Some Days
The office, usually the tidiest room of her house, seems to have been turned inside out. Everything that once adorned the desk has fallen in a heap on the floor. Little Dylan sits at the desk clacking away on the keys of her laptop, unknowing that what he is typing makes no sense at all. She sits beneath the desk trying to crunch the list of numbers for the presentation she must give in an hour. The babysitter has already called to say that she is going to be about twenty minutes late. That is twenty of the thirty minutes she had planned to work baby free.
The phone is ringing again and with the position she has contorted herself into, it may be impossible to get up at all today let alone answer the phone before the machine picks up. She hears the click and her own familiar greeting as the machine kicks on. It’s probably not her ex-husband, he hasn’t called in over two months, and she prays to God that it is not the babysitter again.
When she hears the voice of the mystery person, she doesn’t immediately recognize it, although she is sure she knows who it is. It’s definitely not the babysitter, which is good. The voice she hears sounds ragged, tired, and defeated. Finally it clicks. It’s her boss. Of all the people it could have been, she did not think it would be him.
“Stop whatever you are doing right now,” he says, “When you can, come to the office. We need to talk.”
***Written in a 2008 Creative writing class. Prompt was a picture in which every object mentioned in the story was present.***