we’ve got. But you know the timelines we work under. I can’t have someone in here who has such disregard for what we do and for the pressure his disregard puts on his coworkers.”
“I understand Jim, really, but I was—” I started, but he held up a hand.
“I don’t care, Terryn. I just don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me what’s going on with you. Not now. The time for that has passed. You’ve been on a downward spiral for quite some time now, you know that. You’re still a rock star, so I’ve gone along with it, but now you’re just out of control. What I care about is the health of this team and the quality of our product. You have lost touch with both. You’re out, Terryn. I’m sorry.”
His face was grim. Jim was a genius, and an amazing boss, too. I admired him and looked up to him. It made me sick to think I’d let him down so badly. I had known things were going to be bad, but I honestly did not believe that this was how things were going to play out. I know it makes me sound like a pompous ass—hell, maybe I am—but I sincerely believed that I was so valuable as to be irreplaceable.
“Jim…” I tried, but he cut me off again.
“Don’t, Terryn. This is hard enough, don’t make it worse for both of us by trying to save your gig. Go home, figure out whatever it is you need to figure out. Call me if you come out on the other side, and I might reconsider.”
If I come out on the other side. Not when, if. Did that mean he had no confidence in me at all anymore? Had I fallen that far? I didn’t think so, but fuck, I wasn’t sure of anything anymore. A sudden, hot rush of irrational rage overtook me so fast it made my head spin.
“Fuck you, Jim,” I spat. “I’ve given you seven years of extraordinary effort and product, which you’re so goddamned worried about. I mess up one time and miss one week of work and you fire me? Fuck you.”
He looked at me coolly and said absolutely nothing. He was angry, sure, but his eyes showed only pity, and that pissed me off even more.
“You know what? Shove your pity, Jim. I’ll make it without you, then.” I turned and walked out of his office with a stiff back and clenched fists. I didn’t make it back to my desk; a couple of the corporate security goons caught up to me at the elevator and escorted me out to the street in front of the building. I sat across the street, waiting for Brian to bring my stuff down to me. I had left my keys at my desk. Or the desk, I guess. Wasn’t mine anymore.
I fumed while I waited, and fumed even more when one of the security goons walked out the door with a boxful of seven years’ worth of my stuff. Even Brian had left me hanging. Feeling childish but not caring at all, I spat a final, “Fuck all of you,” at the guard, the building, everything, and threw my middle finger up at what had been my promising professional start in life, and now seemed to represent only my fall from grace.
I turned and walked to my car with my head high and back straight. My dignity was all I really had left at this point, so I gathered it close and funneled it into every attribute of my bearing as I drove back to my empty and lonely house.
