Description:This short story is fully written, and is in it’s third draft. It’s a story about something that’s becoming more and more typical every day - overworked and under appreciated IT (Information Technology) staff. This story highlights one fictional situation that may not have a happy ending. It’s quite long, currently almost 5,500 words.
Rating: PG-13 - violence and language

***

None of us working at the company saw it coming, but looking back, perhaps I should have. I sat across from him in the Information Technology office, his image usually cut in half by the edge of my computer’s monitor. His slumped figure stared at his screen every day, pounding out code on his keyboard. Tatta-tatta-tatta-plunk-tatta-tatta.

Paul was his name, but most of us called him Paulie, and he didn’t mind. Paulie and I chummed around on our breaks, bumming cigarettes from each other when one of us had forgotten our own pack. Neither of us really smoked. Lighting up was just an excuse to get the hell out of the office. Rain or shine, snow or blinding heat, we escaped out the back door a few times every day.

He was one of the nicest guys I’d ever met. Kind of a hermit, but that went with the stereotype that he filled so nicely. He liked being a geek. He was proud of it. I really don’t know why we hit it off like we did. Our job descriptions were similar; we worked in the marketing department designing and maintaining our “corporate web presence”. But the chasm between our skill sets was far and wide. We were like two chefs, one who specialized in pork tenderloin and duck a l’orange, and one who flipped burgers for a truck stop diner. In the grand scheme of things, though, we were just two guys who sat in front of a phosphorus tube for forty hours a week in the same office. Forty hours that we were paid for, anyway.

Our Director of Marketing, Martin Fenwick, didn’t show up to work one cool fall day—and we never saw him again. It turns out that he had left the country, and taken plenty of travel money with him; two-hundred fifty thousand dollars and some change, to be exact. The story is still sketchy, but what I was told is that he had figured out how one of the other general managers was embezzling money. Marty, always resourceful, had managed to siphon about half of the other manager’s illegal profit away, and by the time the poor schmuck knew it, Marty was on his way to sunny Brazil. He had managed to do this in only four years at the company, his first year as a lowly Sales Manager. Perhaps accounting would have suited him better.

That was a month ago, in late August. One month later is when things started to fall apart.

The woman that replaced Marty was an angry young executive from British Colombia. No one ever figured out what she was angry about, but there was no doubt that she arrived with a score to settle. She was hell-bent on proving herself, and didn’t care who she ruined in the process.

I’ll never forget the first time I met her. It was a Monday morning. She was slated to hold a meeting with the technical and web design department that morning, shortly after the Very Important People Wearing Suits had their weekly morning powwow over croissants and gourmet coffee. It was early still, and I walked into the small kitchenette near my office, almost directly across from hers. I noticed the new gold doorplate etched with her name, Geraldine Matthews.

As I started filling the carafe of the little coffee pot that Paul and I shared, I noticed her standing near the back of the little room.

“Excuse me”, she said. “Could you come here a minute?”

I knew who she was, just from seeing her being paraded through the hallway on the nickel tour, but this was the first time I saw her face to face. She was young, thirty years old at the most. She was wearing a close-fitting red knee-length skirt with a softly shaped jacket that matched. Her white delicate blouse draped her perfect breasts, gently hugged her waist, and tucked neatly into the waistline of her skirt under a thin gold belt. Impressive.

I turned off the water and set the carafe on the counter. I stretched out my hand as I walked toward her. “Hi. I’m Josh, in IT.”

“Yeah,” she started, ignoring my hand and moving to her right. She pointed downward with one manicured finger. “Hey, I’ve made kind of a mess here. Could you get this cleaned up? Thanks.” And she left.

I put my hand back down by my side, and looked at her “mess”. It looked like she had tried to make a three-point shot at the trash can with a wet coffee filter full of old grounds. And she had missed, only managing to bounce it off the wall and the side of the can in the process.

I was speechless. I looked back over my shoulder to see if maybe it was a joke. Expecting her to be standing there, smiling, hand outstretched, ready to move into a peaceful employer-employee relationship and live happily ever after. But the doorway was empty, and the only thing left of her was the trailing scent of her perfume. Ladies and gentlemen, Geraldine Matthews has left the building.

