Of mice & men

Despite all of this, I actually got a good night's sleep that day. It felt like... Things were slowly coming into order.

Now even the alarm worked, and this time I got both breakfast and a shower. Heavenly.

Walking into the lobby of the building, I suddenly ran into her.

Anna-Marie Depardieu. My magazine's sexy, hip, artsy photographer.

She actually wasn't that bad of a person either. Just way too pretentious and took her art way too seriously. Too bad she didn't take me seriously. Her score was only -10, which, in this building, was way below average.

"Oh hey Jack! What's up? How's it hanging in the word department?"

"Yeah, it's... well... What's up with you?"

"Oh I just went to meet with Sophie. We came up with great ideas for pictures for her article. I'm gonna start calling up models right now, actually."

"Hey, that's great. But you know, like, how about you do that for me sometimes? I mean my articles could use some... "cool" pictures too."

She just about kept herself from laughing. "Oh Jack. We really don't have the same taste, do we?"

That was true. Her interpretation of the word "erotic" meant seven layers of gothic clothing and some stupid artistic filters. Mine was just a sexy model wearing a dog collar around her neck, crawling towards the camera.

"We could still try to come up with something?"

"Sure, we'll do that. Some time." she said and padded me on the back like I was an infantile little child, and left.

Yeah. We would come up with something. Sooner than she probably thought.

---

My plans for Gretchen were pretty solid. However, I could only start acting on them in the evening, after everybody else left. So right now, I had a whole workday of other things I could do.

The most useful use for this time was to write those "perfect" articles. That's right, I still needed to write them, to at least keep up the facade. And I managed to write three extremely crappy articles today. Those were going to be today's, wednesday's and thurday's articles. Because I realized something important. Friday's article needed to be at least passable, so that when it was published, it wouldn't be that big of a shock. That is, of course, if I had Gretchen in my grips by that time. But I was going to devote the rest of my extra time on that article now.

I sent the tuesday's article to Gretchen, and the only response I got was "Seriously?". What a bitch.

This was also a good time to start testing different ways of gathering those sweet submission points from my writing colleagues.

---

I brought a cup of coffee to Ulla's desk. She stopped writing her epic masterpiece for a second and looked at me.

"I'm sorry about yesterday, Ulla. It was wrong of me to ask you to do something so... servantly. I hope this makes up for it."

"Yeah whatever."

"So if I could please ask, can we both just sort of forget about what happened yesterday? Would mean a lot to me."

She took a sip of the coffee. Good thing I already knew how she liked it.

"We'll forget about it. Sure. Just don't do it again."

Well once again, she obeyed my order, but did it in a way that caused her no humiliation and left me as the downtrodden one. Why was this so hard?

"Do you like that coffee?"

"Yeah, tastes like cappucino so I'm good."

"You know, I would still appreciate a 'thank you' for it."

She just scoffed. Fine. No progress with her again.

As I left her desk, she turned around and said "Thanks for the coffee". (ULLA: +2SP) (-43SP)

It was a good enough start.

---

As I walked by Sophie's desk, I "accidentally" dropped a pencil under her desk.

"Oops. Get that for me, will you Sophie?"

She looked at me in **** annoyance. What were her options here? Either I went under her desk to get the pencil myself and had a nice view under her skirt, or she just quickly picks it up and hands it to me?

"Ugh. Fine," she said as she bent over and picked up the pen. (SOPHIE: +2SP) (-58SP)

"Thanks" I said as I took the pen. Even that easy decision seemed hard for her.

---

Lana was desperately trying to turn on her computer, but the screen stayed black.

"What the fuck is wrong with this thing again?"

I casually walked up to her desk, and took a real plaintative look at the machine.

"Oh yes. I know. I can help you, if you want."

"Good, do it then."

"But you have to ask nicely"

She laughed. "Yeah right. Come on Jack, I gotta get on with my work."

"Fine then," I said and walked back to my desk.

"What? Jack? What the fuck is wrong with you this week? This is not how it works between us. I tell you to do something, and you'll do it like the good man you are. Why are you turning into such an asshole?"

"I think you should be nicer to those willing to help you."

"Fine. I'll just call the IT then."

"Okay. What are you going to do the next couple of hours as you wait for them?"

She actually seemed to contemplate that for a while.

"Jack. Please fix my computer, you extremely macho superman" (LANA: +4SP) (-37 SP)

A bit sarcastic, but seemed to work anyhow.

"You can do better, Lana."

Maybe I was pushing it a little too far? Hard to tell from her angry expression.

"Pretty please with sugar on top fix my computer, Jack?" (LANA: +4SP) (-33SP)

Not a bad score! I finally got up and walked to her computer. And yeah, of course, I just plugged the power cord back to the wall where I ripped it off fifteen minutes before. Thank God Lana was completely tech blind, and looked really embarrased when she saw the real cause of the problem.

"You're welcome"

"And you're welcome to go fucking kill yourself"

Well that wasn't nice.

