The Shrink Slip Chapter 1
Here is a story I decided to start writing. It's pretty tame and for most audience. This is the introduction.
Randal thought deeply about the life he had chosen at his boss's feet, literally at his boss's feet. For several years now, he had been shrunken to the size of a cockroach and at the beck and call of Becca Lockwood, the rather young vice-president of Elric Technologies.
Formally a lowly regional manager, Becca had made miraculous advancements within the often secretive corporation in the past couple years since Randal's downsizing. She was a go-getter in every sense of the word, never missing an opportunity to rise up the ranks. One of these instances occurred several years ago, with the opportunity to sit in on one of the major, frequent, and often hush-hush CEO meetings. She had been keeping her ear to the ground about such events as the more minimal employees who were lucky enough to attended these big whig get togethers often left them with a new look on things and a new, cushier position. When her boss, a Mr. Frank Crossfields, let it slip that the next meeting would happen soon, Ms. Lockwood quickly leapt at the chance, asking her boss for the privilege to join in. Mr. Crossfield had been told before by HIS boss not to just bring people willy nilly to such important conjunctions of the higher ups, but this time Mr. Crossfield was too mesmerized by Becca's can-do attitude (and the very blatant peeks up her rather short skirt as she sat adjacent to him) to put up any effective form of defense to the idea. Mr. Crossfield's was quick to relent and soon Ms. Lockwood found herself one of the few woman in a meeting room filled with the fat, old and disgustingly powerful men of Elric Technologies.
This time the meeting was about one of their government funded semi-top secret projects, the development of shrinking technologies. The company, being as heartless as most companies can be, wanted to test the new shrinking creation, hot from the labs, on a human subject. They, however, wanted to keep it hush-hush for PR purposes (of course of course), meaning it would most likely have to be someone from the company who took the bullet, or, in this case, the intense and potentially harmful rays of shrinking energy. The real important question was who would be the best un-suspecting guinea pig. It had to be someone unimportant; someone who wouldn't be missed or worse, sue the company if anything went wrong. Seeing an opportunity to impress the top dogs, Becca immediately volunteered her services; not for her to be shrunk, goodness no, but to have one of her employees shrunk. She knew exactly who too, having recently been informed by a certain secretary, of this employee's infatuation with her several days earlier.
Randal had been rather new to the company, just under two years to be precise; still a pup in the eyes of the vets. He had only been given the job in the first place because his aunt, a curmudgeonly but hyper-athletic security guard at the firm, put in a good word for him with the higher ups. Since the beginning of his new life with Elric Tech, he'd been given mostly menial tasks, write up and mail delivery, and confined to possibly the smallest cubical in all of the whole building (then again, who knows what happens on other floors). Small is in fact, an understatement for the size of this cubical. Any added decoration to the space, even a classic "hang in there" poster, would have greatly diminished the needed arm space required to actually function as a workspace. The older crew at the company had been fond of calling the space "the teapot" as most people sentenced to the space often began to boil over and leave the company in a rather steaming fashion. The only convenience poor Randal seemed to have was that his meager work domain stood in perfect view of the bosses door, meaning he got to enjoy seeing Ms. Lockwood enter and leave her extensively larger office at all times of the permitted work hours.
To say Randal had a crush on Ms. Lockwood wasn't far from the truth. He was smitten with her from day one. As soon as he laid eyes on her gorgeously soft visage, her flowing brown hair, and her body's luscious form he had fallen into a death spiral of love. This was despite the fact Ms. Lockwood didn't care two bits for her new employee, barely even giving the time to remember his name (it was Ralph or Rodney or something…). She hadn't even spoken to him since the introduction to the company and even then her only words to him were "the coffee in the break room is for earners only." Still, Randal felt his heart flutter almost spastically when she uttered those words which were more of a verbal warning than a helpful caution.
Since then, Randal had been on an unsuccessful campaign to get her attention; a good morning here, an attempt at passing banter there. Most attempts at conversation however ended in the realization that she had trouble telling he even existed. It wasn't her fault, it was difficult to see anyone so below her on the corporate ladder, and he was barely on the first rung. So, Randal's campaign soon turned into a mild form of stalking, watching her come and go from her office, a conveniently often occurrence.
Though Ms. Lockwood was oblivious of his presence, another woman in the company was sure not. Darla Clockwick, a young blond haired southern girl finding herself in the big city, was another small cog in the corporate machine. Being the secretary of Ms. Lockwood's boss, the ever leering Mr. Crossfields, Darla found her desk to be the center of attention for the male staff who worked there. Mr. Crossfields tended to favor those with his general mindset, mainly men who still seemed to live in the sexist fifties. Darla grew use to the whistles and cat-calling of the men who purposefully passed by her desk (even when it was out of the way of their destination). There was always the occasional peeping eye when she bent over for something dropped, and the rarer but not too rare pick-up line from some of the braver gents. Poor Darla was starting to lose hope in finding a knight among the barons. It wasn't till Randal came by with the mail did she find hope in the less fair sex. In their brief yet thoughtful encounter, Darla was taken off her feet by the kindness and respectful ways of the young office gofer, something quite the luxury in her world of old skevers. And so, much like Randal had become with the ever unreachable Ms. Lockwood, so too had Darla fallen for Randal and finally the love- er…line had been birthed.
Darla, falling hard for the one decent man in the office, made any excuse she could to run into him in the workplace, delivering the wrong packages to his cubical, using the women's restroom on his floor (one floor below hers), even simply abandoning her workplace just to have a moment with him. Spending time with him seemed to make the unbearable approaches of her male coworkers somewhat bearable again. He was a light of hope for her and all she wanted was for him to look her way.
Soon she had formed a somewhat healthy relationship with him, which was all they could really have for now. Office romance was strictly forbidden at Elric Technologies, usually leading to the firing of one or both of the employees involved. The company simply didn't have the time to deal with such relationships, especially when they turned sour, which always seemed to happen. So on Darla dreamt of the day the two of them could be together, a nearly hopeless dream especially when she discovered what was in Randal's desk.
It had never been any contest for employee of the month in Randal's workplace. Ms. Lockwood was always a shining example of Elric Tech values. As such, it was incredibly rare for the regional manager to ever not be the employee of the month, a status that came with a photo in the break room and a modest bonus during pay day. The company policy for such an award (surprising enough they would bother to have a policy for it) was that a fresh picture was taken each month, the older one thrown away never to be used again.
At the end of one of these months, another cold month in terms of attention for Randal, the office nobody did something drastic. That month, Randal decided to salvage the old crumpled up photo of his unrequited love and keep it in his one useable drawer in his tiny, tiny cubical.
Several weeks later during one of Darla's drive by encounters with Randal, she had caught a glimpse of the neatly uncrumpled photo in his desk drawer. Her heart briefly sank in despair and quickly bounced back with a devious plan (all for the sake of love of course). Darla would discreetly inform the oblivious Ms. Lockwood of this secret and one-sided admiration for her, who would subsequently fire Randal for his forbidden office romance. Broken hearted, sweet Darla would sweep in and comfort the stricken Randal who most definitely see who his true love it. Happily ever after the petit southern secretary and the kind ex-office gofer would live, or so Darla thought.
The devious lover wasted no time in divulging her secret to Ms.Lockwood, who thanked her for the notification and set the secretary back on her way. Soon, Darla thought, soon she could come to Randal's rescue, but it never came. After a few days of nothing, Randal disappeared...
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