by West, Sam
More ranting from the speed-talking voice on the end of the line and Atwood held the phone away from his ear. “Later,” he said more emphatically, before severing the call.
“Problems, Mr Atwood?” Paul asked innocently, all the while fantasising about pummelling his too-handsome face to a bloody pulp.
“Never have children, Paul. They make your life a living hell.”
Paul followed James’s gaze to the framed photo on the desk. From where he sat, Paul could only see the back of it. “Can I see?” he asked.
A flash of something that Paul couldn’t quite make out passed over his face. Uncertainty, perhaps?
“Sure,” he said after a moment’s hesitation, turning the picture round for Paul to look at.
The photo was a snapshot of the four of them, taken on a sunny day. They were laughing into the camera with Atwood in the middle, his arms draped over his wife and daughter, with his handsome son next to his wife. The first thing he noticed was how blonde and sunny his wife and two kids were – how they contrasted so nicely with his dark good looks. It really did make him feel quite ill.
Paul drank in the sight of the two women, not paying any attention to the son. At first glance, they might have been sisters rather than mother and daughter. The daughter was almost as tall her dad, and the mother barely came up to his chest. Mrs Atwood was classically beautiful in a delicate, Michelle Pfeiffer kind of way. Miss Atwood was a lot more robust. She was easily as beautiful as her mother, but it was a different kind of beauty. Her facial features were similar, but everything was that much heavier, from her stronger jawline, to her bee-stung lips. She had her mum’s dazzling, powder-blue eyes, but like the rest of her features, they were a lot bigger than her mother’s.
James Atwood cleared his throat and Paul snapped his gaze away. Shit, he had been staring for way too long.
“They look nice.”
Really fucking nice. So fucking nice I’d like to fuck your wife and daughter until they scream for mercy.
“They are. Ryan’s doing so well, he’s studying for a Structural Engineering degree at Oxford. And Claire’s a good kid. Mostly.”
Atwood sighed heavily, dry-washing his face. He peered over his glasses at him, as if debating whether to share anything further. Paul kept his expression neutral, his eyes wide and guileless.
“My daughter may be nineteen, but all the while she lives under my roof, there are rules, damn it. She treats our home like a god-damn hotel, out all hours of the night getting up to god-knows-what with who-knows-whom, without a care for me and Mary. I guess we’ve been too soft on her, she probably needed a much firmer hand growing up…”
He stopped mid-flight, as if suddenly realising that he was pouring his guts out to a guy he was in the process of firing. Clearing his throat, he got back to the subject at hand.
“Look, Paul, I happen to like you, and I like to think that I’m a pretty good judge of character. You always show up for work on time, you’re conscientious, and polite to the customers, even if you are a little quiet. But the thing is, a member of staff has complained about you, and in this day and age, I am forced to take such complaints seriously. Especially when that complaint happens to be about sexual harassment in the workplace. And I know it’s early days, but you don’t appear to be gelling with the other staff-members to the extent that I would like. Comradeship in this profession is essential when we have to present a friendly, united front to the public.”
“Who’s complained about me?” Paul asked, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice.
The tremor was not born of sadness, or disappointment, but pure, unadulterated, white-hot rage. It boiled in his chest, making his heart hammer and his skin flame.
“I’m sorry, Paul, I’m not at liberty to say.”
Paul thought back over his short time at the tourist attraction, ‘I Can’t Believe It’s True!’. Yesterday, he’d had an altercation with Louise, the stuck-up bitch who sold tickets on the front desk. Okay, so maybe he’d been caught ogling her chest, but then, if she didn’t want people to look at them, then she shouldn’t wear a top that made her tits look like two distorted, tightly taped-up water balloons.
Take a picture, why don’t you? she had said.
Paul had slunk away with his cheeks flaming. Not in embarrassment, but in outrage. In his head, he had cut her open from sternum to groin and paddled in her guts, but not wanting to cause a scene, he had retreated.
“It was Louise, wasn’t it? If someone’s been saying things about me, I think I have a right to know.”
“Okay, fine, I’ll level with you. You’re obviously a sensitive lad. She said you made an inappropriate comment about her, you know, her breasts.”
Paul bridled in genuine indignation.
“I did no such thing. I swear, I didn’t say a word.”
“I’m sorry, Paul, that’s as maybe, but the fact remains she has made a formal complaint of sexual harassment. And sadly, you don’t seem to be settling in as well as I’d hoped.”
“I see,” he mumbled, twisting his hands anxiously in his lap.
“I really am sorry that this hasn’t worked out,” he said gently. Obviously, he had mistaken his enflamed skin for blushing and Paul wanted to kill him for his patronising tone. “I’ll make sure that you leave here with a glowing reference, and you will find a small-bonus in your pay-packet, a little thank-you for your time here.” Atwood stood up and extended his hand.
For a second, Paul just stared at it, his mouth dry and his heart racing. A fleeting image of pulling hard on that offered hand and smashing it into the top of the oak-desk flared in his mind. And when he had done that, he would grab the stapler and staple his fucking eyeball…
Instead, he stood up and accepted the offered hand, allowing Atwood to pump it rigorously up and down.
“Thank-you, Paul, I appreciate the time you have put in with us. A decision like this is never easy.”
He let go of Paul’s hand and opened a drawer of his desk, frowning to himself. Paul’s gaze was drawn to the movement of his hand, and he saw a stack of messy papers and opened envelopes with their letters poking out, on top of which was a little black, leather-bound book.
