Monday, July 29, 2013

WRITING BOOT CAMP - Day 4



Day 4
Sent to the Wrong Printer

You’re at work and you print something personal (and sensitive). Unfortunately, you’ve sent it to the wrong printer and, by the time you realize it, somebody else has already scooped it up.


            ‘Dear Mr. Harris,’ Claudia’s chipped-pink nail polish fingers clicked away decisively at her keyboard. If it had a voice, and it was grateful this morning in particular that it didn’t, the keyboard would have had a shill, holier-than-thou screech that so often pained the ears of Claudia’s co-workers when it emanated from her vocal chords.
            Claudia didn’t pause to take a sip from her cooling coffee mug – something that offended the pink cup (adorned with the insignia ‘I’d Rather Be Knitting’ and a pug wearing a hand-made toque) deeply. Yet the chilled goblet swallowed its’ pride and said nothing. The remainder of Claudia’s desk was equally unused to being disregarded – papers sat unfiled, documents unedited, emails hovered unread. The telephone was the only who voiced her disapproval with a constant, shrill ringing – yet, to no avail.
            Claudia paused for a moment, fingers poised above the keyboard as tense and proud as a concert pianist prolonging the final chords of his master piece, and the objects in Claudia’s meticulous office held a collective breath, anticipating their daily routine to resume. It did not. Claudia dived once more at the keyboard, striking the keys with such force as to harm the blocky letters, had they any feeling.
            ‘Last night was amazing!’
            The cursor blinked repeatedly in shock.
            ‘I can’t tell you how long I’ve waited for your hands to caress me like that –‘
            The ergonomic chair which, for so many years, had devoutly and delicately embraced Claudia’s lady parts, groaned and creaked in jealous rage.
            From the top of Claudia’s precisely parted hair, to the harshly ironed lines of her grey slacks, to the nude stiletto pumps that ever so slightly crossed from work appropriate to sexy, Claudia was the epitome of propriety – bordering on prudish. Today, however, Claudia’s eyeliner was smudged, her lips bereft of their usual plum lipstick, her hair unkempt and she was, shocking to any who would notice, wearing the same outfit as yesterday. One of her nude pumps lay deserted at the corner of her cubicle, having been discarded and left for dead when Claudia stormed in earlier. It lay, cockeyed and dusty, in no man’s land. A hole in the toe of Claudia’s panty hose had spread, shearing through the thin fabric, meandering up an unshaven calf to linger tenuously on the curve of her knee.

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