Short story Wednesday

Wake Up Call

“Why is that fun things are few and far between for adults?” I muttered to myself on a dark dreary morning drive into work. I cleverly have renamed my current position title to Minion Peon of the Cubicle Underworld # 4, or MPCU4 for those of you who are so acronym-ly inclined. I sloshed through the parking lot of ice, snow and everything in between trying to paste a false smile that said “Yes! I love my job, so please don’t choose me for the big lay off!”

Slipping into my seat unnoticed I sigh with relief. I’m not the kind of perky bubbly morning person that most people want to run over in the street; however I seem to attract them. Before I hear the buzz of the coffee maker sputtering to life, I calmly type in my pc’s password M-I-N-I-O-N. As the pc decides to crawl out of its slumber, I grab my favorite mug and head toward the manna that holds life together, coffee.

The work day starts normally enough until we all get the memo, there is a mandatory “staff meeting” at 2 pm this afternoon. Groans of inevitability started a reverberation through out the building. As I listened to some people taking bets on who would go to lunch and never come back or those who would fake an illness at 1:30, I mentally kicked myself for not digging that escape tunnel under my desk. Feeling a migraine from stress start to bloom, I muttered “MPCU4 requesting entrance to Hell via escape tunnel 3, please”. That was when I started to fall.

So after like 20 minutes of falling, with my voice hoarse from screaming, I landed with a loud “oomph”. It was warm, dark and weird, because the groaning reverberation switched to a high pitched squeal repeating “If you never did, you should. These things are fun and fun is good”! After 25 minutes of the maniacal repetition of the phrase, I became certain Dr. Seuss was paid by the Devil in some way.

I turned to a shuffling to behind me and the right, there was a hallway, figuring movement is better than growing roots I quickly went through the hallway to the door at the end. Turning the handle as silently as possible I opened the door, into a well lit room. Stepping inside it took a minute for my eyes to adjust, it was a throne room and I knew I was in trouble. I started to slide back to the door, when I hit a wall. The wall was hot, I didn’t want to even peek at it, and I could feel the blaze of its eyes on my face.

“So minion, report” as a sickening stench of decay swirled around my head; I shook my head in an effort to find fresh air. Apparently that wasn’t my best idea, because the stinky breather wall was agitated and threw me to the front of the throne. I was still trying to get up when he grabbed me again. That’s when he spoke, a voice of dark chocolate, coffee with sweet cream, honey and ecstasy all rolled into one. He said just one word. “Enough”. I am pretty sure that’s when I fainted.

I woke up to someone shaking me roughly, and realized I was back at my desk, in my cubicle. I heard someone behind me asking if I was ok, it was him the one who stopped my torment in the throne room below. So I did the only thing I could I quit the job and ran as fast as I could, mumbling “If you never did, you should. These things are fun and fun is good!”