His address book…
“Funny, I was sure your wages were in here. Oh yes, that’s right, Fay was about to hand them to me and I had intended to put them in the drawer, but then Jeff called and I forgot,” he said, more to himself than to Paul. “Excuse me for a second.”
Atwood got to his feet, heading for the door that led into the adjoining, smaller office that was the domain of Fay the secretary. Paul had nothing against Fay; she’d always been nice enough to him. She was a plain girl – probably around his age – with mousy hair and a border-line weight problem.
He left the room, pulling the door to behind himself. Acting on pure impulse, Paul sprang to his feet and leaned over the desk, yanking open the drawer that Atwood had just been in.
Bingo!
A speedy shuffle through the messy drawer revealed exactly what he had been searching for – an opened utility bill with ‘Mr J. Atwood’ written across the front, with an address that wasn’t for I Can’t Believe It’s True!.
It has to be his home address.
He also grabbed the little black book, and, having nowhere to put it, he shoved it down the front of his underpants. The edge of the book scraped against his cock and he reached down there to sort it out, only just snatching his hand out in time when Atwood re-entered the room.
“Your wages,” he said, handing him a brown envelope. “And your thank-you bonus.”
Paul only just managed to shove the letter into the pocket of his black, work-trousers in time, and he accepted the pay-packet with a murmured thanks. “I guess this is it, then.”
But Paul could tell that Atwood wasn’t really listening; he was already on the other side of the office and reaching for the doorknob. Paul hadn’t even left the office yet and he was already forgotten.
“Thanks a
gain,” Atwood said, holding open the door.
“Aren’t I even going to stay the rest of the day?” he asked pathetically.
“There’s no need. Goodbye, Paul, it’s been a pleasure.”
The bastard! The complete and utter fucking cunt bastard!
It was so unfair. He liked this job. He liked the hustle and the bustle of the crowded, tourist attraction. He liked watching the toing and froing of the people, it was so nice to actually feel like he was a part of something.
And he particularly liked watching the women. Oh yes, he liked watching them.
“Goodbye, then,” he said, still hoping.
But hoping for what, he wasn’t sure. A kind word, perhaps? Or Atwood changing his mind?
Yeah, sure. Fat chance of that…
You’ll get yours, you cunt.
And just like that, Paul found himself cast out, the office door firmly shut behind him. Fay the secretary smiled sadly at him as he walked the walk of shame through her territory.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her eyes shining with sympathy behind her glasses.
“Yeah.”
He looked away, unable to meet her eye as he shuffled past her, his face burning in shame.
She knows what a failure I am. She probably heard me getting fired. Anger mingled with the embarrassment. Fake, fucking bitch. I bet she’s laughing at me, really. I bet they all are.
Beyond the office lay the rest of the staff quarters, which was situated in the basement. To his left was a door which led to the vast stockroom, and before him was the staffroom. Thankfully, this morning it was empty. He couldn’t face anyone right now – not that anyone actually ever spoke to him.
At the end of the staffroom were two doors – one led upstairs to the front desk, the other out into the ‘Chamber of Terror’. Whoever was on ‘scare duty’, got to go through that concealed door in costume and jump out on people. They were even allowed to threaten people. Nothing too obscene of course, just something playful, like, ‘I’m coming for you, blondie,’ or, ‘I’m gonna getcha’. Paul had wanted to say things much worse than that, but he had restrained himself. He had been the model employee, or so he had thought.
It’s so unfair. The only time in my life I play by the rules, and I get fucking sacked for it.
Paul was sad he would never get to do that again.
His hand hovered over the door handle that led to the stairwell and front-desk, but he couldn’t bring himself to turn it, instead opting for the other door.
One last walk through paradise.
It was only quarter to ten, and Paul found himself alone in the Chamber of Terror. People were only allowed down here at hourly intervals to ensure that the electronically animated displays weren’t playing to an empty audience. Ten O’clock was when the first wave of people were due.
It was almost crap with the overhead, fluorescent lights switched on and no spooky music or sound-effects. The macabre displays looked like just that; displays. Dismally, he wound his way through the body-bags that hung from meat-hooks from the ceiling. He punched one, and it was as heavy as a punchbag. It swung slightly, the blood-drenched plastic looking as about as real as a set of Dracula fangs bought from a lame joke shop on Broadgate’s seafront promenade.
Yet he still loved it, so, so much. It had been his dream fucking job.
Yeah. Had is the word.
I might as well just kill myself.
The thought was sure and true. Throughout his entire life, he had lurched from one pile of steaming shit to the next. Abused by those who were supposed to care for him. Let down by every single person he had ever known.
I can’t run forever. I don’t want to keep on running. The buck stops here.
A female voice startled him, snapping him out of his black thoughts. It was coming from round the corner, in the direction of the Broadgate Butcher, his personal favourite display. ‘The Broadgate Butcher’ – a real life serial-killer from the early 1900s – was a life-size, entirely realistic, animated waxwork of a man repeatedly chopping through the severed thigh of a woman who lay screaming on her back on a butcher’s table. Lit up in the dark against the stone wall of the basement, it was genuinely creepy with the thunk of the axe coming down and the woman’s screams.
Paul crept closer but stayed hidden around the corner, stepping over the rope that cornered off the ‘heads on sticks’ display and tucking himself against the stonewall. He recognised that voice. Bloody Louise, the fucking slag with the stupid, oversized, squashed tits that had got him fired. He strained his ears to listen…
End of sample.