I let out a little laugh, still incredulous. I grabbed the carafe and walked back to my office where I planned to call housekeeping and report the mess.

***

I knew Paul would hardly believe it when I told him, but when I walked into the office, he was hammering away at his keyboard, fingers flying and clicking like miniature tap dancers on speed.

“Whoa, man, slow down! The java’s not even brewing!” I said.

He just shook his head, and kept typing. He was fuming about something.

“What’s going on, Paul?”

He never looked away from his screen when he said “That bitch wants a complete re-write of the whole fucking site, and she wants it in three days before the launch.”

The “launch” was for our new software, not even through its beta testing, but appearing in a full page ad in The Wall Street Journal and USA Today on Friday. The “site” was our corporate site. We had worked on it for months, and were very pleased with the results. Paul had spent countless weeks perfecting it, and hailed it as his best work. We’d even won an award or two.

“That bitch? You mean Geraldine?”, I asked. “I just met her.”

“Fucking bitch”, he replied. I noticed for the first time that he was on the verge of tears.

I sank in my office chair, and saw a memo placed squarely in the middle of my keyboard.

Interoffice Memo

To: Technical staff, web design, artists

From: Geraldine Matthews, Director of Marketing

RE: Realigning corporate strategy–URGENT

As you all know, the newest revision of our key product is being announced Friday. I shouldn’t have to stress the importance of our image to any of you. Starting first thing Monday morning, it will be your job to completely revamp our image to the public. We are not children, and we do not manufacture toys. We are a corporation, and it is time we began to present ourselves as one.

I expect to see an entire new look across the site before midnight Friday morning. Please have your ideas storyboarded by 11:00am Monday morning for the mandatory staff meeting.

I’m looking forward to working with you.

GM

I felt sick at my stomach. That bitch.

***

We didn’t take a smoke break that morning. Nor did we take a lunch break. Our meeting was nothing more than a ridiculous lesson in “Corporate Strategy”. Paul and I both brought storyboards with our ideas, as did some of the guys in the art department, but they were all quickly dismissed. None of use were too surprised when Geraldine handed each of us a thick packet of printouts, neatly bound with a plastic see-through cover. Inside, in glorious color, were her ideas for the site. And we realized that discussion would be futile.

Paul leaned back in his chair and turned sideways. His cheeks and eyes were red, and his nostrils quivered. I had never seen him this upset.

Later, hours past the end of our normal work day, we took our first smoke break. It was already dark outside.

“She can’t do this”, Paul began. “This is totally insane!”

“I know.” I had no real reply. “She’s crazy. She’s got everyone in Marketing licking her feet, too. They act like she’s a goddamn deity!”

Paul rolled his eyes. “That site is huge. You can’t just say ‘Gee, I don’t like the color, let’s just change the whole fucking thing!’ This kind of thing takes time!”

Paul’s hands were shaking. Every trembling drag on his cigarette ended in an exasperated spew of smoke which seemed especially thick in the cold night air. “I can’t do this in four days. There’s no way.” Paul had a habit of taking any project entirely on his own shoulders, and his attitude was nearly justified. He was the backbone of the department. I couldn’t imagine doing this without him. I let the selfish statement slide. “Just who the hell does she think she is, Jeff? Who died and made her Queen Bitch of the Known Universe?”

I tried not to laugh, but it was funny. I had been in mid-drag, and now I was choking—half laughing, half-gagging on my own smoke.

“I’m serious, man!” he said, but a faint smile had crept onto his lips, too.

The heavy back door opened, and a sudden burst of light and warm air overtook us. As if summoned, Geraldine stood in the doorway and looked at both of us. Her eyes settled on Paul. “You’re Paul, right?”

Paul had the look of a man about to vomit. “Um, yeah.”

“Do you think you could come to my office for a minute?” she said. She wasn’t asking. There was no option here. Paul and I both knew it.

“Uh, yeah. Sure. Let me finish my…”

“I really need you to come now”, she interrupted, and then opened the door wider for him.

Paul glanced at me, then took a quick breath and dropped his cigarette on the concrete sidewalk. He snubbed it out with the toe of his shoe as he walked toward the door. Geraldine let him enter before her. She stared at me as he walked past, then shut the door without another word.

