Dominion

Cloudy Tuesday Morning

In unaware emulation of a web-bound fly, Timon Finch sits in his private office listening to the fan chopping air. To his staff, Timon is the nepotized spider. One that secured his father's corporate web and burrows within, burning energy only for the thread pulling knocks on his door. He is a tall, well-dressed man when he is at work. Coldly handsome with his dark hair well kept—combed off to each side and sundered by a clean line he had anxiously arranged that morning.

Timon slouches in his walnut leather office chair. The chair creaks as he leans back and forth, slightly rocking himself. Through the grainy, pale window adjacent to his office door, Timon can watch vague bodies traversing the office, like the insects testing plants near his web. His finger taps the organized mahogany desk as he waits to make his expected announcement. Like the many lonely kings that overflow historical texts, Timon's purpose is limited to public announcements and final signatures on half-read documents vetted by the company board.

Timon leaves his desk and feels thousands of tiny needles in his legs as blood regains the ground it has lost in his long-sit. After opening his door to the rest of the office, he is confronted by the vague bodies behind the pale window. He leans against the door frame watching the faces pass, each more grey than the last. A familiar repulsive feeling comes over him as black suits drift by: He imagines all the effort it had taken to get themselves here, working for him—spending years at desks preparing themselves to spend years at a desk. All the obstacles they have overcome, and all to support a family of their own to do the same. He falls back into his office, closing the door lightly behind him.

At his desk, he brings out a brown paper bag containing his lunch. In it, MaryAnne left a scrap of paper with a pen-drawn heart—just as always. He pulls out the heart and opens his drawer, reaching in and pushing aside a box of staples to retrieve a clear plastic container where he stores such hearts. He pops it open, and it nearly overflows with these hearts. He stuffs in the new heart anyway and presses it shut after a short wrestle with the container. He knows he would never do anything with the hearts, but he keeps them because tossing them would feel sacrilege.

He thinks of the first few she had left for him, which are tightly packed at the bottom of the container. He remembers the warmth he felt from them — he would hold them for a moment to absorb their emotion, then transfer them to the container. But more recently, it turned into a direct transfer from bag to container, like a small deposit into a bulging bank account.

...

At this time, MaryAnn was on her way home from the office where she works as an editor for a local publication, The Marmot Periodical. She had been scheduled to leave early to relieve the homeschool teacher who had been educating their children at the Finch household.

As MaryAnn leaves the city, her phone rings, vibrating on the passenger seat, and she takes it—finding the caller to be from the periodical. The roads are nearly empty, and the particular area she travels is notoriously vacant of police. So she answers the phone on speaker and holds it in her free hand.

"Hello?" MaryAnn says to the buzzing phone.

"Is that you, Mary?" the voice asks, sounding familiar.

"Sarah?"

"Hey, yeah, it's me. I think you're being called up tomorrow. They want to know if you are leaving early again or..."

MaryAnn thinks for a moment.

The road is forested in sections, with discrete gas stations and homes that can be vacant or fully operational. She is never sure.

"MaryAnn?"

"Hey, Sarah. Sorry. I'm driving—but no, no. I don't need the day off, but let them know I can't be in until nine."