Office Fantasy - A Short Story

We've all thought about it . . . how fantastic would it be to walk into your boss' office and tell him exactly what you thought of him?

That was the inspiration for this story. The writing prompt for this assignment was to begin a story with the sentence, "Alice tried to remember who had given her the key."

Enjoy!

Office Fantasy
By Kristen Berry

Alice tried to remember who had given her the key. She had taken careful notes in the beginning, but, as always, she had begun to cry before she escorted the first person out of the building. By the time the last key was handed to her, her sob-induced hiccups caused her hand to shake until her notes became illegible.

“Cheer up Alice, your job is safe,” Robert had said bitterly as he left. “If they didn’t have you, who’d be around to show us the door?”

Alice pushed aside her ledger and box of keys just as a new email announced itself on her computer. It was from the partners, declaring the latest batch of layoffs to the staff.

“Take heart,” the email said in closing, “Deveaux Public Relations is as strong as ever!”

The partners always hid in their offices on the days of the firings, sending out trite, insincere emails from their comfortable confines while Alice, the H.R. director, was left to do the dirty work.

“Hey Jackie,” Alice called out of her office, wiping away the last of her tears with the back of her hand. “Do you have plans for lunch?”

Jackie looked pained, as though she suddenly wished she had chosen another route to wherever she was headed.

“Um, sorry Alice,” Jackie said. “I’ve got . . . a lunch meeting. Sorry.”

Alice sighed, thinking of the days before she had become the office pariah. Though everyone knew she had no hand in deciding who stayed and who went, Alice was the harbinger of this news. And precisely because she had no say in the matter, she was a safe scapegoat for their resentment.

But not any more.

Alice gathered her box of keys and ledger and walked down the hall. She marched into the office without knocking. Bill Bishop, senior partner, was leaning over the phone on his desk, two account executives leaning forward from the other side, as a voice droned from the phone’s speaker.

Alice lifted the box and turned it over, spilling the dozens of keys onto Bill’s desk. The two account executives jumped backward. Bill regarded Alice as though she had sprouted horns.

“What . . . hello?” the voice from the speaker squawked.

“There is a way to do things,” Alice said, her voice quavering, “and there is a way not to do things. This is not the way to do things, Bill. Why don’t you consider that maybe, after working for you for however many years they’ve been here, maybe they at least deserve a face-to-face conversation and a handshake from you at the end. Maybe they deserve at least that much.”

Alice opened her ledger and pulled the pages from the spiral spine in fistfuls, shredding them and scattering them over the desk. Bill stared up at Alice, his blue eyes simmering with contempt.

The voice from the speaker continued to chirp.

“Take my advice or not, I don’t care,” Alice said. “But it’s your mess now, not mine.”

Kanye West – “808s and Heartbreak”

I am a Kanye fan. I’ve been a Kanye fan before I even knew his name, when I was bobbing my head to the songs he produced on Jay-Z’s “Dynasty” and “Blueprint” albums. By the time “Through the Wire” dropped, I was hooked. One of Kanye’s greatest strengths is his versatility, and his ability to weave personal and sometimes self-deprecating revelations – a departure from the typical pure bravado of hip hop – into his music. As a listener, I always felt that I was getting more from him than a glossy image he wished to convey – I was getting him, the real Kanye West. And if you’ve ever seen him perform in person – particularly at his latest concert, the “Glow in the Dark” tour – you know that he leaves his heart and soul on the stage.

Kanye is testing the limits of those strengths on his latest effort, “808s and Heartbreak,” releasing November 24th. While the personal admissions given in his earlier music were often told with tongue-in-cheek, witty plays on words over catchy, danceable beats, the emotion on “808s and Heartbreak” is raw, bare and unabashedly exposed, told over beats created on a Roland TR-808 drum machine, and with the distinctly synthesized voice distortions of the Auto Tune machine made famous by Roger Troutman in the 80s and re-popularized by T-Pain over the last few years.

Though there are cameos by such contemporary hip-hop stars as Young Jeezy, Lil Wayne and the up-and-coming Kid Cudi, don’t be fooled; “808s and Heartbreak” is not a popular music album, and it’s certain to leave many Kanye fans scratching their heads – myself included. When I first heard “Love Lockdown,” the first single off the album, I thought it sounded as though Kanye had locked himself in a basement with his voice and drum machines for a week and produced an album which might have better served as a private diary entry than a public release. We all know the tough several months the artist has been through – with the sudden death of his beloved mother and the dissolution of his engagement – and he is clearly working through the feelings caused by those events on this album.

But there is something deeper going on here. Kanye is pushing the boundaries by exploring something that has been lost in the genre that made him famous for some time now – emotion, loss, and heartbreak. Sure, every hip hop album released today features a requisite “love” song, and the occasional reflection on a lost friend or family member. But I can’t recall another example of a popular, commercially-successful hip hop artist putting forth something so personal, so introspective, and so risky.

Because “808s and Heartbreak” certainly is a risk. And while I doubt that Kanye will see the skyrocketing sales he experienced with his earlier albums, I think he achieved something more important with this one. In a genre flooded with half-hearted, cookie-cutter, emotionless music, Kanye West pushed himself to create something new. He tried something here, something beyond the proven, money-generating formula.