***

We worked night and day for four days straight, taking turns at short naps on the couch in the reception area. We lived off of any kind of food that could be delivered. Pizza, deli sandwiches, Chinese, gyros…anything would do. Depending on the time of day there was always a cup of coffee or a some kind of cola at every workstation. Paul and I never left, and never went home.

Paul had been right, there was no way we could get that amount of work done in that short time. We cheated, though, and cut out massive sections of the site that had generated the least traffic over the past six months. A little snip here, a link removed there, and we cut our workload by about thirty percent. No one ever missed the crap we took away. We planned on incorporating it back into the site later, but never got the chance.

Something had changed in Paul in the midst of this nightmare. It was like he had lost all of his positive outlook on life, and his blossoming career. In one fail swoop, Geraldine had snatched Paul’s happiness. Whatever she had told him in her office that night had sapped him of the glow he once had. He never told me what she had said. But he had looked ashamed, desperate even, after almost an hour had passed that night and her door had finally opened.

By Wednesday evening, I was coming close to losing it. Nothing seemed to work like it was supposed to. Every bug that I found and fixed pointed out another bug that had been overlooked. In a moment of sheer frustration, I flung my pencil cup across the room, and enjoyed the sound as it shattered on the marker board, pencils scattering in several directions.

Paul whirled around in his seat, first glancing at the doorway, then looking at me. “Cut that shit out, Jeff. You want to get your ass fired?”

“Maybe I do. I don’t need this shit, Paul, and I don’t know why you’re taking it yourself. You’re acting just like the ass-kissers that you’ve always ranted about.”

Paul looked ruffled, but didn’t reply immediately. It was a harsh thing for me to say, but I was pissed. And Paul, the guy I would have expected to fight this project until the bitter end, had been docile and complacent. This was not the Paul I thought I knew.

Finally he spoke. “Just do your job. Don’t make waves. Let’s just get through the week, ok?” He looked at down at his shoes, almost seeming to be ashamed of what he had said.

Paul, who perhaps had more right to be righteously angry than any of us, was telling me to play ball. I wondered, then, if this was the crux of his conversation with Geraldine. Had she threatened to fire him if we didn’t get this done? There’s no way she could. This place would be lost without Paul—she had to realize that.

But Paul wasn’t the only one that worked here. There were others of us that were considerably more expendable. Hell, I was one of them. And at once I knew. I recalled Geraldine’s cold glances, and how she always avoided me. I never asked him about it, but from then on I could see the unspoken threat confirmed. It was written across his face, and I knew.

***

Late Thursday evening the site was nearly done, and we had about an hour until midnight. In one hour on the East coast, people would start picking up their newspapers from airport newsstands. USA Today would be slid underneath thousands of hotel room doors all across the nation. Someone from the art department had volunteered to make a run to an all-night newsstand and wait for the first copies.

The tension had broken yesterday. Geraldine and the rest of the managers stopped coming around every hour to check up on us and see if we were still working. Either they finally figured out that we were on track, or they were sick of the smell of unshowered geeks. The pressure was still on, but it didn’t seem to be as crucial as that first memo had suggested. We welcomed the relief. Paul had even begun to relax a bit.

At 11:45 pm on Thursday, Paul started the process of uploading the new site to it’s permanent location. It was a sizable chunk of work. New graphics, new logos, new navigation, new look and feel altogether. The new front page contained a link to the press release that would be simultaneously emailed to our investors, and to the world at large via the affiliated press.

I approached Paul as a friend instead of a co-laborer for the first time since our smoke break on Monday night. We had been working together, but since our quarrel, something in our usual relationship had been severed, or at least postponed for a while.

He looked haggard. His eyes were bloodshot, and I could tell that every movement he made, every keystroke, was a sheer act of determination. I could see it in him because I felt the same way, like I had been run over by a truck. Actually, either of us would have welcomed a truck at that point in time, because at least we’d be able to lay down and rest for a good long while.

“Well Paulie, we did it.” I clapped my hand on his shoulder. His eyes were still transfixed on his monitor, but he nodded his head and sighed. “New site, all the bugs whacked. We kicked it’s ass.”