---

Okay. This was it. Me and Gretchen were the last two still in the building. Thank God for her workaholism, or this probably wouldn't work.

I put my ear to the wall and waited. At some point, she surely had to... There it was! She left her office and walked towards the bathroom. This was my only chance. I quickly sneaked into her office, because of course she left the door open. Her mobile phone was on top of her desk. Excellent. I pocketed that quickly. Then I left a little something else in her office, and got out of there fast, mere seconds before she returned from the bathroom. If this was a suspense movie that surely would have made a really exciting scene.

I got back to my office and waited. It wouldn't be long now. And...

There it was. A terrifying screech. Alright, wait a few seconds... And now.

I left my office in a hurry and ran towards her office. As I opened the door, she was standing on her desk. Excellent.

"Gretchen?! What was that?"

She was probably still a little surprised that I was here this late in the evening, but nevertheless got on with it.

"Th-there's a mouse here! Kill it! Kill the motherfucker!"

"A mouse? Here? Are you sure?"

"Yes yes yes! Kill it! Kill the fucking thing!"

"Wow, are you that scared of a little rodent? I didn't know a strong woman like you were such a 50s stereotype."

"Shut the fuck up you fucking asshole and kill it! Now!"

Okay, everything went as planned. Time to change the atmosphere.

"Well it seems to me you need desperately something from me. You probably should be nicer towards me."

That stopped her. She took a long look at me, completely surprised I had the balls to say something like that.

"Are... Are you fucking kidding me? You think you have any power in this situation? Kill it right now or you are one hundred percent guaranteed to be fired."

"Why would I care about that? The chance of me keeping my job is slim to none anyways. I like this situation a lot more."

"That's it. You're dead. Goodbye. I'm calling security to deal with this thing."

Gretchen started searching her desk for her mobile. Oh dear, it seemed to be missing.

"Well, if you don't need me, I'll leave you here with Mickey for the rest of the night. See you in the morning."

I walked slowly out of the office.

"No, no, wait! Fine! I fucking forgive you and forget about everything you said just now! Just kill it!"

The mouse scurried from one corner of the room to another. Gretchen let out another small scream.

"I don't know. You've been really mean to me lately. I'd need something from you"

She didn't know quite what to say. She probably thought I was going to ask for the 'perfect article'. But I wouldn't do that. I knew she would rather camp on her desk for a week than give me that right now. Besides she could easily reverse her decision after the mouse was gone.

"Yes. I think I know now. I think I'd need to see you humiliate yourself for a bit. Just to level the playing ground between us a little."

"E-Excuse me?" boy, she looked pissed.

"Those high heel shoes. You've been wearing them all day, right? Boy they must smell bad at this moment. Tell you what. Take them off, and sniff each of them deeply. And then tell me what it smells like. After that, I promise to catch the mouse."

Welp. That felt like the longest silence of my life. Either this was going to work or it wasn't. All my planning lead me here, in this very moment.

I could see the gears turning in Gretchen's head. Sure, what I asked for was extremely humiliating. But after the mouse was gone, she could destroy my career with **** prejudice. Either that or spend the whole night locked in with this mouse. She couldn't really threaten firing you anymore, since she had already tried that. No matter how many times she counted this thing in her head, it all lead to one decision.

"You sick motherfucking pervert."

"Is that a yes?"

She finally started taking her shoes off. Epic. (GRETCHEN: +20SP) (-55SP)

She took both of them in her hands, and stared at them solemnly. She held them close to her face and took a small sniff.

"Smells like feet. Good enough?"

"Oh no no. Really get your nose there and sniff deep for at least three seconds."

She clearly wanted to throw them at me right now, but hey, she was already this far.

So she did it. She stuck her nose in one and took a long sniff. (GRETCHEN: +5SP) (-50SP)

When she stopped, she had to cough and dropped both of her shoes on the ground. "Oh God, that's so fucking disgusting. Smells like feet sweat and some other disgusting odours. Who the fuck would want to..." that's when she saw what I was doing. I was holding my phone and recording her shoesniffings. She was a little surprised, to say the least.

"Sorry Gretchen. I'm not going to do anything with this. Just needed to protect myself. You were probably going to message Maria and tell her to fire me immediately, right? Well, if you do, I'm sure a lot of people are going to see this video. That doesn't need to happen. Let's just go back to the way it was, okay? I'll keep trying to write the perfect article, and you'll give me a fair chance?"

She had to think about her situation. After a little contemplation, she seemed to agree to the terms. As if I could somehow supervise how fair she was going to be in critizing my articles. The main thing was not to allow her to destroy me immediately.

"Fine. Now kill the thing or I kill you" (GRETCHEN: +3SP) (-47SP)

Yeah, 28 points, that's was probably the maximum out of this situation.

"Actually I promised to just catch it", I said and took a small piece of cheese from my pocket. The small mouse, that I had already a day to get acquainted with, quickly ran towards it and started nibbling. I grabbed the mouse in my hand and put it back in my pocket.

"You had... cheese with you?"

"Yeah. Don't think about it too much. Just one of my quirks."