Chapter 41: First Come, First Served
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I exited the boss's office in despair. Wandering toward my desk, I could feel the passage of rumour on the air. Muffled tales upon whispered voices, barely audible, spoke of me - a woman on the ropes. Their rumours didn't escape my ears. Nor, it seems, did my conversation with the boss escape theirs.

With a heaving sigh, I fell into my desk chair. Melancholy was written on my face. Overhead, I could hear the ticking of the clock. It was a metronomic cacophony, ticking with each passing second: serving as a slow reminder of my encroaching doom.

Tick, tock.

Tick, tock.

Staring up at the contraption, counting down the hours until I'd be staring back at my boss, I sighed as I put my head against the desk. The boss's patience had snapped. I guess nobody was invincible, least of all me.

I probably should've remembered that.

I groaned audibly, as I leaned my head against the desk, feeling the cold wood against it. In my mind, a part of me wondered which one of my coworkers would be the one to have the luxury of destroying my life. My future would probably be put on the case board: a free for all with my soul. It would be first come, first served, for whoever wanted to make my life most miserable. Knowing the sadistic people of this place, the destruction of my soul would probably be in high demand. Perhaps they'd fight over me, like a pack of ravenous dogs that had been tossed a chunk of meat. I couldn't imagine that'd be a pleasant experience. Not for me, at least.

I stood up, wandering over to the far-side of the office as I wandered into a room adjacent to the break room. It was cramped and empty, maybe large enough to fit two people inside it, and at the end was a haggard dispenser which seemed beaten and barely functional. A bright green button sat on the wall beside it, and below were a stack of discarded manilla files - their contents splayed across the floor. I grabbed one of the discarded files, a future that some worker either couldn't be bothered destroying - or one that even they couldn't bring themselves to destroy. Who knew which it was. Looking down at it, I heard a voice from behind me.

"Malarie," Dalton said. "I heard you got quite the talking-to today, didn't you?"

I turned around, clutching the file in my arms, as Dalton stood there with that horrid smile on his face - the kind that made you feel the irresistible urge to wipe it off with your fist. However, I kept my hands to myself as I stood there. 

"You didn't have to come all the way over here to gloat," I replied.

"Maybe I didn't," Dalton said. "However, it doesn't change the fact that it's fun to watch one of Es's lackeys burn."

"I'm nobody's lackey," I replied.

"You keep telling yourself that," Dalton smiled.

Staring at one another with malice upon our breaths and thinly-veiled ire across our faces, I watched as Dalton bent down, picking up one of the old case files off the floor. With a smile, he pointed to me.

"Did you think you were invincible, Malarie?" Dalton asked. "That as long as you looked like you had prospect, the boss'd let you get away with anything? Well, of course, he probably might've if somebody didn't intervene. He seemed awfully angry from what I heard, perhaps a little too angry, especially over a tiny little pass you broke. Seems a bit strange, don't you think?"

"What do you want, Dalton?" I said. "Are you saying you're trying to get me fired?"

"No, no, of course not," Dalton stated. "However, I'm just saying, you'd do well to remember. In this place: there's a price for everything. I hope, with your record, you can withstand that price long enough to survive it."

As Dalton pressed the file button, letting a person's life fall into his hands from the machine, he gave me a horrid and condescending smirk, leaving me behind as I stood within the litter of case-files: within the messy pile of people's souls. Taking the file under his arm, he waded through the paperwork with a careless gait, treading across people's identities with reckless abandon as they littered the floor. 

"You weren't the one who intervened with the boss, were you?" I asked Dalton as he left. 

"You believe what you want to believe, Malarie," Dalton replied. "It won't matter in a few hours anyway, will it?"

"You're a real piece of work, you know that?" I responded.

"As I said, you believe what you want to believe, Malarie," Dalton answered. "Any fool can criticise, condemn, and complain. At the end of the day though, don't blame the world when the only problem is you."

Dalton smiled at me, with that same malignant expression as the one he wore before, as he turned around to walk away - joining his execrable entourage of appalling sycophants once more. As they laughed at whatever utterances seemed to echo from his lips, I wandered from the case room, clutching the file within my grip. I wasn't the problem here, and I wouldn't be made to believe that lie. 

Stepping forward, I went to wander back to my desk. Ambling across the room, I slowly returned to my chair, and as I went to slump down - I stared blankly at the file I'd gotten from the pile. With footprints all across it from all the hundreds of people who'd gone to the case-room, ignoring the souls on the floor as they pressed the button. I went to open it and look inside. However, as I went to open it, a pair of slender fingers pressed the file back down - stopping me from doing so. I stared up at the woman standing over me.

"You would be best served casting that case from your mind," Esmeralda said. "You have far more important things to do over the next three hours, do you not?"

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