Fire Away

What does this bitch want?

I laugh to myself, kind of nervously. You know, if that is your first thought when somebody approaches you at work, it is probably time to get a new job.

It is what I think when Fatty HR Chick approaches me with "that" smile on her face. "That" smile that told me that she wants something. (Oh yes, as HR chicks do, pass it on, just keep passing your work on.)

I reach for my mouse and clicked on Seek. The mouse, the modern day equivalent of the ruby slipper. Click your mouse and say three times. "Anywhere but here. Anywhere but here. Anywhere but here."

Poof! Whoosh up into the sky. Whirling around and around and around until I land somewhere new and exciting, where that is nobody knows. Come on, thrill me...

I open one eye. Nothing. Fatty HR chick is still barrelling towards me, Doh! "That" look still on her face.

I look up and smile. Yes, bitch? "Hi. How are you?" I say. Smile. The smile isn't even forced, says the spider to the fly. I have been doing this long enough to know how to fake a sincere smile, as I mentally plot someone's death.

She shrugs and scrunches her nose, clearly she thinks she is Tabatha Stevens, only seventy years, and 100 hundred kilos, too late to pull that one off  “Can I ask a favour?” she says.

Oh, here we go. “Sure.”

“I have this small problem.”

You want me to do your work for you, but you are not sure how to get me to do it. “Fire away.”

I love that expression. I mentally picture 6 men standing behind her with shot guns, each blindfolded. They all fire at once.  I can see the bullets spinning through the air. Her head explodes like a watermelon, red pulp covers everything, splat, splat, splat, splat, splat, splat, splat, splat, as the bullets hit her in the back of the head, simultaneously. She falls to the ground like a bag of shit.

“I have a contract that I just need to…”

Just as I thought, do your own work. I stop listening. Blah, blah, blah blah is all I can hear, set to Shine On You Crazy Diamond. I really should listen, I guess. But, I am astral travelling high above our heads. There is purple and red and blue shooting through the crisp air brightly and shiny, like streamers flung of electric magical colour. It is brilliant. It is gorgeous. Everything is beautiful  I'm inside one million neon signs...

“So, what do you think?... Josh?”

Come on you target for faraway laughter... The beautiful light suddenly fades. The music stops. Gone. “Oh, um, er, I don’t know.” I stare her in the eye and dare her to question my response.

She folds like a failed bluff in poker. “Oh... um... rightio then... I’ll investigate... um... a little further then... shall, I?”

“Okay,” I say.

There is a moment where we both just gaze at each other. She is not quite sure of the answer I have given her. But, I am sending thought blockers through my death stare straight into the cavity where her brain ought to be. She is wondering if she should question me further, but she is not really sure what question she should ask. My mental mind fuck is working its magic on her, she is putty in my hands. Oh! Yuk! She is white gloop on my fingers, I shake her off, she rematerialises in front of me.

Her lip curls.

She is a deer caught in headlights, such is my mind control. I am staring at her unblinking. I am beginning to imagine ants eating out her eyeballs. She spontaneously rubs her face. She rubs again, she is not really sure why she is touching her eyes. It is as if she has hey fever, but worse.

“Okay,” she says. She shrugs and scrunches up her nose again. It still has no effect on me, that cutesy nose move, nice try Tabatha. The crow’s feet appear at the corners of her smiling eyes, momentarily. Crease, crease. He skin reminds me of brown paper. She makes big eyes. I imagine what she'd look like with myxomatosis. She opens her mouth and her tongue makes a kind of clack noise, which I am not at all sure she means to make. She backs away.

I spin around back to my screen. I can feel her presence less and less behind me. I am a star ship commander, the two screens in front of me morph into the universe. I say, "Engage." The milky way around me melts into liquid light as we hit warp speed and I am suddenly a thousand light years away from the mundane problems of the day.