Shane, 27 - Overworked, Underpaid, Single and Lonely

You sit staring at your sales stats for the month. There will be no bonus again, that's for sure. At this rate you'll be lucky to still be clinging onto your job by the end of the year, and you can barely make your extortionate rent as it is. That bonus you had worked so hard for, but not even come close to hitting, might have allowed you some sort of existence that went beyond merely eating, sleeping and working for the next few weeks. Clearly that wasn't to be.

For now, you need the documents from that one property exchange you did manage to get over the line this week photocopied for your records, and there is someone even lower down the food chain than you are in this office who you can delegate a tedious task like that to.

"Ria, can you come here a moment?"

'Fuck off Ria' you tell her bitterly in your head as she walks towards you.

When Ria Lewis had first shown up at the estate agents you have been stuck working at for the last five years, you thought it might have been the first good thing that had happened since you accepted the job. In fact, it turned out to be the worst.

Twenty one years old and effortlessly gorgeous, Ria had become a brutal daily reminder of everything you had always wanted but could never have. A living symbol of all the hot girls who had ignored you your whole life.

You had initially assumed your relative seniority to Ria might earn you some modicum of respect from her. In reality, most of the time she didn't even bother to take her headphones off when she interacted with you. Like now, as she wordlessly, and with just a hint of annoyance, snatches the documents from your hand and walks over to the photocopier with them.

She is always at that bloody photocopier, which is situated right in your eye line. And she is always wearing those short skirts that showcase her long, perfectly toned legs, as if to taunt you about how much you want to fuck her but can't.

A paranoid part of your mind can't shake the feeling she is doing it deliberately. The one person in the office you ought to feel some semblance of superiority to constantly reminding you how far beneath her you really are.

Of course she's not the person at the bottom of the food chain here. That's you.

She's so fucking sexy though. You can't help but stare at those legs she likes to tease you with so consistently, imagining what it would feel like having them wrapped around your neck. Until...

"Hey, eyes on the screen buddy!"

It's Micky. The companies golden boy. The man with the gift of the gab. The cunt who swipes your most promising leads from you and takes the top bonus every month without fail. He is always friendly, in that insincere and almost predatory way estate agents are. Most of them only switch into that mode on for their clients though. It seems to be Micky's default personality.

"Uh, I'm just a little tired and zoned out"

That's not technically a lie. That weird dream you had about some spirit giving you the power to enter people's sexual fantasies was incredibly intense and seems to have wiped you out for the day.

Micky looks at Ria, then back in your direction and gives you an annoying wink.

"Hey, I believe you. Thousands wouldn't!"

You wish there was something you could say to just make him fuck off, but you know by now there isn't.

"Tough month, huh?" he consults your utterly depressing figures cheerily "Chin up fella, they can't always be that bad!"

"Hey Micky!"

Ria is walking back over. She'll take her fucking headphones off for him of course. She places the documents she copied on your desk without even bothering to look at you.

"Did you manage to close on that property on Tudor Street?"

"Yep, got the fuckers to pay about thirty grand over what they needed to as well"

"That's awesome Micky!" Ria trills back excitedly "Hey, I went to that club you were talking about and..."

You don't hear the rest of the conversation as they have walked off to take an impromptu break together.

---

You go to bed feeling even worse than you did the previous night. What is the point of all this? Surely life is supposed to get better than what you are currently experiencing at some point? When is that going to be exactly? What do you have to do to make it happen?

Maybe you are desperate, or delirious through sleep deprivation, or more than likely both of those things, but you decide there can't be any harm in at least experimenting with the power you were supposedly given last night.

Just imagine if it worked?

You close your eyes and think of Ria.