Chris, a Tech Director at a TV station [Negation ring]

What a waste of a weekend... Chris thought to himself as he stared at the multiview screen in absolute boredom. The time is 3 AM on a Sunday morning and Chris is doing everything in his power to try to keep his eyes open. After Wyatt, his lazy and creepy coworker, called out of his graveyard shift for the weekend, Chris was **** to come in to cover. He’d had plans to meet with a cute girl he’d started talking to on Tindr that weekend, but looks like that plan is out the window.

Who is even awake to watch this garbage anyway? As the stupid MyPillow infomercial ran again for the 3rd time that hour, Chris couldn’t help but let his thoughts drift. He still had 4 hours left to go on the shift and nothing to do with the rest of his Sunday but catch up on sleep before his ACTUAL shift Monday. Chris glanced at his empty coffee cup and, with a sigh of frustration at his situation, headed to the break room to start another pot.

It’s a ghost-town in the newsroom at this time of night, but that’s expected on a weekend day. Even though Chris’ news station is one of the biggest in the city, no one is going to be in the building at 3 in the morning on a Sunday... except for him.

As the coffee-maker groaned, Chris paced around to stay active and awake. He slowly walked past cubicle office after cubicle office not really paying attention to anything but the sounds of the coffee machine. Eventually, he made it to the storage room and paused. Normally this room is locked and forgotten, but today the door is slightly ajar.

Chris stepped in, curious to what was in the previously unexplored room, and flicked the lights on. With a dull flicker, the LED lights revealed... old TV cameras and analog systems. Yup, pretty much what he expected. Chris turned around to head back to the break room when he saw a small black box tucked behind an old box TV. He noticed the box because, unlike everything else in the room, it was dust-free and looked fairly unused.

Chris walked over to the metal shelf holding the TV and black box. It’s weird, it almost seemed like a box someone would hold an engagement ring in. The box was black but had a velvet feel to it and a gold engraving of a symbol Chris didn’t recognize. The symbol almost looked Asian and was decorative within a golden circle on both the top and bottom of the box. Chris opened the lid to find 2 rings inside, one golden and one silver.

What an odd place to hide a box containing fancy rings. Chris took out the silver ring and inspected it closely. It was small, probably too small for Chris to wear, and was undecorated save for one dash engraved to the outside of the ring. Confused, and feeling a little greedy, Chris tried to put the ring on the middle finger of his left hand and was surprised to see it fit perfectly! Guess it wasn’t as small as I thought... Chris thought, inspecting the ring on his finger. Man, this actually looks pretty good.

As he looked at the ring, he heard a distant beep signaling the coffee was done. Chris put the box back on the shelf, turned off the light, and headed back to the break room already forgetting about the silver ring on his left hand. With fresh coffee in hand, Chris wasted the rest of his Sunday morning hours with more infomercials, car commercials, and educational morning television until his replacement finally arrived to relieve him.

As he sleepily walked to his car, he noticed Wyatt come walking towards the building. Fresh, hot anger rose in Chris at the sight of the lazy dirtbag who made him waste his weekend.

“Dude, the fuck!” Chris exclaimed, closing the distance. “You called out sick for the weekend and made me cover you, but you seem perfectly fine to me!”

“Uhh, hey Chris,” Wyatt said meekly, not even bothering to look at him on his way inside the building. “Yeah, my bad man. I needed some me-time, ya know?” He looked like he was trying to quickly end the conversation, squirrly and nervous as always.

“Whatever, enjoy your weekend I guess.” Chris was done, he hated working with the creep anyway. He was exhausted and just wanted to get home. With an obvious passive-aggressive message, Chris pushed past Wyatt, got into his car, and headed home.

As Chris passed out in his bed still mostly clothed, he wondered why Wyatt would even bother returning to the building if he called out for the weekend. As his eyes closed, Chris would have no idea of the power he held on his hand until the next day.