“Yeah,” he groaned “at midnight it’ll be all over. The final switch-aroo is already scheduled. Off with the old, and on with the new.” He smiled for the first time in days. “I have to admit that I even kind of like it. Especially with the few liberties we took.” He turned his head toward me and smiled mischievously.

Marketing doesn’t know as much about web design as they think they do. They had thrown out some pretty far-fetched ideas about the underlying technology they thought we should be using to make the new site “work”. They tossed out every buzzword they had read in every Internet magazine that was aimed at high profile executives.

They wanted animation, but their ideas for accomplishing it were just stupid. It would have added significantly to the load time of every page, inevitably causing many prospective customers to give up and go somewhere else. No one likes a slow page.

They wanted the site designed so that even customers with older web browsers and small monitors would see the site as it was designed. What they didn’t know (and didn’t care to hear explained by us), is that only 1% of our customers were using and older browser. We had the statistics to prove it. Each of us reached a silent agreement: If it looked like Marketing wanted it to look, they’d never know that we had done it our way behind the scenes anyway. We stopped arguing with them when we realized that they would never know the difference.

With two minutes remaining before the launch, Geraldine walked into our office and toward the front of the room. There were five of us chatting, our jobs finished for a little while. Silence fell on the room when she turned and faced us. She half-stood, half-sat, leaning on Paul’s desk. She opened her leather day-planner and pulled out a small sheet of paper. This was certainly for show, because she never once referenced whatever was printed on it.

“I’m happy to say that together we have met our goal”, she began. I almost felt the hair prickle on each of our necks. This roomful of tired, frazzled worker bees stared at our new Queen, knowing without a doubt that this “figurehead” had done nothing more than bark orders, “power lunch” with the other execs, and sit on her pretty ass for the last four days. This was the latest she’d been here on any night, but she hadn’t come in until two this afternoon. If we had met our goal, we didn’t include her, and everyone knew it.

“I hope you’re all aware that the company knows the sacrifices you have made to be here”, she continued. “Unfortunately, we have some bad news. When it became apparent that Developing would be unable to fulfill our perceived immediate demand for product, we were forced to pull the ad. It won’t be running for another two weeks, provided our engineers can complete their project by their new deadline.”

There was a stunned, angry tension in the room that was palatable. The greasy pizza boxes, the foam coffee cups, the residue of our home for the last four days had suddenly revealed itself for what it was. It smelled like a locker room, and with no one breathing for a short moment, the pungent air stagnated around us like a disease.

“Thankfully, this will give us time to look at what we’ve accomplished here, and take it to the next level.” I saw Paul’s grip tighten around a Happy Meal toy he kept on his desk as decoration. “The design we have reached is good, but not nearly as good as we know it can be with a little more hard work.” She looked directly at Paul. “Now, more than ever, we know that this department is capable of more than it has produced in the past.”

Oh, she had no idea what we were capable of. And each of us had a pretty good idea of what we wished we could do to her right now.

She began to walk away, toward the back of the room and out of our office for the last time. Passing Paul, she stopped and said “Be sure the old site doesn’t get replaced like we had planned. We’ll pick this up tomorrow morning. Drop by my office when you get in.” She eyed the toy that Paul was holding and smiled sweetly. Paul never looked up at her. “That’s cute. I got one for my niece. I’ll see you tomorrow. Be here a little early, so we can get started on phase two bright and early.”

She passed my desk and glanced at me. Paul followed her gaze. She was expressionless. The smile she had worn for Paul hadn’t lasted two steps past his desk. I have never felt less welcome in my life.

***

“Paul?”

The rest of the guys had left, but Paul hadn’t moved. Most of the lights were out in the building. It was fifteen minutes past our cancelled deadline.

“Paulie, I’m taking off. Let’s go. C’mon.”

He shook his head slowly, twice. He never looked up.

“Paulie, come on. You can’t stay here. Let’s go have a smoke.”

“Just go”, he said. “Get the hell out of here. Go sleep. Take a shower for God’s sake.”

“What about you?”

“I’m just going to be here a few minutes. I stopped the clock on the rollover, but there are a few more things I need to clean up.”

