The prompt will appear in bold in the text.
“As my assistant, I’ll expect to be able to delegate a variety of tasks to you.”
I nodded, keeping up with Susan’s brisk pace. “Of course, ma’am. Anything you need.”
She arched an eyebrow at me. “First off, don’t ma’am me. I hate that.”
“Yes, m–sorry.”
“Second…” She froze for the briefest of moments then turned sharply to the right, opening a door and tugging me in behind her before closing it again.
“Wha–”
“Shh,” she hissed.
“Susan?” a man called from the hallway. “Are you in there?” The door handle rattled and began to turn.
“Fuck my life,” she muttered mostly under her breath. At least, I thought that’s what she said.
The door pushed inward, and a man stuck his head into the room. “Oh, there you are. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
Susan turned toward a shelf full of dusty looking folders. “You’ll have to make an appointment just like everyone else, Chad.”
He entered the room, completely blocking the doorway. “This will just take a minute.”
“Make an appointment,” she said again without looking at him.
“It’s happening again. Every time the janitorial crew cleans my desk gets farther away from the break room. This time, it’s three eighths of an inch.”
“You measured?” I blurted.
He glared at me before looking back at Susan. “And my medium sized binder clips have all been replaced with small.”
She didn’t say anything, but her disbelief was clear on her face.
“And,” he continued, “my black ink pens have all been replaced with blue. I hate blue ink.”
“I know you do. We’ve been through this before. But as I’ve said, I can’t think of a single reason the cleaning crew would target you.
“I want motion sensor cameras set up.”
“Not in the budget, Chad.” She looked over her glasses at him. “And isn’t it possible that someone found a blue pen on the floor and just put it in your jar?”
“Something needs to be done about this. I’m not going to keep putting up with people messing with my stuff.”
“Make an–”
“I’m trying to have a conversation with you!”
She turned and shoved a stack of folders into my arms. “And I’m trying to subtly avoid it! If you want to discuss this–again–make an appointment.”
Chad stomped away slamming the door on his way out.
“As I was saying before we were so rudely interrupted,” Susan said, tossing a box of red pens on top of the folders I was already holding. “I’ll need you to perform a variety of tasks.” With a smile, she added a box of extra-small binder clips to the stack.
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Jess * Siobhan
This story was inspired by Adele’s “River Lea”. Here’s the 
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