I think the album forces us to question what is more important – an artist creating an album for his listeners and his fans, or for himself. Because I do think “808s and Heartbreak” is a cathartic release for Kanye rather than an album created with his fans in mind. I can’t write this entry without also noting that while Kanye is a talented rapper and lyricist, he isn’t much of a singer, and since most of his latest album features his vocal styling rather than his rhyming, the musicality of this album is called into question. I personally think that, musically speaking, Kanye is best when he finds a happy medium between the personal and the commercial – take the moody, haunting “Flashing Lights” from his latest album, the wildly successful “Graduation.” The song was an enormous hit, and though it was a song about love gone wrong, it was a song people enjoyed listening to. And though it had a head-bobbing beat and a catchy chorus, it wasn’t any less powerful than many of the songs on “808s and heartbreak.”

While I can’t see myself driving around with this album playing in a constant loop for months as I did with his earlier albums, I can’t help but appreciate the effort behind “808s and Heartbreak.” Listen for yourself at: http://www.kanyeuniversecity.com/blog/?em3106=214212_-1__0_~0_-1_11_2008_0_0&em3281=&em3161=)

A Mercy

Toni Morrison has been my favorite author since I read Song of Solomon in high school. More than just a supurb, Nobel Prize-winning writer, Morrison is one of the world's best storytellers. Her latest novel, A Mercy, is in stores today.

Runaway Train - A Short Story

Last week my writers group meeting ended with an assignment: a 500-word story that must contain three elements - a bowl of goldfish, a man in black and a train.

I love writing prompts; it's so interesting to see how a group of people interpret the idea-generating keywords individually in each of their stories. Take a look at the blog list on the right to see what the other members of Writers by the Woods came up with.

Here is my take on the assignment:

Runaway Train
By Kristen Berry

It had been another hasty escape, which was why I found myself on the last train out of Chicago with a fishbowl on my lap. It had been frighteningly easy to smuggle it onboard, with only a trench coat thrown on top. Each time the train veered, water splashed against the fabric, soaking it with murky, fishy water. I repeatedly lifted the coat to make sure Coltrane hadn’t flopped to the floor. I’d left Jeremy a thousand times before, but I’d shown him that I was serious this time; I’d taken the fish with me.

“Is that a goldfish in your lap?” The man across the aisle asked, amused.

“No,” I replied briskly. But when he continued eyeing the odd bulge under the coat, I sighed and unveiled it.

“What’s his name?” The man asked. He was a generically handsome business traveler. He smiled at me the way the guys at the diners I worked at often did, like they thought if they tipped me enough I might go home with them.

“Coltrane,” I said.

“Odd name for a fish. How’d you come to that?”

“It’s the only thing we had in common. Jazz.”

“You and who?”

“Me and the man I’m leaving.”

The man nodded, as if this made perfect sense.

“Going to Ann Arbor?”

“Detroit.”

“You should stop with me in Ann Arbor for dinner. I know a great place.”

“It’ll be two in the morning when we get there.”

The man smiled. “I’ll take you to the train station in the morning.” He said this like I should’ve jumped at the chance, as if a woman like me should’ve been flattered instead of insulted.

I sighed and tapped a fingernail against the fishbowl. Coltrane came immediately to me, his mouth opening and closing in a silent warning.

“So this man of yours,” the man said, “why are you leaving him?”

“He’s a friend of Tina.”

“What?”

“A meth head. He’s a meth head.”

“Oh,” the man replied. I’d hoped this revelation would disgust him, but he only seemed more intrigued. “What’s your addiction?” he asked.

“Assholes, apparently.” I re-covered Coltrane with the coat and turned to the darkness passing outside my window.

My mother would’ve been thrilled if I showed up back in town with a man like that. She didn’t realize that assholes came in all kinds. Sometimes they were hopeless stoners like Jeremy who wore caution signs on their foreheads, but they could also be like this guy, professional types in $300 shoes who asked you to bed before asking your name. The train was speeding toward a thousand I-told-you-sos, but I didn’t care; at least I’d be away from him.

But when the train reached the station, Jeremy was standing there, waiting for me. He must have pushed the old Lincoln like hell to beat the train. My traitorous heart was happy to see him, but he was dressed all in black, like a bad omen.

Welcome

Hi everyone! Welcome to "a literary girl," a blog about all things, well, literary. I created this blog for both writers and readers, and hope both groups will find it useful and entertaining.

As a lifelong writer working towards becoming a published author, I will post excerpts from new pieces I'm working on, as well as interesting articles, news, and insights related to the art and business of fiction writing. Your thoughts, suggestions and critiques are always more than welcome.

I'm also an avid fan of music, movies and fashion, so occasional posts about those subjects are bound to creep in once in a while, but I'll do my very best to stay on topic.

I would like to send a special thank you to the members of Writers by the Woods, the phenomenal writers group I recently joined: though I am new to the group, you've already been an incredible source of inspiration, education and motivation; without you, I never would have created this blog, or taken a cold, hard look at the first draft of novel #1.

Thank you all for visiting! Enjoy, and come back soon.

- K. Berry