I couldn’t think of anything that could possibly be left to do. Paul wasn’t acting right. “I’ll stay with you. We’ll go grab a beer, or at least something to eat.”

“Just go, Jeff.” He spun slowly around in his chair. He was calmer than I had seen him in a week, a new resolve having overcome him. He should have been livid, but he acted as if nothing was wrong. “I’m just not in the mood for company right now, man. Go on without me. Get the hell out of here, all right? You should be sick of this place.”

“Ok, if you’re sure.” I felt sorry for him. This person sitting in front of me was just the broken, roasted husk of a guy that I really liked. “I’m sorry, man. This whole deal was wrong.” I took a step toward him, but he turned back around in his chair. I grabbed my canvas portfolio bag, and left the office.

***

I opened the back door to the parking lot, and cold air clamped around me like a gigantic frozen hand. For once, the weatherman had been right. I had been watching a cold front move in on radar maps from the Internet all night long, but I didn’t realize it was going to be this damn cold. I had left my coat on the coat rack in the office. I dropped my bag just inside the back door, and made my way back through the darkened hallways, back up the staircase to the second floor.

I saw Geraldine backing out of her office, holding a small file box. She had her keys in her hand. Her purse dangled from one arm, and she had a few papers clenched lightly in her teeth. She was reaching back into her office to switch off the light. She hadn’t seen me come out of the stairwell, and she never saw Paul standing behind her.

Paul’s arms dangled by his sides like limp noodles, a tired, vacant look in his eyes. I black steel gun was in his right hand. It looked out of place in hands that I usually saw holding a computer mouse, or a book, or a box of software. I opened my mouth to yell, but I didn’t know what I would say if I did. Who would I yell to? Paul? Geraldine? And what to say? Stop!, or Paul, what are you doing?, or Look out! Nothing came from my throat but a short gasp of air, and I watched Paul raise the gun and bring it down on the back of Geraldine’s head.

Geraldine lurched forward, banging her forehead on her doorjamb. The box she was holding fell, scattering files and papers on the floor in two directions. Her keys jangled, and fell by her foot. She fell like a marionette whose strings had been cut, and Paul looked down at her absently.

I ducked back into the stairwell, still in the dark, and took the cell phone from the clip on my belt. I fumbled with the buttons, but managed to dial 911, and waited for a connection.

I stole a glance around the corner to see what, if anything, was happening. Paul had picked up Geraldine’s limp body under her arms, and was dragging her into her office. My phone beeped three times, and sounded much louder than I would have liked. The display read “No Signal”. I looked up to see if anyone had heard, but they were both out of site.

Paul was yelling now, worked into a frenzy and pushed over the edge. “You stupid, stupid bitch. How long? How long did you fucking know?”

I saw the gun laying on the floor in the hallway. Paul must have dropped it when he had picked up Geraldine. I tiptoed down the hallway toward it, still concealed mostly in darkness. I reached the little kitchenette where I had first met Geraldine, across the hallway from her office door, when I saw Paul’s shadow begin to emerge. I ducked into the little room, but I could still see Paul.

“You let us work our asses off for you and your damn site, just to see what we could do?” he was saying. He bent to retrieve his gun, and placed it on the small table. “You didn’t think we had a life outside of this office? Who gave you the right to do that to us? Why?”

He went back inside, but came back out soon, dragging Geraldine in her executive leather office chair behind him. He parked her in the hallway beside a small table showcasing brochures about the company. I could see Geraldine clearly. One of her hands had begun to move slightly.

Paul disappeared for a moment, but I could still hear him talking. “I will not be your pawn!” he was yelling. He came back out of her office with a roll of strapping tape. “You just can’t do this to people!”

Geraldine started to move, but Paul had already begun to wrap tape around her neck, strapping her to the back of the chair. Before she could wake up completely, he had bound each of her hands to each arms of the chair, and her feet together to the pole which supported the seat. Her eyes opened slowly, and I saw her wince in pain.

“Good morning, dear. You’ve had a nasty blow to your head, right about here…” Paul reached behind her head and pressed on the lump that must have been huge on the back of her head. She screamed in pain, at once completely conscious.

