Flashmaster (Short Horror and SciFi)

Office Comforts (For Michelle)

"So then my pants started sagging down in the back and you could see the crack of my ass."

"Oh my God." Ruthie thought, looking up from her monitor. "He did not just say that the crack of his ass was showing."

"And it wasn't like it was just the very tip either." Her boss went on. "Half my ass was just hanging out."

Ruthie rolled her eyes and pounded on her keyboard in an effort to drown him out. If there was one thing Steve liked more than telling inappropriate stories, it was getting Ruthie riled enough to say something about it so that he could bully and intimidate her into silence. He went on to talk about having to change clothes right out in the open while fishing, but she let it slide. That's when she smelled the smell.

Just on the other side of her putty colored wall with the poster of the kittens on it was the office microwave. Someone, at nine o'clock in the morning, at nine o'clock in the damn morning was burning popcorn. She couldn't stand it.

She thought about trying to sneak out for an early break but Steve was still blabbing on just outside her cube and the mountain of paperwork in her inbox meant people would be looking for her all day.

Taking what escape she could, she clicked on the internet icon on her desktop and pulled up the online news. She was reading aimlessly when the phone in Cindy's, the woman in the next cube's phone, started ringing. It didn't ring like a regular phone. It had an electronic "bing bing bing" kind of a sound. Ruthie hated it.

After four rings it quit, meaning the answering service had picked up which was fine with Ruthie because Cindy was on vacation in Texas and wouldn't be back for a week. Her satisfaction with the silenced phone was short lived however as it began to ring again almost at once.

Popcorn, phone, naked butt, Ruthie could hardly keep track of the article she was trying to read. Even one of the ads on the page she was viewing was blinking annoyingly. Almost against her will, she looked at it.

"You have been selected for a free demonstration of Office Comforts. Can we help you with that phone?"

Ruthie looked up startled. The phone had just started a third round of ringing. How could an online advertisement know the phone in the cube next to her was ringing? Overcome with curiosity, she clicked the button. The phone fell silent. In the middle of the third ring the phone simply stopped ringing. Ruthie's mouth hung open.

On the screen a new button appeared. It said, "See our full suite of office comforts?" She clicked it.

The next page was full of buttons and short descriptions; "Get rid of popcorn smell," "dust."

She found one called, "silence boss." She gave it a click and instantly Steve shut up and moved back to his desk. "Wow!" She mouthed to herself.

She tried a few other buttons. One marked, "stop flicker" fixed a rippling florescent bulb in the fixture over her that she'd been waiting on maintenance to get to for weeks.

Finally, her eyes drifted down to the bottom right of the screen where the words "Clean Sweep" were highlighted next to a button. With an internal shrug, Ruthie clicked the button.

There was a wooshing noise. The ceiling leapt out of sight and the walls vanished. Ruthie stood up and peered around. Against all reason, the office had completely vanished from around her cube. Above her was a powder blue sky. Below her white clouds rolled slowly by. The breeze was fresh and brisk. She sat back down in her chair stunned but happy. She felt like she was in a fabric dryer commercial. This was an environment she could get some work done in.

When she turned back to her computer however a new screen had popped up. "Add new comforts?" it asked.

Ruthie raised an eyebrow and clicked to the next page. Some of the available comforts were merely comfortable. Some made her giggle a bad girl giggle. She pushed lots of buttons. 

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