The table beside them held a small lamp with a green glass lampshade. The light was off. Paul unplugged it from the wall outlet, and yanked the cord from the base of the lamp, baring the wires on each end.

Using the multipurpose knife he always carried, Paul exposed about two feet of bare wire from each of the two strands on the cable. Geraldine’s eyes widened when he began to wrap one strand around her neck clockwise.

“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?” She tried to sound mad and strong, but it came out in a squeak. Paul didn’t answer her, but started wrapping the other strand of cable around her neck in the opposite direction, crisscrossing over the first.

“Paul”, she said. “Stop this, please. Whatever you’re doing, stop!”

He looked at her face to face, eye to eye. And he hated her in that stare. “You took my work and called it childish. You raped it. You made me bust my ass to deliver this new site to you, and I did it. We all did it, yeah, but I put my heart in it! I hated you from the second I read your first fucking memo, but I worked my ass off for you, and for this company. And you don’t give a shit.”

“That’s it?” she replied. “All of this because of the site?”

“No,” he had finished wrapping the cable. “All of this because you are heartless. You don’t care who you hurt, and how much you keep hurting them. I’ve hated people like you all my life, but you, man, you take the prize. You knew days ago that we would be postponing the launch, and you said nothing.” He half smiled and shook his head. “If you were going to keep us on as useless slave labor, with no overtime, you could have at least offered to buy the fucking pizza.”

He moved his face closer to hers, and looked her in the eyes. “Now that you have what you want, I’m sure Jeff is history, right?” Geraldine sneered and turned her face away from him. He grabbed her face and turned it back toward his. “Right?”

As if it were the first time she had thought of it, she screamed for help. Paul wasted no time in backhanding her. It was a hard blow, which disturbed the chair and could have toppled it, if he hadn’t reached out to steady it. The slap shut her up long enough for him to tape her mouth shut. She banged her head over and over against the back of the chair, trying to kick, trying to break loose, trying to scream through her nose. I looked at my phone again. “No Signal”.

Paul grabbed a coffee mug from a desk in the office behind him. “Have a nice day!” it said. He splashed the cold, stale contents onto her face and neck, and wiped his hand on his wrinkled khakis. He took the other end of the cord in his hand, and knelt beside the chair.

I had to say something. Anything.

“Paulie, wait!” I slowly emerged from the kitchenette, hands raised.

Paul looked at me, startled. He grabbed the gun from the table, but he never pointed it at me. “Josh, stay back! Damn it, why didn’t you just leave!”

“Paulie, you don’t want this. She’s a bitch, yeah, but this…this is too much.”

“She would have fired you”, he said. “She had it out for you from the beginning. I hear she’s got a cousin, about your age. He’s very interested in learning web design.”

“I don’t care, Paul.”

He had already lowered his eyes, breaking the connection between us. “If you see her, tell mom I love her, ok?”

I didn’t have time to respond. Paul’s left hand reached for the power outlet. Geraldine’s eyes widened, and she whimpered through her nose. When the cord made contact with the outlet, Geraldine’s body stiffened and bucked ferociously in the leather chair. Her neck popped and sizzled under the wires, and sparks flew like a miniature fireworks display around her face.

It didn’t last nearly as long as I would have hypothesized. Flames poured from both the outlet and the wires around her neck. Geraldine’s blouse caught fire, and the orange blaze spread quickly across her shoulders and chest.

The lights blew, and the building fell silent. All the computers, copiers, faxes, printers—a hundred or more devices, each sucking electricity and cooling themselves with tiny fans—ceased to function in one quick moment. The lack of sound created a vacuum, and nothing remained but the sound of Geraldine, and the small fire crackling on her body. The fire extinguishers came on, showering each of us.

In the diminishing light of the fire, I saw movement. Paul, who had been staring silently at the spectacle he had created, slumped back against the wall across from Geraldine’s burning corpse. His arm raised. There was a strong metallic click, followed by an explosion. A plume of fire from the barrel of Paul’s gun illuminated his face, and burst from the back of his skull.

Paul’s body jerked once, then fell, leaving most of his head on the wall, and in the office beyond, through the hole the gunshot had created.

I sat in the darkness on the linoleum floor of the kitchenette and waited for the fire trucks and police to arrive.